The most recent three movies in the Star Wars Skywalker Saga were about the franchise's next generation continuing the legacy of their parents, so it’s fitting that Carrie Fisher’s iconic Leia was able to return for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker in part because of her daughter, Billie Lourd. The 27-year-old actress, who played the Resistance lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix in all three films, also, it turns out, doubled for Leia in a flashback to her Jedi training with Luke Skywalker.
Although director J.J. Abrams and other people behind Rise of Skywalker had indicated that Fisher, who died in December of 2016, appeared in the new movie thanks to miraculous unused footage Abrams had shot for The Force Awakens, a recent wave of interviews with the effects workers behind the movie have revealed that her scenes required quite a bit of digital effects and CGI as well. In most scenes, Fisher’s face from the unused footage was pasted over a digital body, clothes, and hair, so as to better fit into the surrounding scene.
The flashback scene, though, when Rey learns about Leia’s Jedi training, showed Leia looking as she appeared around the time of Return of the Jedi. During those acrobatic scenes, Lourd played her mother, acting opposite a digitally de-aged Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, according to Yahoo Entertainment.
“It was a poignant thing, and something that nobody took lightly—that she was willing to stand in for her mom,” ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Patrick Tubach explained.
“It was an emotional thing for everybody to see her in that position, Tubach continued. “It felt great for us, too. If you’re going to have someone play [Fisher’s] part, it’s great that it’s [Billie] because there are a lot of similarities between them that we were able to draw from. The real challenge was just making the Leia footage we had to work with fit in that scene.”
In an essay Lourd wrote for Time about a month before The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters, the 27-year-old actress reflected on acting in Star Wars films alongside her mother, and that doing it without her in Episode IX would “be one of the most painful, difficult things I would ever do.”
“But I said yes for her–for my mom,” Lourd continued. “For Leia. For everyone Leia means so much to. For everyone Leia gives strength to… Initially, Princess Leia was kind of like my stepmom. Now she’s my guardian angel. And I’m her keeper.”
While it remains a tragedy that Fisher died before her time, and that we’ll never know what Episode IX would have been like had she been able to play Leia one more time, it’s nice to know that her daughter had a role in the character’s final appearance. And, it’s nice to now know exactly how Leia came back, unlike Emperor Palpatine.
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