Star Wars: The Last Jedi is pretty much the perfect sendoff for Carrie Fisher following her death last year but the character's fate is left up in the air as the movie concludes with General Leia Organa still very much alive. Earlier in the movie, The First Order's attack on the Resistance ship saw Leia get blasted into outer space, a prime opportunity for the character to be killed off before Episode IX.
That would have required extensive reshoots, though, not to mention the vast majority of Fisher's performance winding up on the cutting room floor. Asked if it was ever the plan to bring Leia's story to an end at this point in The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson explains that he never gave it any consideration. "I mean, after we came back from New Year’s, Kathy [Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm] and I had a conversation and I felt really strongly that we had a beautiful performance from her."
"Because if we did that, first of all that would feel like a very unsatisfying end to that character, because that moment of her getting blown out was not engineered to be an ending. And second, that would mean we would lose the scene with her and Luke, the scene with her and Rey at the end, the scene with her and Holdo. So much stuff that I feel I wanted to have from Carrie. I didn’t want to lose that. We talked about it briefly but it was something very quickly I decided I didn’t want to do."
Of course, Leia saves herself by using the Force, a moment which has created an awful lot of discussion among fans. Asked if that scene should be taken as an indication that Leia trained as a Jedi between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, Johnson confirmed she's just strong with the Force.
"This is a reflex action on her part. It’s the equivalent in my head of when you hear about parents, toddlers are caught under cars, and they suddenly get Hulk strength and can lift it up. Or a drowning person climbing their way to the surface. It’s instinctual, her use of it. It’s the opposite of when Luke Force-pulls the saber in Hoth. It isn’t like, ‘I’m going to try and do this.’ For her it’s just an instinctual thing of, ‘I’m not done yet. I’m not giving up. I’m pulling myself back in.’" What do you guys think?
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