Jon Watts Is Reportedly Directing Star Wars: Episode X — Here's What That Actually Means
Deadline reported Friday that Lucasfilm has tapped Jon Watts — the Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy director and Skeleton Crew co-creator — to direct the first film in Simon Kinberg's new Skywalker Saga trilogy. Multiple outlets are already calling it Episode X. Lucasfilm hasn't officially confirmed the hire, and the project still isn't greenlit, but the reporting is specific and widely corroborated.
Four days ago I wrote about Dave Filoni's own MandoVerse crossover movie losing a scheduling fight to Simon Kinberg's new post-Skywalker trilogy — a trilogy Kathleen Kennedy has been calling "the next iteration, the new saga that moves us into the future" since Kinberg started developing it back in 2018. At the time, that trilogy was still an abstraction: a writer, a producer, and a promise. As of Friday, it has a director attached, and the framing around it just got a lot more specific.
What Deadline Actually Reported
Jon Watts — who directed Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home, and who co-created Skeleton Crew for Lucasfilm — has reportedly signed on to helm the first film in Kinberg's trilogy. Multiple outlets, including Rolling Stone, MovieWeb, and Reactor, are already referring to it as Episode X: not a spinoff, not a side story, but a direct, numbered continuation of the mainline Skywalker Saga sitting alongside the original nine films. Daisy Ridley is reportedly attached to return as Rey, in what's being described as a smaller role than her Sequel Trilogy lead — this is being framed as the start of something new, not a continuation of her arc specifically.
The important caveat, and it matters: Lucasfilm has not officially confirmed Watts' hiring, and the project has not been greenlit. This is Deadline's reporting, corroborated widely but not yet backed by a studio press release. Treat "Watts is directing Episode X" as strong, multi-sourced trade reporting rather than a confirmed fact until Lucasfilm actually says so.
Why Watts Specifically Makes Sense
This isn't a random hire. Watts already has a working relationship with this franchise — Skeleton Crew, which he co-created and executive produced with Christopher Ford, was a genuine creative swing for Disney+: a smaller-scale, kid-adventure story that leaned into Amblin-style wonder rather than saga-scale stakes. That's relevant context, because it shows Lucasfilm trusting him with tone control on Star Wars material before handing him the numbered saga itself. His Spider-Man trilogy, meanwhile, is the strongest evidence he can handle a legacy-character handoff under real studio pressure — Homecoming had to reintroduce Peter Parker inside someone else's cinematic universe, and No Way Home had to service three different eras of Spider-Man actors and continuities without collapsing under its own ambition. If Episode X genuinely is meant to open a new saga while still touching Rey's story, that's almost exactly the skill set the job requires.
The Bigger Picture: This Confirms the Priority Call
My piece from Monday framed Kinberg's trilogy as the reason Filoni's own crossover got pushed to the backburner — a strategic bet that a new saga-launching story outranks tying off the existing Disney+ era. A director hire is the clearest signal yet that the bet is real and moving. Studios don't attach a name like Jon Watts to a script that's still purely theoretical; a director attachment, even an unofficial one reported by Deadline, means casting conversations, budget conversations, and a production timeline are all starting to take shape behind the scenes. Kennedy calling this "the next iteration" back in earlier interviews reads very differently now that there's an actual filmmaker's name next to it.
What "Episode X" Actually Means for the Saga
It's worth sitting with the numbering itself. Calling this Episode X — rather than a standalone film like Starfighter or a spinoff era piece like the New Republic-set Filoni movie — is Lucasfilm stating, in the clearest language this franchise has, that the core numbered saga isn't finished at nine films. That's a bigger institutional statement than another trilogy announcement would normally carry. The Skywalker Saga was explicitly closed out with The Rise of Skywalker in 2019; reopening that numbering system for a new story, with new characters, in a post-Skywalker era, is Lucasfilm betting that "the Skywalker Saga" as a brand is bigger than the Skywalker family itself.
Where That Leaves Us
Nothing here is final. No greenlight, no official Lucasfilm confirmation, no release date, and Ridley's involvement is still described as "reportedly." But the shape of the next several years of Star Wars filmmaking is coming into focus faster than it has in a while: Mandalorian & Grogu already released, Starfighter locked for May 2027, and now Episode X with a named director attached, all while Filoni's own passion project waits its turn. Four days after calling this a scheduling fight worth watching, it's clear Lucasfilm just made its next move. May the Force be with Jon Watts — reopening the numbered saga after eight years is not a small assignment.
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