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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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Yesterday, news was reported that Carrie Fisher is definitely, totally going to be in Star Wars Episode VII (presumably as Princess Leia.) But then today counter reports came out claiming she was “just kidding” about that and that nothing has been confirmed. But then George Lucas—a man who is not actually going to be directly working on Star Wars Episode VII and actually sold Star Wars in October—chimed in claiming Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford were all set to be in the forthcoming film.

What gives? Is Star Wars news driving us all insane? Is any of this real?

As bloggers, we tend to be a little jumpy online when it comes to news about things we really love. Star Wars holds a very special place in everyone’s hearts as being the biggest cultural event of all time, meaning any scrap of information about its unexpected and somewhat legitimate return to the cinemas excites us all to the point of insanity. In addition to all the Carrie Fisher flip-flopping, Disney has officially, finally confirmed the development of the stand-alone Star Wars movies, further fueling everyone’s speculations as to what said films will be about and who will be in them, even though nobody actually knows!

At this point, the future of Star Wars is like a conspiracy theory where the lack of actual evidence paradoxically fuels the belief in the conspiracy. Other than Michael Arndt and J.J. Abrams and being involved as writer and director respectively, we truly don’t know all that much more than we knew in October when the whole Lucasfilm sale to Disney news came out in the first place. It’s like we’re constructing our image of what the new Star Wars movie will be like by using echolocation techniques and half-assed time travel, even though we don’t know how to use either one.

Is this to say we should stop getting excited about Star Wars, or hanging on every word anyone associated with Star Wars says? Not at all! It’s fun. But, I for one, think we should probably take some of it a little less seriously. At this point, the stars of the classic films are probably getting so many questions about it that they’re likely to start just making stuff up to get people out of their faces, which, to me, is what it sounds like happened with Carrie Fisher. She even made a joke about Leia living in an “…in an intergalactic old folks’ home.”

In an old VH1 Behind the Music documentary on John Lennon, there’s some footage John and Yoko walking in Central park in the late 70’s being accosted by fans. “When are the Beatles getting back together?!” someone shrieks. To which John stoically replies, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.” This is what is happening with Star Wars. No one really knows quite yet what is going on in terms the specifics of the movies, and it seems that nice folks like Carrie Fisher are just getting a little slap-happy about it. Should we all calm down?

Maybe there’s no way to curb our enthusiasm for Star Wars news, but perhaps we can reduce our over-earnestness about it?  After all, that galaxy far, far away isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and like a loyal Penelope, we’ve been patient for this long. We can be patient a little while longer.


Ryan Britt is a staff writer for Tor.com.

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