Anakin Starkiller said:
Woohoo, a five second throwaway line that could’ve been replaced with a dozen other things.
Vader wouldn’t be able to turn Leia to the dark side if she wasn’t Force sensitive.
Also throwaway line is genuinely hilarious considering it’s what causes Luke to almost turn to the dark side and kill Vader.
I forgot to mention this before, but it also heightens the stakes. Luke says that if he dies along Vader and the Emperor, Leia can take over as she’s also Force sensitive. If there was nobody else in the cast that could become a Jedi then the audience wouldn’t feel like there’s any risk of Luke dying.
My objections to Leia being a Skywalker are as follows:
“No, there is another.”
Just because the answer to who that was was changed between movies doesn’t mean it wasn’t set up. The specifics of the pay-off just changed.
- It feels contrived that the secret sibling is someone Luke already knows
I can’t necessarily argue with “feels like” but within the lore it’s been justified three times over the circumstances in which they met. Bail Organa and Obi-Wan know each other, Obi-Wan trusted Bail with Anakin’s daughter, Bail trusted his daughter to find Obi-Wan leading her to Luke.
Having Luke’s sister just so happen to be the only other woman he’s spent the three films with is contrived to the point of ruining my immersion.
So you admit there’s nobody else it could be?
Say what you will about Rey being a Palpatine (I won’t pretend that isn’t stupid as well) but her grandparent only comes in at the end specifically looking for his granddaughter; he didn’t just bump into her at a bar.
The only reason she’s able to find her way to Exegol is because she managed to solve this intricate treasure hunt that Palpatine couldn’t have possibly predicted. He didn’t seek her out at all. He asked Kylo to kill her.