‘The Force Awakens’: Opening Crawl Punctuation An Error Or Deliberate ‘Star Wars’ Easter Egg?

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which brought in $238 million during its opening weekend, was a well-received update on the latest adventures of Leia Organa, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker. But followers of the franchise are still putting forth new fan theories about the storyline all over the internet. One such theory was proposed by a staff member of Mic when he pointed out something in regard to the opening crawl of The Force Awakens.

There’s a portion of the crawl regarding General Leia’s brother, but which one? That’s where the question comes in. Joel Topcik, a content editor for Mic, pointed out a likely punctuation error involving the lack of offset commas in a segment of the crawl that pertains to Luke Skywalker.

That said, in The Force Awakens crawl, Joel was thinking — if present knowledge of the franchise storyline is to be followed — that there should be two commas required in this case. But if it was a deliberate part on J.J. Abrams’ part, then the lack of commas could be an Easter Egg teasing a hint regarding the Star Wars 8 and Star Wars 9 sequels.

Interestingly enough, in order to verify that the punctuation is likely an error, one would need to trace the Skywalker roots back to Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala’s coupling and birthing of both Leia and Luke, who, according to the storyline, are the only two children of the characters.

However, the lack of commas suggests another existing brother. Perhaps a half-brother unseen and off-screen that Anakin may have contributed to?

If one were to correct this comma usage error, the sentence in The Force Awakens crawl should read like this:

“She is desperate to find her brother, Luke, and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.”

This correction would stay true to the already-known story. Mic’s senior copy editor Kaitlyn Jakola also cited the following in regard to comma usage, according to Screen Crush.

“Without the offset commas, they’re suggesting that it’s necessary to specify which brother.”

So in the Star Wars prequels, there’s a theory that this is comparable to Kevin Smith’s Dogma movie in regard to some higher power being involved, but this can only be speculated, according to Uproxx. Perhaps some kind of immaculate conception, even?

Perhaps even somewhere between Star Wars Episode 3 and 4, something of a birthing occurred? It’s amazing how a mere punctuation error can bring up questions that may be read into way too deeply, but this doesn’t surprise us as The Force Awakens director did his own brand of misdirection in Star Trek Into Darkness, where he said there was no Khan in the film. However, according to an Inquisitr article, Abrams admitted this to be a mistake he regretted in hindsight as he thought fans knew better.

J.J. Abrams takes full blame for you not liking @StarTrek Into Darkness. https://t.co/vYjMtNqxTv pic.twitter.com/rm5JPJ7IN6

— Vulture (@vulture) December 17, 2015

Star Trek Into Darkness screen writer, Damon Lindelof, participated in an interview with Entertainment Weekly and sounded off about this mistake.

“When we did Star Trek Into Darkness, for example, we decided that we weren’t going to tell people that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan. And that was a mistake, because the audience was like, ‘We know he’s playing Khan’.”

Many fans say the Star Wars crawl’s comma error is unlikely to tease anything substantial because it would add a plot twist in an unnecessary fashion to a story that’s working well on its own.

But the comma fiasco isn’t the only Star Wars issue to recently take the internet by storm. According to Mashable there are even fan theories regarding Rey’s parentage— things like whether Daisy Ridley’s character is of Luke’s blood or perhaps even of Leia or Han’s lineage. Some are even taking it further, questioning whether she’s a Kenobi mainly due to how during the light saber vision in Star Wars: The Force Awakens the audience can hear Sir Alec Guinness’ voice say “Rey.”

[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News]