Were Luke and Leia twins all along?
On my new Star Wars-inspired series of posts, I’ve come up with a new interesting question: do you think Lucas always intended Luke and Leia to be twin siblings?
All the while I thought no, that Lucas had made stuff up as he went along but, just being the egomaniacal guy he is, later had sworn up and down how he’s had the story written up along. (Granted, some years ago, way before the new prequel trilogy came out, I had seen some drafts of “Star Wars,” and I do remember he mentioned “padawaan” and “Mace Windu,” perhaps not as they were eventually used in the prequels, but he definitely had some ideas written down that he used in the prequels).
Anyway, I was watching just the end of “Empire Strikes Back,” and I definitely did see some elements that led me to believe that perhaps Lucas was, at least in this instance, not being a pompous blowhard. For instance, when Luke jumps after his battle with Darth Vader and is hanging from that antenna below Bespin, he calls out to Leia and she “hears” him sort of telepathically, very “twin-like.” Plus, in the very last scene, the way Luke puts his arm around Leia is very tender and brother-like, not romantic in the least.
Whether he really had this all planned out all the way from “A New Hope,” however, that I don’t know. Having a sister myself, there are just too many romantic overtones and kisses between them to make Lucas a very sick fuck if he really did intend Luke and Leia to be brother and sister in the end. My one word to you, Mr. Lucas, from “brother” to “artiste,” is: “Ewww.”
So, what’s your take on this? How much did Lucas know, and when did he know it? Let me hear it! 🙂
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Very interesting question my friend, and one that we may never know the answer to, since we cannot take Mr.Lucas for his word, being the pathological liar he is.
First of all, I think whatever kisses and hugs Luke and Leia gave each other are irrelevant to the discussion. If you had been separated from your very hot twin sister, and you met her 18 years later without any idea of who she was, given the opportunity you would hug her, kiss her and fuck her. Period. End of discussion. This is a fact, so you could succesfully argue that Lucas just had the characters behaving as they would on the real world. You could even argue he did it to throw us off and surprise us. I don’t think that makes him a sick psycho.
Did he know in Star Wars? If he did, he gave us absolutely no hints about it there. He definitely knew about it in Empire Strikes Back, not only because of the Bespin scene you described, but the conversation between Yoda and ObiWan when Luke leaves prematurely to Bespin.
ObiWan -“That boy is our last hope.”
Yoda- “No. There is another.”
It is pretty clear to me he’s talking about Leia. That combined with the telepathic link between them makes pretty clear that he knew in Empire.
However, did he know all along? I do not know. Lucas has proven to be full of shit before, so I cannot take his word for it. I think he did know about Vader, and if he did, it is reasonable to assume he knew about about Leia too, but I think it is more probable that he came up with it when he was writing Empire Strikes Back.
If anybody has some piece of information that can shed some light into the subject, please share it with us.
César, you make some good points, but I think you’re giving Lucas’ writing skills WAY too much credit! I’m not ready to believe he was SO cunning as to make the characters he was eventually going to declare brother and sister seem to be in a love triangle just to “throw us off.” I think at the beginning he really didn’t know, so there was no harm in having the silly Han-Luke-Leia love triangle.
While it’s true that “in real life” twins growing up separately could conceivably meet and fall in love (in true Greek tragedy fashion), I think it’s highly unlikely that Lucas chose to do so consciously simply because “it could happen in real life” or to “throw us off the scent.” Remember, this movie is a work of fiction: why would he knowingly introduce eventually incestuous acts into his PG movie, when it’s just as easy to avoid them altogether?
Regarding when he knew about Vader being Luke’s father, that might be harder to ascertain, but I would venture a guess that he didn’t know at the beginning, given Obi-Wan’s famous “Darth Vader killed your father” speech. When he explained it away in “Return of the Jedi,” his explanation always seemed to be pretty overwrought to me, and it seemed like Lucas was trying to get out of the corner he had painted himself into in “A New Hope.”
On the other hand, “vader” is the Dutch word for “father”… I don’t think Lucas’ grasp of Dutch is all that, but it’s still an interesting point (and a very fortuitous coincidence, if it is that)!
Again, any other viewpoints are welcome. 🙂
Brother and Sister or no, I would have preferred Luke and Leia to Han and Leia. Call me nasty but the whole bully-to-the-point-of-rape as a May:September advantaged ‘insight into female behavior’ is even creepier than GSA incest.
Frankly I never liked the Han Solo ‘impression’ (I have the Tall Dark And Dangerous jock body, I have the faster sporstcar, I have the cool lines, I get the girl, by preconditional default) of a romantic male lead.
As it seemed to make it rather obvious that Puke wasn’t Lucas at all but rather Ford (same body style, same hair color, same age range) as the ‘secret hero’ George blatantly invested all his ego sating advantages into.
Obviously the car crash didn’t help Hamill’s destroyed-face chances but if Lucas truly cast himself as ‘The Hero’ does it make sense for him to emasculate said character in the way he did (whiney, short, blonde)?
The sadness for me is that I like the elegant and slow development of an angry-arrogant ‘poor farmboy meets pretty girl and gets his jaw dropped’ scenario where love becomes humility as she ‘learns more about him too’ when his true nature begins to show thru.
This also seems more natural, for the actor’s relative mental ages, than the Han Solo ‘already knows all there is to know about women, wink-wink’ version of romance as an act of sexual manipulation and exploitation bordering on predatorism.
Leia is the wild card here. Again, for a woman who is used to being in a room full of bought-looks Alpha males with well developed ‘conversational skills’ (dominance driven competitiveness), the notion that a sharp tongue is all that pleasing is ridiculous. She can debate all damn day with whoever she likes.
