Star Wars: The Force Awakens contains a cool Star Wars Easter egg from The Empire Strikes Back, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about it before. Star Wars: The Force Awakens essentially relaunched Star Wars as a franchise. While the similarities between The Force Awakens and the original Star Wars movie, later retitled A New Hope, are striking – Starkiller base is just a bigger Death Star, after all – it was also clearly inspired by other Star Wars movies, including, as it turns out, The Empire Strikes Back. 373w5m

Star Wars: The Force Awakens copied a character detail George Lucas had given C-3PO. Despite being a mere protocol droid, C-3PO has endured many of the Star Wars galaxy’s most pivotal moments and served some of the franchise’s most important characters, including Anakin Skywalker, Pé Amidala, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa. He’s lived through the Clone Wars, the Galactic Civil War, and the conflict between the Resistance and the First Order, all the while helping our favorite heroes communicate with their closest allies (and enemies).

One notable quote from Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens became far more meaningful after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Like the Galactic Empire, the First Order uses stormtroopers as a key part of their military, though unlike the Empire, the First Order’s stormtroopers are not recruited. First Order stormtroopers were kidnapped as infants and indoctrinated in the First Order’s neo-Imperial ideology, making most of the troops fanatically loyal to the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke.

Ten years after Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Daisy Ridley has looked back on Rey's legacy. It's hard to believe it's been ten years since the sequel trilogy began, launching a whole new Star Wars era. Daisy Ridley's Rey was positioned as the Luke Skywalker of this bold new era, and she's destined to lead a New Jedi Order.

One painfully underutilized Star Wars villain predicted that Rey would build a new Jedi Order 10 years ago – but with a twist. The Star Wars sequel trilogy changed everything for Star Wars, both negatively and positively. Though the trilogy was incredibly divisive, there were some stand-out storytelling beats and characters – Rey represented a new generation of Jedi, and Kylo Ren became one of Star Wars’ most layered villains, for example. And yet, there were plenty of things to nitpick about, especially concerning Palpatine’s surprising resurrection.

This key moment from Star Wars: The Force Awakenssuggests that Star Warsmay have subtly introduced time travel 10 years ago. Star Wars movies and TV shows have gotten increasingly creative over the years, frequently introducing brand-new Force powers, planets, and concepts. The sequel trilogy was especially inventive, bringing about never-before-seen concepts in the franchise, such as the Force Dyad between Kylo Ren and Rey.

Seven years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams' popular show Lostreferenced the single most iconic line in Star Wars. Lost premiered in 2004, and it captivated audiences for six seasons with its delightful characters, innovative concepts, and mind-bending plot twists. Although the Lost series finale remains controversial, the show is impressively still a topic of conversation nearly 15 years after its conclusion.

Few Star Wars properties show how dangerous blasters truly are, but the franchise’s first movie – A New Hope – and the first film in the sequel trilogy – Star Wars: The Force Awakens – are among them. Blasters are one of the Star Wars galaxy’s most common weapons, firing pulses of irradiated explosive gas known as blaster bolts, which explode on impact with solid objects. Blasters may be ubiquitous, but certain types of blasters are more powerful than others, as shown by civilian models, which struggle against body armor while military-grade blasters easily burn through it.

Although her name is now canonically Rey Skywalker, the original idea for Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens was key both for the character and for the future of Star Wars. ittedly, I don't dislike the idea of Rey Skywalker. I think Rey's name is perfect payback for Anakin Skywalker, in that Rey rejected the Palpatine name and lineage and instead continued Anakin's legacy—effectively giving the Skywalkers the final word. Even so, the idea for Rey to be a nobody was so much more compelling, both in The Force Awakens and in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

10 years after Daisy Ridley's first-ever Star Warstable read for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the sequel trilogy's star has revealed exactly what it was like for her, and what she feared the most. Entering the Star Wars galaxy is no small feat, especially for someone like Ridley, who was so young at the time. She was just 22 years old when she sat down alongside talent such as Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher to dip her toe into the larger story she and her co-stars would be telling, and not everything was roses straightaway.