Last December, Star Wars fans said goodbye to Carrier Fisher. This December, they’ll get her back.
As has been reported for months, Fisher will posthumously reprise her role as Princess Leia (née Leia Organa) in the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which is set to hit movie theaters on Dec. 15. And Entertainment Weekly, in a multi-parted feature, has revealed some of the facts about Fisher’s final onscreen turn.
“Her character to some degree or another has been defined by loss through this whole saga, starting with the loss of her home planet. She’s just taken hit after hit, and she’s borne it, and she focuses on moving forward and the task at hand,” writer-director Rian Johnson told EW.
In the movie, she’s once again heading up the now ragtag Resistance and mourning the loss of her one-time lover, Han Solo, who—spoiler alerts be damned at this point—met his end in The Force Awakens. She’s also got to live with the fact that Kylo Ren, her and Solo’s only son, did the killing. She’ll also share a lot of screen-time with Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), whom it appears she’ll be grooming to be her replacement as the head of the Resistance.
Though, as EW notes, the next movie is currently being amended because of Fisher’s death, Leia’s presence will be felt throughout the rest of the series.
And as writer-director Johnson says of Fisher’s exit in The Last Jedi, “… there’s going to be a very emotional reaction to what she does in this movie.” Get your hankies ready.
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