The Real Timeline Between 'The Force Awakens' and 'The Last Jedi'

Welcome back to more of my timeline musings, and this time we’re going to be discussing a particularly knotty problem that has taken a not-inconsiderable amount of time to undo!

It all started with a conversation with fellow timeline aficionado K'kruhk's Hat regarding a passage in the novelization of The Last Jedi, by Jason Fry, stating that Rey was on Ahch-To for three days before Luke decides to train her!

Originally I, like I’m sure so many of you had, assumed the two movies had a pretty condensed timeline - no more than a handful of days each - and the scenes with the Resistance fleeing the first order happening concurrently to Rey’s time on Ahch-To. But if Rey is on Ahch-To for at least 3 days while that is happening, how do we explain it? The problem is further compounded by the fact that this 3 day passage of time all happens in chapter 9 of the novel - no option to split the chapter up - and is also backed up in the junior novelization by Michael Kogge.

Random House Worlds

So Rey’s time on Ahch-To looks something like this:

Day 1 - Rey hands Luke the lightsaber.

Day 2 - Luke milks a sea cow.

Day 3 - Luke goes fishing.

Day 4 - Luke shows Rey the Jedi Texts and agrees to start training her tomorrow.

Day 5 - Training with Luke.

Day 6 - Leaves for Crait.

That’s a lot of time for the Resistance to be on the run!

If we take the movies at face value it would be a safe assumption that Rey leaves D’Qar shortly after the destruction of Starkiller Base, is in hyperspace when the First Order arrives, and arrives at Ahch-To after the Resistance escapes.

Now the problem of Rey being on Ahch-To for 6 days while the Resistance fleet is being pursued by the First Order could actually be explained away by this text from The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary which implies that the passage of time on Ahch-To works differently.

DK Books

I have to say though that I am not a fan of a “get out clause”, so what other evidence to support this new stretched-out timeline can be found?

Ah-ha! In the Marvel Comic mini-series Captain Phasma we follow Phasma as she attempts to cover up her involvement in lowering the shields of Starkiller Base that led to its destruction. This page, from issue #4, tells us she is en route back to the First Order fleet 4 days after that battle.

Marvel Comics

So far so good.

There isn’t even anything to suggest she arrives back at the fleet on the same day as that page. So as long as Rey left D’Qar soon after the battle then, given Phasma’s presence with the back First Order fleet in the movie, the days should start more or less matching up?

EXCEPT… in the junior book Rey’s Story, by Elizabeth Schaefer, we are told that Rey spent “nights” at Finn’s bedside on D’Qar, while the junior novelization by Michael Kogge, also sees Rey reflecting that it had been “a few days” after the battle at Starkiller Base.

Disney Lucasfilm Press

So calling this 3 nights (2 days) between the destruction of Starkiller Base and Rey leaving D’Qar, and her 6 days on Ahch-To, we are already at an 8 day span for The Last Jedi alone. There can’t be any other big time jumps again, can there?

Introducing Cobalt Squadron, by Elizabeth Wein, to throw another spanner in the works. Now this junior tie-in novel spans a big chunk of time by itself, and its internal chronology is pretty rock solid.

In Chapter 15 we see Admiral Holdo join a Resistance relief mission at the planet Refnu, and she tells the crew (Rose & Paige Tico included) that Hosnian Prime was destroyed “2 days” ago, and that Starkiller Base was destroyed “today”! Again, there is little in the movie to denote this passage of time and we rely on the ancillary books and comics to fill in the gaps.

Random House Worlds

We also learn that Leia has ordered D’Qar to be evacuated (we see the same order given in Poe Dameron #28, by Charles Soule). Given everything else we’ve discussed, the evacuation must now be spread out over several days - similar to the First Order “chase” in The Last Jedi.

There can’t be anything else to stretch the timeline further, surely? BUT Poe Dameron #26 shows us Poe waking up at night following the TIE crash, which means that despite the movie lending itself to the assumption that Finn & Rey meet Han Solo, and get to Takodana, the same day as escaping Jakku we need to allow time for Poe to get off Jakku and back to D’Qar in order to take part in the battle there.

BUT not all concurrent stories stretch the timeline - some make it smaller (just to keep us on our toes). The Battlefront II video game DLC, Resurrection, sees Iden Versio & co. witness the Hosnian Prime blast from the planet Vardos before sneaking aboard the First Order Star Destroyer Retribution - disabling its hyperdrive to come out of hyperspace just in time to witness the destruction of Starkiller Base.

