It wasn't the first time fans had heard evidence of a path not taken. In The Art of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, below the portrait of sharp-eyed Padmé with the bright red ribbon in her hair, a note by McCaig describes some queen who never was: “The moment Padmé realizes Anakin can't be saved, she should do the thing that she needs to do—out of love. She should kill him.”
We know Padmé saw what her husband was; that much survived. The surprise is that, in a story that never got told, she did something about it.
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In deleted scenes from Revenge of the Sith, Padmé meets a few sympathizers from the Galactic Republic, which is faltering toward fascism. They form a coalition of planets concerned about democracy. Padmé leads the delegation to deliver their demands to Chancellor Palpatine; behind him, Anakin.
This story stretches back to The Phantom Menace, when Palpatine convinced young Queen Amidala to call a vote of no confidence in the Senate. Despite the shattering consequences, it's a story the movies somehow couldn't tell. A 14-year-old queen made one misstep and doomed the galaxy for a generation; it's almost too painful to face such a mistake. What would she have thought once she realized what she'd done? As the Senate applauded its emperor, did she think the galaxy got what it deserved? What calculations would she have to make to justify her love for Anakin? What does it mean for a story to worry so much about Anakin's gullible hatred and leave all this behind?
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The novels, comics, and TV series offer Padmé plenty to do. Spy on aristocrats. Defend the innocent in court. Demand the Senate stop commissioning soldiers and alleviate some suffering instead. In this expanded universe, she and Anakin fight—each other, or side by side. She uses any gambit within the rule of law, and when the law stops working, she goes around.
The storymakers must know how inert she seemed in Revenge of the Sith. They give her canon space wherever they find it. The one thing they cannot do is turn back time and put a knife in Padmé's hand. Some things it's too late to alter. Some stories stay untold.
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Amid the things that can't be undone, there are endless Star Wars stories. (Willrow Hood's ice cream maker is still poised for a more satisfying narrative than Padmé.) If there's one franchise that knows the value of ghosts, it's Star Wars. And Padmé casts long shadows over the canon.
One shadow looms over the new trilogy: Anakin and Padmé's impossible love story echoes through their grandson Ben, whose obsession (at first antagonistic, later mutual) with Rey reshuffles half a dozen facets of the first star-crossed love story. Rey is a scrapper from a sandy nowhere, in dire straits until a high-stakes emergency intervenes, and strong enough in the Force to make everybody nervous. Ben Solo grew up with a politician and was sent through the proper channels to get training for his abilities. It's Ben who gets paranoid, kills his competition, changes his name, and flees to the fascists. Rey, who had only as much time to contemplate justice as starvation allowed, still dreamed of the Resistance before it ever landed at her door. And her loyalties run deep. She fell in love with Ben in The Last Jedi, enough to give herself over to the First Order, trying to get Ben to change his allegiance.
He does. He kills his emperor for her; he and Rey fight side by side. But hunger wins out, and he was Kylo Ren a long time. He claims Supreme Leader, one hand out for Rey. She begs him—once: “Don't go this way.” Then she fights him, and she flees.
That's the other shadow: all that fighting. Politics gets heavy, and the psychological tolls are too close to the real. Trade blockades and murder by committee isn't the struggle people come to see. Everyone understands that loyalty will spur a hero to draw their sword against a sworn enemy; Padmé railing against a darkness with a hundred thousand hands is too much to think about. Even in Rogue One (the rare Star War where heroes make tough moral decisions), the Empire lurks on every corner, an enemy so obvious there's no question what needs doing.