I also expect that, like most privileged class women, Leia is allowed or even expected to begin dancing the dance (trading companionship for advantaged association) rather early and would hardly be the sexual innocent that Lucas portrays her as. Again, if the thrill of being the kill is no longer there as an untried curiosity, a slower procession to the act might be a bit of a _genuine_ love relief.
At a practical level, if you are going to do incest as a theme, the one question you HAVE TO answer is the ‘what about their kids?’ outcome and frankly I would expect SWU tech to be vastly better at genetic pre-screening than what we have available.
Especially if they are able to modify specifi allele locii for things like submissive behavior, size enhancement and growth acceleration as they are with the Clone
Soldiers.
The aversion to brother:sister incest is a relatively recent one in many cultures, including those which specifically bred for ‘royal traits’ of intelligence and altruism and surprise, surprise, those historical nations didn’t end up with flighty idiots or epileptic bleeders in most (Egyptian and and Early Greek) cases.
What most don’t realize is that once you have identified the gene pattern groups you want to fix as traits, ‘pure breeding’ is the same for humans as for horses, you just cull the runts rather than let them breed back into the line.
Ashkenazi Jews have been practicing a form of this (Uncle to Niece) for about a 2,500 years and while they don’t slaughter their afflicted to keep genetic disease low (Tay Sachs and Rosaria among many other issues), they do have a mean IQ a full standard deviation about the rest of us in the range 112-113. With about 4 times the Bell Curve statistical distribution of other ethnies in the high gifted (120) and genius rated (160+) IQs as well.
Does it excuse Lucas introducing this theme to a child’s film? No. Absolutely not, it was a horrific mistake.
Does it merit the scorn you give it? Understand what you spurn before you judge it. Love is love and if it is given freely, with medical oversight after normal premarital screening, it should not be a forbidden fruit so much as an understood tragedy that is best left to the individual choices _so long as it doesn’t afflict the next generation_.
I’m not sure if you intended to defend incestuous brother-sister relationships, or if that was an accident — but in any case, the question posed in this entry is whether George Lucas knew “all along” (meaning, from the time he wrote the original “Star Wars” script) that Luke and Leia would end up being siblings, not whether incestuous brother-sister relationships merit scorn (although, you know, they do). 😉
Thanks for commenting!
I believe that Lucas intended Luke and Leia to be twins from the beginning. Their name sounds good together and it starts with the same letter. That is usually how parents name their twins 🙂
He he, that’s a good point, although I think you’re giving Lucas WAY too much credit. 😉
If darth vader is luke’s father (which is confirmed in whichever movie it was when vader says: “Luke I am your father”.) then Lea is in fact luke’s sister because in the third movie padme (anakin’s wife) names the second of her twins Lea.
Well, yes, of course Luke and Leia are really siblings — that’s not under dispute. What I am wondering is whether George Lucas knew this “plot twist” when he was writing the script for the first movie (and by that I mean “A New Hope,” in case that isn’t clear).
I think the most obvious issue with them not being twins is that in the script for New Hope Luke is described as being 18, and Leia around 16. They weren’t twins originally. This doesn’t answer whether or not they weren’t originally designed to be siblings, but they definitely weren’t twins.
Interesting, Martin: I never knew that in the script they are described as being 2 years apart. What’s funny is that I always thought Leia looked (or at least acted) older than Luke — and she’s supposed to be 2 year younger than he?! Do you have a link to the original script, by any chance? 🙂
Lucas knew it all long, “search your feelings you know it to be true”. First lets tackle the Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker question. In a New Hope its obvious that Lukes uncle and aunt know something dark about his father. They give each other strange looks when Luke mentions Obi wan. Look at the scene when Obi wan tells luke that his father was murdered by Vader. Alec Guinnes pauses slighty and shifts his eyes as if hes gearing up to tell a lie. As for Luke/Leia, well first off their names are very similar, even if you want to dismiss that as just a coincidence. Yoda says there is another hope for the rebellion when Lukes leaves Dagoba to save Han and Leia. Luke also is able to connect to Liea mentally, this implies a connection.
I think you’re reading too much into those “reactions” from Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru in “A New Hope.” It is well-known that when filming “Empire Strikes Back”, the fact that Darth Vader was Luke’s Vader (and consequently, that Luke and Leia were siblings) was not know to anyone in the cast except for Luke Hamill (even the line David Browse spoke during filming was “Obi Wan killed your father,” not “I am your father”). So it’s simply not possible that any actor during the filming of ANH conveyed any such subtlety with their acting.
Also, the scenes you mention with Yoda, and Luke and Leia’s telepathic link happen in ESB — by then I do believe Lucas knew. The question is whether he knew “all along,” as he claims — meaning from when he was writing ANH. Watching that movie it seems very unlikely to me that he did.
Thanks for commenting! I’m still surprised when people find this old post, he he. 🙂
Your absoulety right, there is nothing in ANH that suggest their is a sibling connection between Luke/Leia ( outside of the similarities of their names). Lucas went through many drafts of STAR WARS, and in the process he moved a lot of things around before settling on a core story. This is separate from your question but I still belive that Lucas knew by the time of filming ANH that Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were the same person. However I dont think Lucas intended Skywalker to have two offspring when he filmed ANH.
Hum… so you’re saying Lucas knew Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same person, and that Luke was his son, but not that Leia was Luke’s sister? Well, I see nothing in the film to prove or disprove that, so you may be right — although if Lucas knew, he sure kept it to himself until the filming of The Empire Strikes Back! 🙂