Rumours that Star Wars is secretly "erasing" its sequels tell us something fundamental about our craving for perfection

In a scene from The Force Awakens, Rey and Finn sprint across a desert landscape while escaping a massive explosion with BB-8 following closely behind them.

You don't need to be a Star Wars obsessive to have noticed the noise online lately. The claim doing the rounds is that Lucasfilm is "erasing" part of its own story: the three films made between 2015 and 2019, aka the sequel trilogy.

Let me be clear: it isn't. But the fact that so many fans want this to be true, and are willing to believe it on the flimsiest evidence, says more about how some of us relate to unresolved creative work than anything specific to Star Wars.