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Post #1553492

Author
RogueLeader
Parent topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1553492/action/topic#1553492
Date created
9-Sep-2023, 3:15 PM

This is definitely a good debate to have, and you can see why Terrio felt he had to make that decision.

On one hand, it gives a clear reason why she didn’t become a Jedi. It also plays into the whole “Palpatine pulling the strings” idea, and like he did with Luke, he may have planted this vision in Leia to prevent her from becoming a Jedi. That can also be a bad thing, though, if it feels like every plot line boils down to “It was Palpatine all along!” It also potentially takes away agency from Leia as a character if her hands were tied because of a vision she had. Though it may be a simpler explanation than one that hinted at Leia just not feeling it was the right path for her. It honeslty could be an interesting premise for a Leia novel: We could get the payoff from ROTJ by seeing Luke train Leia as his first student, but Leia wrestling with the moral dilemma of trying to be both a Jedi Knight and a Senator/politician in the nascent Republic. The Jedi Order and the Galactic Senate were separate entities in the Old Republic. Is it a conflict of interest for her to be both? What would the implications be if she eventually became both a Jedi Master and the Chancellor? Would that be too much power for one person? What would separate her from Palpatine, another Force-user who became leader of the Republic?

These are all interesting questions, and I personally feel like Leia making the choice to become a Jedi solely based on a vision she had takes away from all of those interesting ideas. BUT, how it parallels Anakin’s vision from ROTS is a fair point as well. If this were a novel, I could see it integrating both ideas, with the vision being the final straw for Leia. Maybe it wasn’t an explicit vision of her son’s death, but nebulous dreams of doom. Whether it be personal or on a galactic scale.

Another option would be to leave it vague and allow people to come to their own conclusions.

“Leia had sensed the end of her Jedi path. She surrendered her saber to me and said that one day, she would finish her journey.”

But maybe that wouldn’t be a satisfying answer. You could also have the original on the “no AI lines” audio track, and the new explanation on the alternate one.

If you wanted to make the new line match Leia’s facial expression in the flashback, you could have Luke say something like, “Leia realized it would be a conflict of interest to be a Jedi like our father, and a Senator like our mother.” I like the wording of DZ’s suggestion, but just a thought.