If you asked someone to list their three favorite parts of Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, chances are their list would look something like: Rey's badass lightsaber skills, BB-8's adorableness… and Poe Dameron. Brought to life by Oscar Isaac, aka the Internet's boyfriend, the Resistance pilot and his charming swagger stole every scene he was in. Poe may not have had as much screentime as fellow newcomers Rey and Finn, but audiences fell in love with him nonetheless — so it's a relief to find out that Poe won't die in Star Wars: Episode VIII , and will, in fact, be sticking around for the whole trilogy.
The revelation comes courtesy of Rolling Stones' recent interview with Isaac, in which the hot young actor let slip that he would be involved with the Lucasfilm franchise for several more years. "I'm basically Star War -ring until 2020," he told the magazine. "It's the first time in my life when things have been mapped out for quite some time." Obviously, the still un-subtitled Episode VIII is due out in December of 2017 — which means that Poe must survive the events of that film if Isaac is to continue making these movies through the end of the decade.
This news is especially welcome considering the well-known fact that Poe was already almost killed off once — a fact that the Rolling Stone article reiterates: "The original plan was to shock the audience by introducing the character and then rapidly killing him off; Isaac resisted the idea, then agreed, only to be told by director J.J. Abrams that Poe would live after all." That knowledge may have made some fans afraid that Poe was simply living on borrowed time; if he was originally viewed as a disposable character, then surely it would be easier for the writers to kill him off somewhere down the line?
The new trilogy hasn't made any secret about the fact that it's not afraid to kill off beloved characters — a point driven home in The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren killed Han Solo. So while we still can't rule out a tragic (but undoubtedly heroic) death in the trilogy's final installment, it's nice to know that we don't have to keep looking over our shoulders for the axe to fall on Poe's head anytime soon. As Isaac put it in the interview, his "character is no longer marked for death."
So what will Poe be up to in Episode VIII, if not dying? Isaac teased that he'll have an even bigger role in the sequel: "In the new film, there's a lot more to do," he told Rolling Stone. "What happens now is the heroes get tested. All of three of them," he said, referring to Rey, Finn, and Poe. "BB-8 gets tested, too! Everybody gets tested! It's the dark second chapter, but not really dark." Given that The Empire Strikes Back was the darkest installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, it's not surprising to hear that the middle chapter of this trilogy will also be its nadir.
The article also notes that Isaac is "always pushing to complicate and deepen Poe, who started as little more than a charming archetype." According to Isaac himself, "We're making sh*t up as we go." Could some of that sh*t they're making up — and some of those complications they're pushing for — include the clamored-for romance between Poe and Finn? Unfortunately, we'll have to wait another year and a half to find out…
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