'The Rise of Skywalker' is Mark Hamill's last 'Star Wars' film and he'll be a Force Ghost

Mark Hamill has said that he's done with Star Wars, but that Luke Skywalker will be returning as a 'Force Ghost' in the forthcoming The Rise of Skywalker.

It was presumed that Hamill's veteran Jedi Knight, and mentor to Daisy Ridley's Rey, would be making his final bow from the other side, but the often loose-lipped actor has now confirmed it.

Collared by AP, he was asked whether The Rise of Skywalker, the last in the current trilogy, would be his last Star Wars movie.

“I sure hope so,” he laughed.

Read more: Hamill says Episode 9 is ‘a missed opportunity’

Asked why, he added: “Well, because… I had closure in the last one. The fact that I’m involved in any capacity is only because of that peculiar aspect of the Star Wars mythology where if you’re a Jedi, you get to come back and make a curtain call as a Force Ghost.”

So it looks like Skywalker is joining the ranks of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and his own father Anakin as previously seen 'Force Ghosts'.

But other than that, thus far there's very little to go on, plot-wise, from The Rise of Skywalker.

Read more: Avatar writer working on new Star Wars movie

Director J.J. Abrams has revealed pretty much nothing, with only one trailer for fans to surmise what might be going on.

One clue was what seemed to be the Emperor's evil cackle as it faded to black, so perhaps he's returning as a ghost too.

With The Rise of Skywalker the concluding chapter of the 9-film Star Wars saga that began in 1977, it seems this will be the last time any of the original cast members return for the movies. Hamill has previously stated he thinks Disney missed an opportunity to show the reunion of the classic characters that fans hoped for.

“I just thought, ‘Luke’s never going to see his best friend again.’ You look at it in a self-centred way,” Hamill recently told Den of Geek. “I said that it was a big mistake that those three people would never reunite in any way … Luke, Han and Leia will never be together again, and I’ll probably never get to work with Harrison again.”

“Then the second thing was that they killed me off. I thought: ‘Oh, okay, you should push my death off to the last one.’ That’s what I was hoping when I came back: no cameos and a run-of-the-trilogy contract.”

“Did I get any of those things? Because as far as I’m concerned, the end of VII is really the beginning of VIII. I got one movie! They totally hornswoggled me.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives in UK cinemas on December 19.