DICE

Obviously video game mechanics play a large part here - I mean, how much fun would it be to spend 48 real-world hours exploring a Star Destroyer without getting caught - but we have to assume that level of infiltration takes longer than the actual gameplay.

One of the problems of being a hardcore timeliner is trying to give every single piece of media the same level of “having happened”. If we take the children's book Chewie And The Porgs, by Kevin Shinick, as an example - this book shows us Rey arriving on Ahch-To, and then “the next day” a certain hungry Wookiee is off in search of food.

Now, the movie famously has a scene of Chewie barbecuing a Porg for dinner, which happens after Luke agrees to train Rey (which we have already established is at the end of Rey’s 4th day on the island). Seems unnecessarily callous of Chewie considering the adventures he’s been having with the little birds.

What this book also gives us is a visual representation of Rey boarding the Falcon and leaving Ahch-To - in the movie this happens at night after Luke & Rey argue (before Luke receives his visit from Yoda). In the novelization, Rey storms off, and her next scene is entering the Falcon’s escape pod at Crait. However, in Chewie & The Porgs, this seemingly happens at sunrise.

Disney Lucasfilm Press

The junior novelization confuses the issue even more by having the escape pod scene before the Yoda scene! And if you really want to get into the reeds of Chewie’s relationship with the Porgs then you could check out Star Wars Rollouts, an series of animated shorts, aimed at a very young audience, that I very much doubt is meant to be “Canon” but this is one of those examples where if you squint really hard it can still fit.

So let’s look at the full timeline in detail, as well as some of the other stories you might have missed:

Day 1 - Poe is captured on Jakku.

Day 2 - BB-8 meets Rey. She offers him shelter for the night but not before a little side-adventure, on the way back to Rey’s AT-AT, as seen in the animated short Sands Of Jakku.

Day 3 - Rey and BB-8 get to Niima Outpost, with yet another side adventure on the way in BB-8 Bandits. Meet Finn (after TIE fighter crash), escape in the Falcon.

Day 4 - Battle of Takodana, Hosnian Prime destroyed.

Day 5 - This is one of those extra days mentioned in Cobalt Squadron. Luckily we can fill it with the Starkiller Base recon mission from Poe Dameron #27. Due to the season one finale of Resistance, where Kaz sees the destruction of Hosnian Prime, we can potentially place the season two opener on this day too.

Day 6 - Rey escapes her cell, with a little crossover with Join The Resistance as J-Squad see her climbing the ladders. Starkiller Base destroyed. Leia orders the evacuation of D’Qar.

Day 7 - Leia holds a memorial service on D’Qar. Rose and Paige prepare to leave Refnu. (first 2 chapters of The Last Jedi novelization)

Day 8 - Rose and Paige’s mission head back to D’Qar. Black Squadron’s mission to Pastoria (Poe Dameron #29).

Day 9 - Phasma still on Luprora. Rey leaves D’Qar, side adventure on Necropolis, meets Luke.

Day 10 - Phasma returns to First Order fleet. First Order incursion at D’Qar (before The Last Jedi).

Day 11 - Resistance bomber run against the Supremacy. First Order catches up with the Resistance fleet after their escape.

Day 12 - Rose stuns Finn after being given a stun rod “that morning”. Luke agrees to start training Rey “tomorrow”.

Day 13 - Luke starts training Rey (you can find of this in the animated short Porg Problems, or in Star Wars Adventures #26), Finn and Rose at Canto Bight.

Day 14 - Rey leaves Ahch-To. The Battle of Crait. And if you want more of Captain Phasma’s adventures between returning to the First Order fleet and then catching Finn then check out the Lego All-Stars shorts. I cannot recommend these enough! Fun little adventures, taking place all over the timeline, and for the most part absolutely not canon breaking at all.

So there you have it! There is a total of 2 weeks that pass between the start of The Force Awakens and the end of The Last Jedi.

However, I must admit that there is no way to confirm or deny that any of the above ramblings meet the creator’s intentions. Maybe the timey wimey nature of Ahch-To is the correct interpretation, maybe another future writer will decide it took Rey a month to reach Ahch-To. And, as ever, my interpretation of these events remain just that: my interpretation.

Lucasfilm

I will end this piece with a quote K’kruhk’s Hat sent me, regarding this particular problem:

“Does the structure of the film imply the existence of Ahch-To time, or does Ahch-To time exist to explain the structure of the film?”

Certain things are true, regardless of the above…we all find joy in this fictional universe in our own way. Creators cannot be expected to keep track of all the minutiae. The Last Jedi remains a stone cold classic, although after all this, I will never view it the same way again.