Stronger Than she Knows

I love the fact that in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the hero is a girl. Rey is a really interesting character. She is a nobody until BB8 rolls into her life, and soon she meets Finn- they escape Jakku, and go on all sorts of adventures!
As the story progresses, Rey grows as a character and she begins to discover her powers. The interesting thing is that at first, no one knows who she is, but as the movie goes along, everyone knows there’s something familiar about her. They realize that she’s important.
Kylo Ren is shocked when she resists his mind probe. He is horrified when she is able to reach into his mind and ascertain his greatest fear.
“You- You’re afraid that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader.”
When Kylo talks to Snoke, the Supreme Leader says angrily, “The scavenger resisted you?!”
And Kylo gets a little defensive, “She is strong in the Force- untrained, but stronger than she knows.”
That is something that sparked my interest- but not just for Rey, but for characters such as Padmè, Han Solo, even Finn and Poe… They aren’t Jedi, but they have a tendency to get themselves out of sticky spots, and they have abilities that seem to go beyond normal human abilities. I will explain this.
For instance, in the classic trilogy, Han Solo has tremendous luck getting out of trouble. He takes risks, pulls crazy stunts, and survives. Here are a few instances:
1. Flying in at the last moment to save Luke from being blown up by Darth Vader so Luke can blow up the Death Star.
2. Flying into an asteroid field
3. Volunteering to lead a mission to disable the shield generator on Endor. (It was incredibly dangerous)
4. Shooting Greedo first (this is sort of a pun, but, it’s true)
5. Even just being there on Tatooine with the Millennium falcon- he was in the right place at the right time to get our heroes to the Death Star. Of course, Chewbacca was there too, and some think that maybe he was in league with the Rebellion all this time, since during The Clone Wars, the Wookiees were on the side of the Republic… but I digress…
Finn has never used a lightsaber before, but somehow is able to wield it with reasonable accuracy. When Hosnian Prime is destroyed, Finn is the first person to turn around- as if he sensed it. Also, there’s the matter of him resisting years of conditioning. When he went into battle, he knew that what the First Order was doing wasn’t right, and he decided that he wasn’t going to kill for them. After the battle, he was brought to Captain Phasma’s division for reconditioning, but he still maintained his stance and helped Poe escape. Somehow, Finn survived the fall of the Tie fighter, and managed to find Rey and BB8.
And Poe, he is an excellent pilot. He too survived the crash, and managed to find his way back to the Resistance Base. When he was being held by Kylo Ren, he resisted the mind probe for a long time before finally caving. In battle, he manages to destroy most everything in his path. While that doesn’t mean he’s a Jedi- or even that he’s Force sensitive- but it’s something interesting, and it is impressive that a normal person has such strong powers.
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Finally, we come to Padmè Amidala. This is super interesting because she doesn’t exhibit an extraordinary amount of skills one would expect from a Jedi, but there are a few times where she is spot on with a character analysis of someone, or she survives assassination attempts, and even a death sentence. She holds her own against a Nexu. But I think the most interesting thing is that Padmè was put in Anakin’s path in a twist of fate. If it weren’t for the blockade, they wouldn’t have tried to escape, had their ship damaged and had to land on Tatooine to repair it.
If they hadn’t landed on Tatooine, they’d never meet, Anakin would probably never become a Jedi, and the whole saga would be different. Her and Anakin got put together, probably by Palpatine in a way- more than likely to cause a rift between Anakin and the Jedi.
The point I want to talk about however is when the Battle of Geonosis is taking place and Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padmè are in a cruiser, chasing after Count Dooku. Padmè falls out, and Anakin wants to go back and save her, but of course, isn’t allowed. Padmè wakes up a few minutes later with a clone trooper standing over her. He’s trying to get her to safety, but she tells him, “No. we’ve got to get to that hangar. Get a transport- hurry.”
If my memory serves me correctly, no one told her that’s where Obi-Wan and Anakin were going… As far as I know, she’s never been to the planet- much less the hangar before this trip, so it’s not even like she knew Dooku’s hiding places, or the geography of the planet… so how did she know?
I’ll also point out that Anakin and Obi-wan, the Jedi- were CHASING Dooku. They were following him because they wanted to catch him- and they didn’t know where he was going.
In the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, the part about Padmè states that Padmè knows Anakin better than he knows himself. There’s a scene in the movie where Palpatine has just told Anakin about being the Sith, and Anakin tells Mace Windu who tells him to go to the Council chamber and wait until the Masters return. Anakin goes as he’s told, but soon leaves. The reason he leaves is that he hears the voice of Palpatine saying, “You do know, don’t you? If the Jedi destroy me, any chance of saving her will be lost.”
Anakin is looking out the window, thinking of Padmè and trying to communicate with her through the Force. He can do that. At the moment he starts looking out the window, Padmè gets up and goes to the window, looking out at the Jedi temple, looking very sad.
Later, she seems to know that something has happened to Anakin. She senses something is wrong… and when he visits her after turning, She knows that something is off with him.
I have the feeling that if Obi-Wan wouldn’t have boarded Padmè’s ship, there’s a possibility, however unlikely, that Padmè could have convinced him to come back to the light. It was Obi-Wan showing up that incited Anakin’s rage. He thought she betrayed him- which was appalling to him because he did all this for her- at least, that’s how he justified it. He was trying to save her and she sided with Obi-Wan who was coming to kill him… A factor in this was the fact that The dark Side is often compared to a drug. He’s consumed so much that he was practically overdosing on it. He was unstable and conflicted.
I should point out here that many psychology students study Anakin because he exhibits 6 of the 9 criteria for borderline personality disorder.
Anyway, the point is that Padmè could have saved him, I think. It may not have been easy, but it could have happened.
I know Palpatine had a lot to do with them getting together, but he wasn’t the only reason. They had chemistry, and I think in a lot of ways, the Force chose Padmè to be a companion for Anakin- it’s just unfortunate that she was collateral damage in the battle of good vs, evil.

