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Rich and Mike’s The Rise of Skywalker Predictions Video

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Two guys with a webcam called “The Last Jedi” four years before Disney did.

On July 14, 2019, RedLetterMedia co-founders Mike Stoklasa and Rich Evans posted “Rich and Mike’s The Rise of Skywalker Predictions Video” to YouTube and the company’s own site, turning their usual half-joking, half-serious analysis toward the final chapter of the Skywalker saga. With five months left before the December release, the pair worked through Emperor Palpatine’s mysterious cackle in the teaser trailer, Kylo Ren’s arc, and a handful of theories ranging from plausible to deliberately unhinged.

• Stoklasa and Evans released the video on both YouTube and RedLetterMedia’s official website on July 14, 2019, months ahead of The Rise of Skywalker’s December theatrical debut.
• Their central topic was how Palpatine could return to the story following the reveal of his laugh in the film’s first teaser trailer, alongside additional wilder plot predictions floated by Stoklasa.
• The video spread through fan forums including StarWarsNewsNet’s “The Cantina,” where commenters cited the duo’s history of accurate sequel-trilogy calls, notably Evans naming “The Last Jedi” as a likely title and predicting a disillusioned Luke Skywalker back in 2015.

The Palpatine Problem

The teaser’s final seconds — that unmistakable cackle laid over Rey’s silhouette — gave Stoklasa and Evans their main jumping-off point. Rich Evans worked through the mechanics of how Lucasfilm could justify Palpatine’s presence after his apparent death at the end of Return of the Jedi, weighing clone theories, Force-ghost possibilities, and lingering dark-side manipulation against what J.J. Abrams had already put on screen in The Force Awakens. Neither host pretended to have inside information; the appeal was in watching two people who’d tracked this franchise for years reason out loud about a single piece of audio.

Stoklasa’s Wild Card

True to RedLetterMedia’s house style, Mike Stoklasa didn’t stop at reasonable speculation. He floated a genuinely out-there plot prediction for how the trilogy could wrap, the kind of theory built more for entertainment than for accuracy, and Evans played the skeptic pushing back on the specifics. That back-and-forth — one host chasing a bit, the other grounding it — is the format that’s made the channel’s non-review content a draw for Star Wars fans who want commentary without a press-tour sheen.

Commenters on StarWarsNewsNet’s Cantina forums pointed straight back to 2015, when Evans predicted the title “The Last Jedi” and called Luke Skywalker’s disillusionment years before either detail became public.

A Track Record Fans Keep Bringing Up

That history is exactly why the predictions video traveled as far as it did. RedLetterMedia isn’t a leak-driven outlet; its reputation rests on close reading of trailers, casting, and marketing patterns rather than insider sourcing, and Evans’ early call on both “The Last Jedi” title and Luke’s arc has become the reference point fans cite whenever the channel weighs in again. It’s the same instinct that fuels other prediction-style content across YouTube — the appeal of watching someone’s guesswork get checked against reality later, the way a ten-years-later predictions review lets an audience score the hits and misses after the fact.

The debate over the video’s merit split along familiar lines in the Cantina threads: some fans treated the satire and lore analysis as the whole point of RedLetterMedia’s appeal, while others pushed back on how seriously to take any single theory about Disney-era Lucasfilm’s plans. That tension — between mockery and genuine plot forensics — is the same one that runs through most fan reactions to major trailer reveals, not unlike the scrutiny that greeted other franchise title announcements once fans started picking apart what a single word choice might signal.

Whatever happens with Palpatine’s laugh or Stoklasa’s wild card, the two won’t have to wait long to find out how close they got — The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters in December, and given Evans’ 2015 track record, the Cantina crowd will be watching just as closely for round two.