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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The Star Wars prequels were full of dumb moments, from the clumsy “I hate sand” speech to almost every moment Jar-Jar Binks was on screen. In general, however, most fans agree that the absolute stupidest the moment Padme Amidala was dying of a broken heart. Even in a galaxy far, far away, it’s hard to accept that a former Queen and mother of the galaxy’s greatest hero would die of sadness alone. However, some fans have tried to redeem this idiotic Padme death plot development with a simple theory: that Anakin Skywalker drained the life force from her to survive unconsciously.
Padme’s Death Theory
Credit where credit is due: Revenge of the Sith had some clever editing moments, including various scenes of Padme giving birth to Luke and Leia and scenes of Anakin Skywalker’s robotic rebirth as Darth Vader. Part of what made that rebirth so terrifying is that we’ve already seen Anakin disintegrate and then be left to burn and die by former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. It didn’t look like something even a powerful Force user could survive, and according to this Padme death theory, the only way Anakin managed to live was by sucking all the life out of his wife (husbands, right ?).
An interesting side effect of Padme’s death theory is that it also redeems another silly introductory moment. Darth Vader’s stupid cartoonish “NOOOOOOO”. scream when he is told that his wife is dead. Palpatine had just told his new pupil that “in your anger, you killed her,” and Vader’s scream was terrifying because he seemed to be very easily fooled by the galaxy’s most blatant liar. According to this theory, however, Palpatine was actually telling the truth and Vader, blinded by rage, was subconsciously draining Padme’s life force in a way that could not be detected through medical scanners.
Padme’s More Than One Death Theory
While this theory of Padme’s death is compelling, there are other variations and theories that are just as interesting. For example, the basic theory assumes that Anakin did all this unconsciously, which is why he is so surprised and grief-stricken when he learns that his wife is dead. Others think he deliberately sucked her life force out (perhaps starting with that Mustafar Force choke or even earlier), and only felt it when he found he had gone too far and killed her. n bad (talk about post-bot clarity!).
Of course, the most popular variation of this Padme death theory is that it was actually Palpatine who sucked out 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 that he could then offer her the false carrot of giving her eternal life. By deliberately sucking the life out of her body after all this manipulation, the newly crowned Emperor could ensure that his strong right-hand man had nothing to live for but the Empire.
Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether this Padme death theory actually redeems the Prequel Trilogy. Even if George Lucas came out tomorrow and gave us his best Solo Han (“it’s true … all of it”), we’d still be left with terrible dialogue and poor plotting. Also, it’s a bit embarrassing that fans have spent almost two decades trying to fix all the mistakes in a movie whose plot has more holes than the body of the Millennium Falcon. Then again, considering how much Disney currently running this franchise into the ground, fans and their theories may only hope for good Star Wars storytelling for the foreseeable future.
