Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
According to Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The Star Wars prequels were full of silly moments, from that clunky “I hate sand” speech to almost every second Jar-Jar Binks was on screen. However, in general, most fans agree that absolutely the stupidest Padmé Amidala was dying of a broken heart. Even in a galaxy far, far away, it’s hard to accept that the former queen and mother of the galaxy’s greatest hero, who took charge, would simply die of grief. However, some fans tried to redeem this idiotic development of Padmé’s death with a simple theory: Anakin Skywalker was unknowingly draining her life force to survive.
Theories of Padmé’s death
Credit for which credit is due: Revenge of the Sith had some clever editing moments, including interlacing scenes of Padme giving birth to Luke and Leia, and scenes of Anakin Skywalker’s robotic rebirth as Darth Vader. Part of what made this rebirth so scary is that we’ve already seen Anakin cut up and then left to burn and die from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s former mentor. It didn’t seem like something even a powerful Force user could survive, and according to this theory of Padme’s death, Anakin only managed to live by draining all life from his wife (husbands, right?).
An interesting side effect of the Padme death theory is that it also redeems another silly prequel moment. Darth Vader’s cartoonishly stupid “NOOOOOOO”. scream when he told him his wife was dead. Palpatine had just told his new pupil that “in your anger you killed her” and Vader’s scream was horrifying as he seemed very easily fooled by the galaxy’s most obvious liar. However, according to this theory, Palpatine was actually telling the truth and Vader, blinded by rage, was subconsciously draining Padma’s life force in a way that could not be detected by medical scanners.
More than one theory of Padmé’s death
While this theory of Padme’s death is compelling, there are variants and other theories that are just as interesting. For example, the primary theory assumes that Anakin did all of this unconsciously, which is why he is so surprised and saddened to learn that his wife is dead. Others think he drained her life force on purpose (perhaps starting with the Mustafar Force choke or earlier), and only felt bad when he realized he had gone too far and killed her (talk about post-robot clarity!).
Of course, the most popular variation on this theory of Padme’s death is that it was actually Palpatine who drained her life force rather than Anakin. This would fit with the ongoing theory that it was Palpatine who sent Anakin visions of his wife dying, essentially implanting the idea of her death so he could then offer a fake carrot and give her eternal life. By deliberately draining the life from her body after all the manipulations, the newly crowned emperor could ensure that his strong right hand would live for nothing but the Empire.
Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether or not this Padme death theory really redeems the Prequel Trilogy. Even if George Lucas came out tomorrow and gave us his best Han Solo (“it’s true…everything”), we’d still be left with terrible dialogue and flimsy plots. Plus, it’s kind of embarrassing that fans have spent nearly two decades trying to fix all the mistakes in a movie that has more plot holes than the hull of the Millennium Falcon. Then again, considering how much Disney currently running this franchise into the ground, fans and their theories can be ours only hope for good Star Wars storytelling in the foreseeable future.
