New Star Wars release makes original trilogy's darkest moment way bleaker

This bleak Star Wars reveal feels like it’s been plucked from the shadowy recesses of our minds. Although it enhances a moment from the OG trilogy, it also makes said scene more heartbreaking.

Many grim realities are realised in Star Wars, though oftentimes they also have ambiguity to allow us to fill in the blanks as we see fit.

Our imaginations can think up such horrors without vividly seeing them acted out on-screen.

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That said, sometimes it’s important to understand the full gravity of a fictional event, and to do this, you need a metaphorical slap across the face. This is what this new Star Wars release delivers.

Star Wars #48 of ‘The Path of Darkness” saga shows us the suffering Princess Leia had to endure after being unable to save her home planet.

The original film does a wonderful job of depicting her anguish, but it’s a fleeting scene that doesn’t show what happens on the planet’s surface, or how it makes Leia feel with such a tragedy seemingly placed at her feet.

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Although a dream sequence, it’s one plagued by guilt at not being able to prevent Alderaan’s destruction. Consequently, we see Leia at the controls of the Death Star as the one who single-handedly pulls the lever that annihilates the planet.

Bleak though that is, Leia’s PTSD doesn’t stop there with its torment: it then places her in an alternate sequence in which she’s a child watching as the Death Star comes into view.

Such concepts of grief and loss weren’t fully explored in the film other than on a surface level; there wasn’t time to delve into the lasting impact of these pivotal moments.

We can now see how it affected Leia, but it’s as bleak as the event that inspired these nightmarish visions.