Princess Leia mother-effing Organa. The one, the only. I of course liked her when I watched the movies as a kid, but I don’t think I knew just how indelible she was until I rewatched the films as an adult and realized how many of her lines/deliveries had been preserved perfectly in my mind for over 20 years. In short, she rocks.
When Luke first sees the message Leia recorded through R2, he’s taken by her: a beautiful princess in trouble, and he can be the one to help her! He crafts a whole heroic vision for himself based off of a short holo-recording. But while Luke comes riding in to save the day (not to mention securing Han’s assistance by promising that Leia will pay him handsomely,) he doesn’t recognize what that recording actually meant.
Leia doesn’t try to contact Obi-Wan for rescue. She records that message for him because, when Darth Vader boards her ship, she’s only just received the intel that could be vital to destroying the Death Star and taking out the Empire’s most devastating weapon. She’s well aware that she could be captured or killed at any moment, and she uses her last minutes of freedom to record a plea to Obi-Wan to get the plans to the Rebellion. Obviously, Leia doesn’t want to be Vader’s prisoner. But the Rebellion is more important to her, and that’s what she prioritizes in this moment.
Honestly, Leia is just wonderful. She bears up under interrogation, never giving up crucial information and only begging mercy for Alderaan, not herself. When Luke and Han show up with an admittedly slapdash rescue plan, she accepts the help but isn’t about to swoon over it. Instead, she gives both of them attitude, being delightfully snarky and giving off an air of exasperation toward her would-be hero and the pirate he hired with her money. Throughout the escape from the Death Star, she plays an active part in her own rescue, and when they get away, despite the harrowing ordeal she’s been through—she watched her planet get destroyed before her eyes—she’s focused on completing her mission.
Moving forward, it’s true that there are other times when Leia is in distress and needs help, but even under the most extreme circumstances, she’s never fully damseled. She stays in the thick of things, coordinating operations at Rebel bases and pitching in when things need repairing on the Falcon. When danger rears its head, she’s often frightened, but she does what she can to fight back and save herself.
Don’t forget: the only reason she winds up enslaved by Jabba, chained to him and forced into an exploitative outfit, is because she goes to Jabba’s palace trying to rescue Han. And after she’s captured, she’s the one to kill her captor, strangling him with the very chain he uses to bind her. Leia isn’t a super woman, but she’s no one’s damsel.
I know people have mixed feelings about Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I’ll always appreciate the series for letting us see Leia as a young girl. On that show, we learn that she’s been giving both captors and would-be rescuers attitude since day one, that’s she’s always had an affinity for droids and an eye for justice, and that she learned from a young age that you can be on a secret mission and still look stylish (it kills me that she makes Obi-Wan buy her a pair of pretty gloves when they’re getting cloaks to disguise themselves.) Seeing young Leia in Obi-Wan Kenobi made my heart swell, because it showed me such a clear throughline from the brave little girl she was to the amazing young woman she becomes.
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