THE LAST OF LEIA
CARRIE FISHER, WHO DIED ON DEC. 27, MAKES HER FINAL APPEARANCE IN EPISODE VIII
With Carrie Fisher’s unexpected death in December, aged 60, The Last Jedi will mark her final performance as Leia Organa—who went from orphan to princess to spy to senator and finally general of the Resistance. “Her character to some degree or another has been defined by loss through this whole saga, starting with the loss of her home planet,” writer-director Rian Johnson says. “She’s just taken hit after hit, and she’s borne it, and she focuses on moving forward and the task at hand.”
In the new film, Leia is leading her scattershot Resistance, cut off from the Republic, whose leadership was obliterated in The Force Awakens. She’s also mourning Han Solo—and his murder at the hands of their son, Kylo Ren, who has fully fallen to the dark side—but there is still hope in her life.
Leia’s story is entwined with hot-shot pilot Poe Dameron’s. “Poe is in some ways a surrogate son for Leia, but also I think she sees in him the potential for a truly great leader of the Resistance and beyond,” Oscar Isaac says. “Leia knows she won’t be around forever, and she, with tough love, wants to push Poe to be more than the badass pilot, to temper his heroic impulses with wisdom and clarity.”
Although the story line wasn’t changed after Fisher’s death, Lucasfilm has vowed not to digitally re-create Fisher for future instalments. “There’s no way that we could’ve known this would’ve been the last Star Wars movie she would be in, so it’s not like we made the film thinking that we were bringing closure to the character,” Johnson says. “But watching the film, there’s going to be a very emotional reaction to what she does.”