Arguably, leaving it the way it is creates a lot of questions that I had never considered before. Like, if Leia DID fully complete her training (it being the last night of her training when she quit) why didn’t she simply become a Jedi again when it was clear that Luke wasn’t coming back on his own? Ya know, instead of just being another general?
But that’s exactly it, in the original film, she didn’t retake her Jedi path in all these years because she didn’t want to lose her son. This would also work if she sensed she wasn’t allowed by the Force. But if she just chose to focus on politics, then there’s no reason why she wouldn’t pick it back up after she saw the New Republic fail, even if she hadn’t completed her training it would’ve made sense for her to try and pick it back up. And if you make it so she had so little training that she couldn’t continue on her own, then how could she possibly become Rey’s Master? There’s no way to reconcile that.
This is mostly just an issue with TROS since there was never any indication in the previous films that Leia had been trained as a Jedi, other than the space walk in TLJ and even that’s a stretch.
It would be an interesting angle if Leia’s decision was portrayed as a failure, but this is supposed to be a hopeful scene, “Leia failed the galaxy and doomed us all by choosing a career in politics” doesn’t fit a scene that is supposed to restore Rey’s spirit. To be fair neither does a premonition of death but that’s why we removed that bit.
I don’t think this dialogue really invites you to think of it as a failure, it’s not really saying anything we don’t already know/suspect about her (since TFA really, because we know she must have made that choice after Luke revealed her potential). Which I think is kind of the goal, it’s maybe a bit much to add some Leia lore (with premonitions or something) when there’s not really any time to explore its implications.
I mean, yeah, the dialogue doesn’t present it as a failure, but it doesn’t take much to come to that conclusion, why did she pick politics when she would’ve been much more helpful as a Jedi? What good did her diplomacy do to the New Republic that was obliterated two movies ago? This movie already added Leia lore by having her training with Luke and teaching Rey, I’m just looking for a way this can be nudged so it aligns with what we saw of her before.