image courtesy LucasfilmLong before George Lucas sold his entire brand to Disney, he had been working to develop his own sequel trilogy. In the three films that he was working on quietly, nothing would have been the same as the movies we got. In fact, the original heroes would have remained as the central characters of the films and would have seen Luke, Leia, and Han move up through the ranks of the Rebel Alliance after the fall of the Empire. His planned sequels would have also seen Luke attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order to its pre-Order 66 levels. Obviously, none of this was ever part of the sequels as Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams had much different ideas for the trilogy. Instead of spending too much time with legacy characters, they decided to do a passing of the torch to a newer generation that would finish out the Skywalker saga.
Now, some new details have come to light. With new details released to the public via a book called Star Wars Archives Episode 1-111 from author Paul Duncan, some notes from Lucas have made their way to the internet about his previous plans for his cancelled sequel trilogy. Apparently, he was going to shift away from the idea that Luke was the "chosen one" and was going to make his twin sister Leia the one to carry that torch. In his writing, it states:
“By the end of the trilogy Luke would’ve rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.”
This is an interesting twist considering Abrams decided to make a female lead the focus of the sequel trilogy we ended up getting.
-CG
