Will Luke get off Ahch-To? Who is the real villain? What will go down at the Battle of Crait? We subject the latest Star Wars trailer to a full Force probe

Will director Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi half-inch the plot and vibe from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, or turn the venerable old space saga on its head by recasting Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker as the big baddie? Is Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren an evil little emo toerag, or a conflicted kid set to eventually turn back to the light, like his shiny black cyborg granddaddy before him? Who the hell is Snoke, and is he a midget or a giant?

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It’s hard to keep track of the many fan theories and questions about the mega-hyped sequel to The Force Awakens. Now a new trailer, The Last Jedi Awake, ramps up the anticipation even more. Here is what we have learned after clamping this latest 45-second offering into one of Ren’s menacing interrogation machines and subjecting it to a full Force probe.

Luke gets off Ahch-To

Or does he? Our first thought from seeing Luke Skywalker on the Millennium Falcon is that the last Jedi has escaped Yoda’s fate in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – namely being left to die on a remote planet while the younger generation jaunt off for cosmic fun in more interesting corners of the galaxy. But could this be misdirection? Perhaps Luke is just scoping out Han Solo’s old ship while it is grounded on Ahch-To.

Snoke is obsessed with grey areas in the Force

There has been a lot of talk about the potential emergence of “grey” Jedis in Johnson’s film. But if Luke and Rey are candidates to finally align the light and dark sides of the Force, then Supreme Leader Snoke can surely be placed alongside them. “Darkness rises, and light to meet it” pronounces Andy Serkis’ prune-faced freak in this new trailer. His line from The Force Awakens was: “There has been an awakening – have you felt it? The dark side, and the light.” It seems clear that Snoke is as obsessed with the point where Sith meets Jedi as everyone else in this new trilogy.

And the jury’s still out on whether he’s a giant

Is Snoke huge, as his encounter with Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens suggested? Or is he merely projecting a creepy giant hologram? It is hard to tell from our debut look at the First Order bigwig’s opulent throne room. At first glance, he appears to be the same size as the various members of his snazzy blood-red-garbed Praetorian guard. But given Snoke is to the rear of the image, this may just be a matter of perspective.

Luke and Rey are locked in conflict

We already witnessed Luke grumpily spit out the line, “This is not going to go the way you think”, in last month’s first full trailer for The Last Jedi. Now we can see that his anger is aimed at Rey, who fires up her lightsaber by way of response. Is this a scene of genuine conflict between the pair, or merely a difficult moment in Rey’s tutelage? Is the wannabe Jedi about to leave Ahch-To before she has completed her full training, as Luke did?

The Battle of Crait will be a major set piece

Wherever it comes in The Last Jedi – potentially in the middle – the conflict between First Order and Resistance forces for bragging rights over the remote mineral planet Crait looks set to be a long and spectacular one. At one point, the Millennium Falcon is seen shooting out from the ground, familiar red dust trailing behind it, after a trip through the planet’s core, which was previously seen in last month’s trailer. Perhaps we can assume that Rey and Chewy play some part in the fight. The presence of “gorilla” AT-ATs, TIE fighters and a fleet of new desert-skimming Resistance ships (seen in April’s teaser trailer) suggests this could be one of the biggest Star Wars ground and air spats since the Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. John Boyega’s Finn is on hand, too, because we can see the red dust behind his ship as he gives us another impressive “whoo” to match that early moment aboard the Falcon in The Force Awakens.