Padmé Amidala appeared in the Star Wars franchise with Natalie Portman’s likeness roughly a year before the prequel trilogy began, reopening the question of how her daughter doesn’t remember her. Canonically, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia never truly knew their mother, as they each only briefly saw her as newborn babies before she died. The Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy’s comic adaptation features a painting of Padmé that potentially solves the issue of Leia remembering her mother in Return of the Jedi.
The only mention of Padmé in the Star Wars original trilogy was during a conversation between Luke and Leia in Return of the Jedi, in which Luke reveals that not only is Darth Vader his father, but that he’s also Leia’s sister. While Luke has no memory of his biological mother, Leia claims to remember her, which didn’t cause any continuity issues at first. By the time the Star Wars prequel trilogy concluded, there was no official explanation for how Leia remembered her mother, but fans hypothesized that perhaps she had visions of Padmé through the Force.
Issue five of The Last Command’s comic adaptation, by Mike Baron and Edvin Biukovic, took advantage of Natalie Portman’s casting as Padmé Amidala by putting a massive painting of her in the former Imperial Palace on Coruscant, using Portman’s likeness. Not only does this Legends continuity comic feature the first depiction of Portman’s Padmé, but it also seemingly resolves the issue regarding Leia’s memories of Padmé before they were even discussed. If Leia observed the portrait before the events of Return of the Jedi, it explains how she’s aware of Padmé’s appearance, but the painting may have also been added to the palace after it became the New Republic capital.
Leia wouldn’t remember her brief glimpse of Padmé on Polis Massa, but she does have a strong connection to the Force. As explained by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, Force users can experience visions of those closest to them, even if they’re “long gone.” While Leia doesn’t have any true memories of Padmé, she could easily have experienced a vision of her through the Force, knowing that the woman she saw was her mother, making her memory of Padmé truly a memory of her in a Force vision.
The portrait of Padmé may further assist in extrapolating how Leia remembers her mother if it was in the Imperial Palace during Leia’s time as an Imperial senator. If Leia couldn’t identify the woman in her Force vision as her birth mother, she could have easily seen the portrait, remembered the woman from the vision and learned that it’s of Padmé Amidala, thus leading her to recognize Padmé Amidala as her biological mother. What began as a Star Wars franchise easter egg ended up being a potential solution to an apparent prequel-era plot hole.
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