HINTS AT DARK TIMES

on Monday, hinting at dark times ahead for the Resistance and possibly even the end of Leia.

Footage from the eighth instalment in the blockbuster space opera, due for release on Dec 15, dropped during ESPN’s Monday Night Football halftime show.

The 154-second clip follows a trailer released in April, which teased Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) teaching Rey (Daisy Ridley) the ways of the Force.

This time around, more plot was unveiled, with Luke telling Rey he’d only seen power like hers once before — and while it didn’t scare him enough then, it does now.

Fans speculated on social media that he could be talking about his nephew and Rey’s nemesis, Kylo Ren, who is seen in a TIE fighter with his mother, General Leia Organa, in his sights, his eyes welling up as he prepares to open fire.

Carrie Fisher, who has played Leia since she was known simply as Princess Leia in the original

(Looper, Brick) the top trending hashtag worldwide on Twitter.

The reaction among critics was effusive, with Ryan Parker, a film writer for the The Hollywood Reporter, enthusing that he was “blown away”.

“I don’t think I have ever been so hyped for a Star Wars film than I am right now. It was the perfect mix of everything I was hoping it would be,” he said.

“We got more Luke, but not too much, some looks at Leia that really hurt my heart and some more insight into where this all is going.”

For Rolling Stone’s Sean Collins, the “hints at a heel turn from Rey with those grim fourth-wall-breaking shots of Fisher’s warrior princess on the verge of death, at the hands of her own son no less” presaged a movie strong in the dark side of the Force. AFP