Surprise! Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has released early on digital download

(Image credit: Disney)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now available to buy digitally in the US, releasing several days before its intended 17 March release date. This mirrors the fact that Disney is releasing Frozen 2 on Disney Plus on Sunday, three months earlier than planned. It arrives as a lot of people across the world are spending more of their weekends indoors. Amazon has it to buy right now for $19.99

There's no word on whether other territories will get The Rise of Skywalker early, but it seems unlikely, since the UK is scheduled to get Episode 9 a lot later on, from 13 April. If you decided not to catch the movie after its mostly middling reviews, this is a pretty good opportunity to complete the Disney trilogy, although it'll come to Disney Plus later in the year as well if you can wait. 

There's no official announcement to mark this release, unlike Frozen 2, which Disney revealed on all major channels. 

What other Star Wars stuff can you enjoy this weekend?

The seventh and final season of The Clone Wars is ongoing right now on Disney Plus, plus it's got every previous season to stream, as well as fellow CG-animated Star Wars series Rebels. If you missed last year's Jedi Fallen Order game, that's a movie-quality slice of Star Wars storytelling, wrapped around a Dark Souls lite-style game.

Otherwise, you'll find a payload of older Star Wars games on stores like Steam and GOG on PC. There's as much Star Wars to enjoy as you can handle, basically.

Samuel Roberts

Samuel is a PR Manager at game developer Frontier. Formerly TechRadar's Senior Entertainment Editor, he's an expert in Marvel, Star Wars, Netflix shows and general streaming stuff. Before his stint at TechRadar, he spent six years at PC Gamer. Samuel is also the co-host of the popular Back Page podcast, in which he details the trials and tribulations of being a games magazine editor – and attempts to justify his impulsive eBay games buying binges.