An Unexpected Character Could Return In Star Wars VIII

Don't want any Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers?

THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

Flee, now, before your eyes scan too many paragraphs and you kill a moment of potential surprise on 17 December.

Still here? Then you'll be wanting to know that Hayden "He ruined Star Wars" Christensen is apparently set for a return in the yet-to-be-named Episode VIII.

Star Wars fan site MakingStarWars.net has word (albeit of the sketchy, rumour kind) that "A team in the UK are soon heading to the US to begin training Hayden Christensen for a Star Wars: Episode VIII appearance of some sort". 

Let's break that down...

A team in the UK...

A UK team. A team that could only be doing things in the UK - with skills the US apparently doesn't have. Skills that Hayden needs to be trained in. 

Many are speculating that this could be some sort of combat team, or a group who are going to get Christensen ready for some thoroughly un-Darth Vader jumping around. 

If we're going to join in with this silly (fun) game of speculation, we'd say that the team could be part of Andy Serkis' Imaginarium Studios - the performance-capture and special effects studio widely seen to be the best in the business, who have already done work on Episode VIII. If Christensen is returning as Darth Vader, there might be an aspect of performance capture that needs the special skills of Serkis and co.

...of some sort

There are two ways of looking at this. 

The horrible one involves imagining a storyline in which Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker is somehow resurrected/cloned - possibly by the Sith-obsessed, masked bad guy Kylo Ren. We know - it doesn't bear thinking about, and isn't the sort of thing we imagine Disney being cool with.

The other, far less ugly option, would involve a Vader/Anakin flashback. Were this the case, it might involve the Imaginarium Studios team helping Christensen with some performance-capturing tricks, possibly giving us some narrative that occurred in between the original Star Wars trilogy. Could we see Christensen's Darth selecting an unknown Sith apprentice who then disappeared after his death? 

We've got no idea. It might all be a lot of nonsense. But it's fun having a guess, isn't it?