Carrie Fisher’s Brother Talks Early Ideas For Leia’s Original Role In Episode IX Before Her Passing

Leia in The Last Jedi

In a recent interview, Todd Fisher has opened up on Leia’s original role in The Rise of Skywalker.

 

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, Todd lifted the lid a little on what was originally planned before Carrie Fisher’s passing. It’s well known at this point that J.J. Abrams has repurposed unused footage of Carrie Fisher from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but originally The Rise of Skywalker was meant to have a huge role for Leia. Todd backed up that claim in his interview:

She was going to be the big payoff in the final film. She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak. That’s cool right? People used to say to me, ‘Why is it that Carrie never gets a lightsaber and chops up some bad guys.’ Obi-Wan was in his prime when he was Carrie’s age!

 

While it’s unlikely that Todd is saying that Leia could have been the literal ‘last Jedi’ referred to in the title of the previous film, it does sound as though Carrie Fisher was going to get a lot more action in Colin Trevorrow’s initial plans for Episode IX. After Carrie’s passing, that role obviously had to change significantly. It was one of the many puzzles that J.J. Abrams had to solve when he took over from Trevorrow, announcing that he would repurpose unused footage to continue her legacy.

 

Leia

 

Todd provides a bit more insight into exactly what J.J. did with that footage:

The truth is that J.J. Abrams was great friends with Carrie… he had an extraordinary sense of love for her. They had eight minutes of footage. They grabbed every frame and analyzed it… and then reverse-engineered it and [got] it into the story the right way. It’s kind of magical.

This is, in its own way, a payoff. … It’s Carrie talking to us all from beyond. The beautiful thing about the concept of the Force is that there is no real death; you just exist in another dimension. So Carrie is looking down or sideways or wherever and is still part of us. To be able to see that — it’s magical stuff only in the movies.

 

However big or small a role Carrie Fisher plays in The Rise of Skywalker, it’s clear that her brother is over the moon with how her legacy has been handled. It’s not long now until we get to see it for ourselves.

 

 

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Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.

Josh Atkins

Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.

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