The ninth Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, is the final film in a trilogy of trilogies now hitting Australian theatres, continuing the popular Star Wars tradition of telling an overarching narrative across three separate movies. Writing a trilogy is one of the biggest challenges that a writer will face. If properly told, a trilogy can enhance a story and give it more depth. On the other hand, it can spoil the good memories by failing to replicate the success of the original. So why do filmmakers persist with writing trilogies when they are so hard to write?

Stefanie Johnson, a PhD candidate at the University of Technology in Sydney, has done extensive research into the history of the trilogy story form.