After the events of The Last Jedi, Rey is the final Jedi standing. According to Todd Fisher (Carrie’s brother), if not for Carrie’s tragic passing, Leia was supposed to emerge as the true Last Jedi.
In a recent interview with Yahoo, Todd Fisher discussed the treatment his sister receives in The Rise of Skywalker. He says that the film will use unreleased shots from The Force Awakens to give General Leia one last journey in a galaxy far, far away.
Fisher says:
“They had eight minutes of footage. They grabbed every frame and analyzed it… and then reverse-engineered it and [got] it into the story the right way. It’s kind of magical.”
Fisher continues, revealing an interesting bit of information about just how this arc would have played out. He says that Leia:
“Was going to emerge as a full-fledged Jedi warrior, complete with her very own lightsaber. That’s according to no less an authority than Fisher’s real-life brother, Todd Fisher”
“She was going to be the big payoff in this final film and that was what the intent was prior to her exiting. She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak…
People used to say to me, ‘Why is it that Carrie never gets a lightsaber and chop up some bad guys,’…Obi-Wan, when he was in his prime, was Carrie’s age.”
Todd previously said that Carrie’s story arc is epic, but this is the first time he’s mentioned just how epic it was to be. There have long been rumors that Leia was a secret Force user. This was confirmed in The Last Jedi when General Leia subconsciously used the Force to pull herself back into the damaged ship.
Is it believable that Leia would step away from leading the Resistance to embrace being a Jedi? I don’t think so, and the writers would’ve found a way so that she could do both.
This could make the story interesting, as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn both state in The Phantom Menace that the Jedi are peacekeepers and don’t dwell in politics. It would be the first time that a Jedi would be pulling the strings, rather than obeying orders.
Just seeing Leia wielding a lightsaber would more-than pay off the price of admission. Although some would say that this means Leia never became a Jedi, in the hearts and minds of Star Wars fans everywhere, she always was one.
