Lucas previously revealed the direction his sequel trilogy would have taken in an interview with director James Cameron, stating that Episode VII would have seen Luke Skywalker train up a new Jedi, named Kira, on a secluded planet (much like Ach-To). The movies would have also given us a closer look at the midi-chlorians, the microscopic life forms described as living everywhere and within everyone during the prequel movie Phantom Menace.
“Everyone hated it in Phantom Menace [when] we started to talk about midi-chlorians,” Lucas told Cameron in his book James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. “There’s a whole aspect to that movie that is about symbiotic relationships. To make you look and see that we aren’t the boss. That there’s an ecosystem.”
Lucas added: “[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force.”
The Whills were, as established by Lucas in the earliest drafts of Star Wars, an order of immortal beings who controlled everything through the Force. “Back in the day, I used to say ultimately what this means is we were just cars, vehicles for the Whills to travel around,” Lucas continued. “We’re vessels for them. And the conduct is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.”
