Well, except for Anakin Skywalker, who was only dead “from a certain point of view.”
I want to interpret them to mean Leia because I think that’s clearly the intent, but it always felt cheap to me that it was always just a plot device for Luke, and thereby Vader, to discover he had a sister, so Vader could taunt him, almost turn him to the dark side, and be thrashed nearly to death. I mean, the chain of events is fine, but it feels contrived if Leia never actually ends up developing her power. So my question is really about whether this can be reconciled with the new trilogy or a similar story, because IMO Disney really dropped the ball in not wrapping up a major loose thread that was left by the OT, unless I’m missing something. (I still haven’t seen the new movie and probably won’t for a while.)
Leia as little more than a back up plan is very unsatisfying to me. In the conversation Luke has with her about developing her power, he says, “In time, you will learn to use your power as I have,” but she never really does, not for any real purpose. It’s like Luke was completely full of it and maybe trying to make himself (or the audience) feel better for handing himself over to Vader by thinking that Yoda could just train up another Jedi. I mean, was that the whole point?
Right. Now, my question supposes the full context of Episodes V and VI, which includes not only what Yoda said as Luke ran off to Bespin, but also what he said on his deathbed (which I would’ve thought was obvious from the thread title). I’m assuming that Yoda is presented as somewhat rational and that the audience is expected to assume he’s speaking about the same person in both instances. But he never says, “Leia”. That bit of interpretation comes from Ben “from-a-certain-point-of-view” Kenobi, so I figured there was some room to finagle.
I don’t know how that’s supposed to tell us definitively what Yoda meant. It was Obi-Wan that confirmed Luke’s suspicions, but this was the same guy that seems to have forgotten all about Leia when he said Luke was “our last hope”, even though he was present at the twins’ birth. Yoda wasn’t there to confirm that’s what he meant during Luke and Ben’s conversation, being dead and all. The strongest evidence we as an audience have for Leia being the “other Skywalker” are Luke’s feelings, which is compelling, but not entirely conclusive.
It’s like the movies held out this big plot-hook and did absolutely nothing with it. That was forgivable when the revelation was coming at the end of Episode VI, but there’ve now been three more movies and nothing ever came of Luke’s seemingly prescient statement that Leia would learn to use the Force as he had. For me, this is a let down.
Because she chose not to. She had other things to do with her life.
Certainly not. For one thing, Yoda was dead by then, and Force Ghost or not, I doubt Luke had any illusions that he was going to be training Leia from beyond the grave.
They do. She flies thorough space in TLJ, and she does stuff in TRoS. It's just that she's more focused on being a general. Spoiler box for TRoS, where her Jedi training is made very clear:
