It’s been nearly 20 years since Star Wars: Episode I —The Phantom Menace, where audiences first met Padmé Amidala, mother to Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, lover to Anakin “Darth Vader” Skywalker, fan of cake makeup, and so on. It’s now well-established in the Star Wars canon that she’s Luke’s mom, but it wasn’t always so. Tweeting over the weekend, Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself, revealed that, between the making of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he pitched Star Wars creator George Lucas on a big twist involving interstellar bounty hunter Boba Fett:
"Then there was the time I pitched Boba Fett as Luke’s mother. I have always been more than willing to generously share my many, many terrible ideas in the off-chance we might stumble across one that could actually be useful. At the time, I didn’t even know Leia was my sister.I once suggested it to George as the only way we could top Vader being my father. I envisioned her as a double-agent working clandestinely for the Rebels. SPOILER ALERT: He didn’t like my idea."
Then there was the time I pitched Boba Fett as Luke's mother. I have always been more than willing to generously share my many, many terrible ideas in the off-chance we might stumble across one that could actually be useful. At the time, I didn't even know Leia was my sister. https://t.co/nurhFZZS01
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) November 16, 2018
Hamill also talked about this idea in a 2004 interview with CHUD: “The audience is expecting the unexpected. I kept thinking that Boba Fett would take off the helmet, shake out her hair, and it’s my mother! You would go, ‘Wow, a double agent!’”
Boba Fett ends up being Luke’s mom, Boba Fett is swallowed by a man-eating sand creature never to be heard from again outside of the Star Wars Legends expanded universe…whichever.
Hamill also revealed that he’s never sat all the way through the legendarily corny Star Wars Holiday Special, so he’s just tweeting up a storm lately.
Not all the way through. https://t.co/h9D1VJJbcd
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) November 18, 2018
Speaking of Star Wars plots that never were, speaking to GQ, Oscar Isaac revealed that his sequel trilogy character, fighter pilot Poe Dameron, was almost killed off near the beginning of The Force Awakens:
“I met with and Kathy Kennedy and Lawrence Kasdan and we sat in an office and they pitched me the story,” Isaac remembers. “He’s Leia’s number one pilot…and you have a scene with Max von Sydow and the main bad guy shows up and then you die spectacularly!”
Isaac was far enough along in his career that he didn’t feel he had to play disposable characters, but after thinking it over decided he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be in a Star Wars movie. But when he called Abrams to accept the offer, he found that the director had rethought the part in the interim. “Actually, we’re changing it up. He’s in the whole movie now. It’s going to be really cool.” And the rest is three-year old history.
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h/t The A.V. Club