Star Wars: Witness Leia’s Jedi Training in This The Rise of Skywalker Clip

It’s been a few months since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker first hit theaters, and the film’s impact has continued to be felt in a multitude of ways. While The Rise of Skywalker‘s digital download release is still a few weeks away, some key sequences have already made their way online for fans to relive in high quality. The latest among that roster is a moment fans wanted to see in the Star Wars universe for decades — Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) wielding a lightsaber. In a clip, which you can check out above, you can see the film’s flashback sequence, in which Leia realizes the prophecy that ultimately needs to be fulfilled with her lightsaber.

The sequence was definitely one of the most surprising elements of The Rise of Skywalker, and was created through the help of archival footage from Return of the Jedi.

“We also had access to the dailies from the original trilogy, and in the flashback of Luke and Leia, that image of Carrie comes from Return of the Jedi,” the film’s co-writer, Chris Terrio, previously confirmed. “So, we had access to everything in the archive, which turned out to be super helpful. So, yeah, the original trilogy was on our table for the flashback and for audio. That said, Leia was a very different person in the new trilogy, and I’m not sure that we would’ve used any audio from the original trilogy. Her voice had changed, and obviously, she was older, wiser and had a different quality to her performance. So, I’m not sure we ended up using any audio from the original trilogy, and we tried to stay true to Carrie’s acting intentions as much as we could.”

Bringing “young Leia” to life in that scene was Fisher’s real-life daughter Billie Lourd, who has also appeared in the sequel trilogy as Lieutenant Connix.

“Billie was playing her mother,” ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Patrick Tubach previously shared. “It was a poignant thing, and something that nobody took lightly — that she was willing to stand in for her mom.”

“It was an emotional thing for everybody to see her in that position. It felt great for us, too,” Tubach pointed out. “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.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives on Digital HD on March 17th.