Star Wars Revealed Leia's Last Message To Darth Vader - And It's Tragic

George Lucas' original "Star Wars" trilogy is essentially the hero's journey. As Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) leaves his homeworld in search of adventure, he ends up coming face to face with the man responsible for most of the galaxy's problems, Darth Vader (James Earl Jones, David Prowse). Of course, we eventually learn that Darth Vader was once Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and that Luke actually had a twin sister, Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). But how did Leia feel about this revelation? Well, most canon "Star Wars" projects don't get into too much detail about it, not until more recently anyway.

In Marvel Comics' latest Star Wars series, "Star Wars: Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising," we get some answers. Continuing the story after the Battle of Endor as seen in "Return of the Jedi," the comic book follows Luke, Leia, and their friends as they continue to help establish the New Republic throughout the galaxy. But as our heroes journey into the unknown, Leia returns to the forest moon to bid her own farewell to her biological father.

We know that Luke helped redeem Anakin, who returned at the end of the trilogy as a force ghost alongside Yoda (Frank Oz) and Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness). But while her brother found peace in Vader's redemption, Leia had a very different response.

But when did Princess Leia learn that Darth Vader was her father? Well, at the same moment that she learned Luke Skywalker was actually her brother. The entire Star Wars story is really all about family, and so it shouldn't come as a surprise when, in "Return of the Jedi," Luke and Leia share a moment where he confesses that they're twins. "It won't be easy for you to hear it, but you must," Luke tells her, to which she replies, "Somehow I've always known." (Considering she kisses him twice in the trilogy, that's a bit unsettling, but we'll move on.)

But while Leia is elated at the news that Luke is her brother, we don't get to see her process the fact that Darth Vader is their father. Luke discovers his parentage at the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" and reveals this to Leia after the fact. So when she does finally learn the truth, she's obviously shaken by the news.

In the 2022 novel "The Princess and the Scoundrel" by Beth Revis, we learn a little more about Leia's internal monologue after the fact. Though she's grateful and quickly accepts that Luke is her brother, the news of Vader being her father is more than she can bear. "Perhaps it was merely that Luke had never been tortured by their biological fa­ther the way she had," Revis writes from Leia's point of view. That's certainly a fair reaction, as is her struggle to make amends with her estranged parent.

Despite the fact that the Empire led to the deaths of his aunt and uncle, and Darth Vader not only severed his hand but allowed Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) to torture him, Luke was able to forgive his father. In fact, he fought tooth and nail to find the good in Vader when no one else possibly could. It was his love for his father, Anakin Skywalker, that helped restore Vader to the Light Side of the Force and pushed the Sith Lord to reject his master in order to save his son. In one of the most powerful redemption stories in the entire "Star Wars" canon, Darth Vader was able to atone for his lifetime of wrongdoing by helping his son annihilate the Empire he once swore to build. Because of that, Luke was able to forgive his father — but Leia was not.

In "Star Wars: Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising" #1 (by Alex Segura, Leonard Kirk, and Stefano Raffaele), Leia returns to the funeral pyre where Luke burned their father's body. Since she never got to speak with him daughter-to-father in life, this was the only way she could express how she felt about the truth. "I'm not like Luke," she tells Vader's distorted helmet. "Luke can forgive with ease I strain for." Tossing the helmet aside, she expresses her anger with her biological father over all those killed and maimed by him and his Order. It's worth noting that Leia's adoptive parents, Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) and Breha Organa (Simone Kessell), were likely on her home world of Alderaan when the Death Star blew it up in "A New Hope."

Ultimately, Leia leaves Vader's corpse behind. She returns to join the celebration with her new family and pushes her biological father out of her mind. For years, Leia struggled to atone for the sins of her parent, but, eventually, she was forced to deal with the Dark Side tendencies of her son, Ben Solo (Adam Driver). But according to "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: A Junior Novel" by Michael Kogge, Leia eventually made peace with her father, seeing the ghost of Anakin Skywalker just before her own death.

If the idea that Leia would just toss an object so filled with meaning like Darth Vader's helmet aside seems strange, it shouldn't. It's easy to see the parallels between this moment and Luke Skywalker throwing away his and his father's former lightsaber in "The Last Jedi," but the two scenes are truly nothing alike. In the case of Luke and his lightsaber, the former Jedi Knight had left his sworn duty to protect the galaxy behind and wanted nothing to do with either his weapon or saving the universe when Rey (Daisy Ridley) found him on Ahch-To. In Leia's case, her reaction is far more justified, and doesn't break anything we know about her character.

It's easy for fans to forget that Leia was actually tortured by Darth Vader in "A New Hope," but the princess likely never. Not only was Leia abused by the Empire, but she watched in horror as her father destroyed everything she fought for. More than that, Vader continually haunted Leia and her friends during the Galactic Civil War and took Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from her the very moment she confessed her love. It's no wonder Leia never changed her name to Skywalker. Vader's ruthlessness, anger, and overall disregard for anyone who got in his way wasn't something Leia could ignore, and while Luke should be applauded for seeing the man behind the mask, it makes sense that Leia couldn't bear to do the same.

Again, Leia eventually came to terms with her father's true self, Anakin Skywalker. In "The Rise of Skywalker," she's seen in an outfit reminiscent of Anakin's getup during "Star Wars: The Clone Wars." More to the point, she and Anakin are both heard alongside one another when Rey battles her own grandfather, Palpatine, at the very end of the film. From what we can tell, Leia eventually forgave her father; it just took her more time to get there.