By Chris Snellgrove | Published
The Star Wars prequels were full of dumb moments, from that “I hate sand” line to almost every second Jar-Jar Binks was on screen. However, most fans generally agree that it is completely stupid moment was Padme Amidala dying of a broken heart. Even in a garage far, far away, it’s hard to accept that the former Queen and mother of the galaxy’s greatest warrior could just die of grief. However, some fans tried to redeem this stupidity of Padme’s death with a simple idea: that Anakin Skywalker took the life force out of her in order to survive.
The Padme Death Theory
Credit where credit is due: Sithi’s revenge he had some brilliant editing moments, including scenes involving Padme giving birth to Luke and Leia and scenes of Anakin Skywalker’s robotic rebirth as Darth Vader. Part of what makes that rebirth so terrifying is that we’ve already seen Anakin disintegrate and go off to catch fire again. fa by former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. It didn’t seem like something that even a powerful Force user could survive, and according to this theory of Padme’s death, the only way Anakin could survive was by absorbing all life from his wife (husbands, right?).
An interesting side effect of the Padme death theory is that it redeems another stupid prequel moment. Darth Vader’s cartoonishly stupid “NOOOOOOO” scream when told his wife is dead. Palpatine had just told his new apprentice that “with your anger, you killed him,” and Vader’s cry was heartbreaking because it seemed like he had been so easily fooled by such an obvious liar. According to this theory, however, Palpatine was in fact telling the truth and Vader, blinded by rage, inadvertently drained Padme’s life force in a way that could not be detected by medical scans.
More than one death theory for Padme
While this theory of Padme’s death is compelling, there are exceptions and other theories that are just as interesting. For example, the main theory assumes that Anakin does all this without knowing, which is why he is surprised and sad when he learns that his wife is dead. Some think he absorbed his life force on purpose (perhaps starting with that Mustafar Force choke or earlier), and was devastated when he found out he went too far and killed him (talk about post-bot clarity!).
Of course, the most popular alternative to this theory of Padme’s death is that it was actually Palpatine who absorbed her life force instead of Anakin. This would fit with the long-standing belief that it was Palpatine who sent Anakin visions of his wife dying, basically planting the idea of her death in order to provide the false carrot of giving her eternal life. By deliberately sucking the life out of his body after all this deception, the newly crowned Emperor could ensure that his powerful right hand had nothing to live for outside of the Empire.
Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether or not this Padme death theory actually applies to the Prequel Trilogy. Even if George Lucas were to come out tomorrow and give us his best Han Solo (“truth…everything”), we would still be left with terrible dialogue and a terrible plot. Also, it’s a shame that fans have spent almost two decades trying to fix all the mistakes of a movie whose plot has more holes than the Millennium Falcon. Then again, given how much Disney is currently running this franchise into the ground, fans and their theories can be ours only I hope for good Star Wars storytelling for the foreseeable future.
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