Some thoughts based on leaks & press coverage so far…

Some of the latest rumors about the finale with Rey & Kylo fighting Palpatine sound like what George Lucas originally had in mind for a duel with Luke & Leia fighting Darth Vader way back in the day. Which showed up in watered-down form in the Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye novel.

Basically the claim is that Palpatine throws Kylo into a pit and then wails on Rey somehow, and she kills him but is dying afterward. Then Ben climbs out of the pit and uses the Force to heal Rey, at the cost of his own life.

Something very similiar happens in the SOTME duel: Luke gets pinned down under a bunch of rocks, and then Leia has to fight Darth Vader on her own using Luke’s lightsaber. Vader seriously wounds her, and she collapses, but then Luke gets free and they fight until somehow Vader stumbles into a pit. Afterward, Luke uses the magic Kaiburr Crystal to heal Leia’s wounds.

Before SW turned out to be a huge hit, Lucas told Alan Dean Foster he saw the duel as being climactic in nature: Luke was to kill Darth Vader outright, and Leia would apparently be left with some severe scars afterward. This was back when the novel was conceived as a back-up plan, in case the first film’s box-office receipts failed to justify doing the sequels Lucas wanted as films. Obviously, once SW actually came out, the ending had to be reworked to make sure it didn’t conflict with making further movies.