One of the biggest Star Wars what-ifs is the role Carrie Fisher would’ve played in The Rise of Skywalker had she not died in December 2016. Well as it turns out, the original plan for Leia would’ve been simultaneously epic and triggering for puffy-chested bros.
Carrie Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, spilled the tea to Yahoo and revealed that Leia’s original character arc would’ve had her end up as a full-fledged Jedi, complete with her own lightsaber. In short, Todd says Leia was “going to be the last Jedi”.
Talk about an epic pay-off for The Last Jedi, right?
While this would’ve been hell of an awesome wrap-up for Leia’s character arc – not to mention the satisfaction we would’ve got in seeing Carrie Fisher finally having her big Jedi moment – this original plan likely wouldn’t have sat too well with all the puffy-chested bros.
You can almost picture all the bros complaining about things like how “having her be a Jedi is not part of her character” to “Luke/Rey should’ve been the last Jedi, not Leia!” If that scene of Leia using the Force to become a space Mary Poppins in The Last Jedi drew criticism from the trolls, imagine the uproar when they see her wielding a lightsaber.
While we sadly won’t see Leia go full Jedi in The Rise of Skywalker, Todd says she and Carrie will get the send-off they deserve in the film. He explains that there’s about eight minutes of unused footage of Carrie from The Force Awakens and apparently J.J. Abrams’ plan was to “reverse engineer” the material to conclude Leia’s story.
Eight minutes doesn’t seem like much but that’s still better than no Carrie Fisher at all. Plus it sounds like J.J. Abrams doesn’t plan to recreate her using CGI, which will be a blessed relief to Star Wars fans everywhere.
Carrie Fisher will forever be loved by the GOAT team and it will be a bittersweet experience seeing her one last time in The Rise of Skywalker, even if it’s in the form of unused footage.
But as a wise bearded man once said, no one’s really ever gone, and there’s no doubt J.J. Abrams will do right by Carrie and Leia to get them the goodbye they deserve.