Alternate Princess Leia Death Revealed In Rise of Skywalker Concept Art

Concept art from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker reveals an alternate death scene for Princess Leia. Rise of Skywalker is the ninth and final feature film in the Skywalker saga, which is the main branch of the sprawling Star Wars franchise that began with A New Hope in 1977. The film concludes Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) journey toward discovering her parentage and where she fits into the universe while attempting to save everyone she loves from the resurrected Emperor Palpatine. However, the film also concluded the storyline of Princess Leia, now General Leia, the third character from the original chronology to pass away over the course of the new trilogy.

Each film in the new trilogy features the death of one of the original characters, beginning with Harrison Ford’s Han Solo in The Force Awakens and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalkers in The Last Jedi. Unfortunately, Carrie Fisher, who plays Princess Leia, passed away in 2016 after filming scenes for The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker was forced to use archive footage and deleted scenes to cobble together a satisfying storyline for Leia, which ended with her – in silhouette – passing away in a dark room at the Resistance base while channeling all of her power to distract Kylo Ren and allow Rey to get the upper hand during a climactic battle.

On Instagram, concept designer Phil Saunders shared an alternate vision of how that scene might have played out. The artwork depicts Leia on her ship Tantive IV being attended to by a droid. In his caption, Saunders reveals that “at the moment of her passing a comet was supposed to streak past her window.” Check out the post below:

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For the Star Wars fans who are most interested in the tech, Saunders also includes the tidbit “I shaped the stateroom to telegraph it’s location in the Blockade Runner, just under the cockpit in the hammerhead.” However, he didn’t share if this concept art was designed before Fisher passed away in real life. Considering how the scene the filmmakers ultimately went with doesn’t feature Leia’s face, as this artwork does, that’s entirely possible.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a divisive film for many reasons. However, it unfortunately had no choice but to find some way to remove Leia from the storyline. This alternate scene has a different location and design, but the character’s death would have likely played out the same way.

Source: Phil Saunders/Instagram

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