(Photo by Joey Gannon, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

We're now three new Star Wars movies into Disney's ambitious plan to reboot the franchise that famously first took us to a galaxy far, far away forty years ago. George Lucas' original Saga has now been expanded into a cinematic sandbox for young creative visionaries to play in, yielding some of the best blockbuster cinema we've experienced in years.

However, before we were gifted with J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens, a few ideas had to be tossed out and rejected. One of those came from Lucas himself, who saw some of his initial storytelling notions survive in this new trilogy. According to the Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi book (via /Film):

"...we learn that one of the first meetings to visualize The Force Awakens happened on January 16, 2013 at Skywalker Ranch with George Lucas himself. Among the pieces presented at the meeting were portraits of an older Luke Skywalker training a new disciple named Kira (later renamed Rey). The idea was that, 30 years after the fall of the Empire, Luke had gone to a dark place and secluded himself in a Jedi temple on a new planet. The paintings show Luke meditating, reassessing his whole life."

Obviously, some of these strands made it into both The Force Awakens and now The Last Jedi, what with the whole middle segment of that picture taking place on Luke's secluded island planet of Ahch-To. Still, it would've been fascinating to watch Lucas expand upon his original ideas, even if the Prequels taught us the rough lesson of what Unchecked Lucas looks like.

One cool last little bit: if you look up Emilia Clarke’s character in Solo, you'll see that she's named Kira. Wonder if Lucas helped sketch her a bit?