In May 2016, Annie Leibovitz visited Sybil Head, a high coastal perch on Ireland's DinB gle Peninsula, to photograph Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley for this month's Vanity Fair cover story. At the tune, the actors were filming Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The film's writer-director, Rian Johnson, had dreamed up a "little Jedi village"—the mysterious place where Hamill's grizzled Luke Skywalker has been hiding out all these years—and a team of Irish craftsmen had dutifully realized Johnson's vision, creating a picturesque, convincingly ancient-looking setting that evokes Skellig Michael, the remote Irish island that had been used for filming the scene in which Ridley's Rey met Luke at the conclusion of the previous installment of the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens.

The upside of such a dramatic locale is that it is profoundly beautiful. The downside? A sheer drop into the cold North Atlantic, just steps from where Leibovitz was operating her camera. To prevent her from inadvertently tumbling into the drink while she maneuvered around her subjects, the photographer was outfitted with a climbing harness.

Leibovitz was on safer ground at London's Pinewood Studios, where most of The Last Jed is interior scenes were filmed. There she presided over an elaborate shoot involving the denizens of Canto Bight, the decadent casino city of which V.F. offers the first glimpse, on page 90. In addition, Leibovitz took portraits of the new Star Wars characters played by Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro, as well as of such now familiar figures as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Finn (John Boyega), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson).

Leibovitz also shot portraits of Hamill as Luke and Carrie Fisher as his twin sister, General Leia Organa. But it was an eleventh-hour idea to shoot Hamill and Fisher together. Leibovitz had photographed them for Rolling Stone in 1980, the era of The Empire Strikes Back; she and V.F. senior photography producer Kathryn MacLeod, who coordinated this issue's cover shoot and its corresponding portfolio, thought it would be nice to get an up-to-date photo of the Star Wars siblings. Sadly, the photograph on page 101 is their valedictory portrait; Fisher passed away last December.

But the mood on set that day was jubilant, 3 playful, and lighthearted: emblematic of the | brother-and-sister dynamic that Hamill and 3 Fisher enjoyed in real life.