We already knew that the late Carrie Fisher completed her scenes for The Watch Avengers: Endgame OnlineLast Jedi, the eighth episode in the ongoing Star Wars saga, before her tragic, untimely death in December.
What was still unknown: whether Fisher's character, General Leia Organa, would also return as planned for Episode IX. Now, according to her brother Todd Fisher, it seems Leia will indeed be back.
SEE ALSO: What a world without Carrie Fisher means for the Star Wars universeThe Fisher family has granted Disney and Lucasfilm the rights to use "recent footage" to complete her role across the whole sequel trilogy, the New York Daily Newsreports.
"How do you take her out of it?" Todd Fisher says both he and bosses at Disney had asked themselves. "And the answer is you don't ... I think her presence now is even more powerful than it was, like Obi-Wan — when the [light]saber cuts him down, he becomes more powerful. I feel like that's what's happened with Carrie."
Don't read too much into that analogy; it doesn't necessarily mean Leia will return as a Force ghost, Obi-Wan style. It's very likely that nobody yet knows how Leia will feature in Episode IX. Todd Fisher's statement simply means that Carrie's family has no objections.
Filming on Episode IX isn't likely to begin until this summer, and director Colin Trevorrow says he's only just completed a draft version of the script.
However, there's one thing Lucasfilm has already guaranteed: Fisher will not be returning in CGI form, as she did at the end of Rogue One.
"We want to assure our fans that Lucasfilm has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess or General Leia Organa," the company said in an unusually forthcoming statement in January.
That leaves the possibility that her performance in The Last Jediwill be split in two: some of it used for Episode VIII, some for Episode IX. Or unused footage from The Force Awakenscould be spliced into the story. Either way, it means Leia lives to fight another day.
And if Leia's last appearance is rendered via hologram, perhaps from R2-D2 -- well, that would bring a fitting circularity to the Star Wars universe. And it would also not leave a dry eye in the theater.
We'll see you soon, General Organa. To us, you'll always be royalty.
The Last Jedi, which focuses largely on what Leia's brother Luke has been up to in hiding all those years, hits theaters this December 15.
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