Currently, the eyes of Star Wars fans around the world are fixed firmly on Rian Johnson’s upcoming entry into the saga, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. With the first trailer set to premiere later this month at Celebration, anticipation is at an all-time high and given that Disney has managed to keep almost everything under wraps (unlike with The Force Awakens), we’re all beyond eager to finally get that first few minutes of footage.
We already know that despite her tragic death, the late Carrie Fisher will still be back to reprise her role as General Leia Organa. The actress finished filming her scenes before she passed away and as such, she was able to appear as originally intended in the sequel, without any changes needing to be made. However, what about Star Wars: Episode IX? We’ve heard that Leia was set to feature quite heavily in Colin Trevorrow’s effort as well and at the time of Fisher’s death, fans were left wondering how the studio would move forward.
Disney has said in the past that despite what they did in Rogue One, CGI will not be used to recreate her. So, just how will they carry on, then? Well, according to Fisher’s brother Todd, he and Carrie’s daughter, Billie Lourd, have given the studio permission to incorporate unused footage of the actress from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi in Episode IX, thus allowing them to still have Leia in the film without having to resort to CGI, or even worse, writing her out completely.
“Both of us were like, ‘Yes, how do you take her out of it?’ And the answer is you don’t,” said Todd. “She’s as much a part of it as anything and I think her presence now is even more powerful than it was, like Obi Wan — when the saber cuts him down he becomes more powerful. I feel like that’s what’s happened with Carrie. I think the legacy should continue… To me, Star Wars is the holy grail of storytelling and lore and you can’t mess with it.”
Though it never seemed likely that Disney would just drop Leia from the film, given that The Force Awakens set her up to have a pretty big arc going forward, it’s still reassuring to hear that the character will appear in Episode IX, giving her story some closure. She’s a huge part of the franchise and it would have felt wrong to not have her in the final part of this new trilogy. Not to mention how disappointed fans would have been.
While there will no doubt need to be some changes made to the script given the circumstances, at least Fisher will get to grace the silver screen one final time when Star Wars: Episode IX blasts into theatres on May 24th, 2019.
