Leia was a not-Jedi for all three original movies. I don’t think of her as a Jedi, she didn’t think of herself as a Jedi, and it would have been weird for her to suddenly be a Jedi in the fourth movie.
The 30 year time gaps helps all of these issues both with our perception and Leia’s potential “conflict” regarding embracing being a Jedi.
I get that, I’m just saying it would have been jarring and I’m glad they didn’t go that route. I wouldn’t have said it “ruined her character” or anything silly like that.
To each their own. I’m fine with the route they went though it does make me say “So much for that” whenever I watch ROTJ.
I don’t think it’d really make all that much sense for Leia to have dropped everything she’d been doing to become a Jedi. She’d been in politics pretty much her whole life, I don’t know what the canon thing is here but I imagine she went into that again after the Empire fell (not to mention raising her son).
And just because she didn’t become a Jedi doesn’t mean she didn’t learn to use the Force.