Before I forget- an interesting element that a lot of people don’t get about the classic trilogy since the prequels have shed some light on what took place to get the galaxy where it was; is the fact that Luke asks Leia if she remembers her mother. She says, “Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.” Which is completely true. Padmè died just after giving birth. That constitutes being “very young”
Luke asks what she remembers, Leia replies, “Just images really- feelings.”
“Tell me.” He prods.
“She was very beautiful. Kind, but sad. Why are you asking me this?”
“I have no memory of my mother. I never knew her.”
Everyone takes what Leia says as some giant plot hole when in fact, it’s not really a hole- Leia has an ability- through the Force which is rare. It just happens to be the same kind of ability Rey exhibits when she touches the lightsaber, and why she’s so good at flying the Falcon when she’s never flown it before- at least not that we can see prior to the movie. They both are gifted in psychometry. Wikipedia states that this ability is: a form of extrasensory perception characterized by the claimed ability to make relevant associations from an object of unknown history by making physical contact with that object.
Rey touches Anakin’s lightsaber (which got passed down to Luke in E.4) and it kickstarts her vision. Everything she sees is stuff that happened in the lightsaber’s presence.
Leia’s gift manifests in a different way. There is a canon comic where Leia goes to Naboo and when she comes to the place where her mother was standing when she first saw Darth Maul in Episode 1, she feels the presence of great evil, and fear. In the movies, she knows when the second Death Star blows up that Luke didn’t die there. She can feel when Han dies in The Force Awakens. She knows Luke is calling to her on Cloud City after his duel with Vader. The reason she “remembers” her mother is never directly stated, but remember what she actually says… “Just images really… feelings… she was very beautiful, kind, but sad.”
None of that is very specific. We also must remember that her adopted father was Bail Organa, a friend of Padmè’s who also knew Anakin, even though they didn’t know each other that well. He also knew Obi-Wan and Mon Mothma who knew Padmè.

All that would have to happen is for Bail to wear a piece of clothing he wore around Padmè, or take Leia to a place where her mother had been for Leia to form a memory. There’s a lot of stuff Leia remembers that she probably has no idea where it came from.