One of the best books to come out of the new Star Wars canon is Bloodline, written by the ever-excellent Claudia Gray. The book focuses on Leia Organa’s political career six years prior to The Force Awakens when, with Leia presumed to be the next First Senator (the replacement to the role of Chancellor), the scandal of her parentage is revealed to the galaxy. This effectively ends her political career, which happens to coincide with Leia growing concerned about the rising threat of what we know as the First Order, causing her to form the Resistance.
It’s a great read and a significant story, and there’s a moment in the novel where some Amaxine warriors orchestrated a bombing of a gathering of New Republic senators on the capital planet, Hosnian Prime. This bombing was intended to provide a distraction from the growing First Order, which it was successful at. But the bombing did not result in large bloodshed, thanks to a mysterious hand-written note scribbled on a napkin, reading only “Run”. Leia found the note, and ordered the building evacuated, saving many lives (including her own).
That’s all the book really says about the note, and the most reasonable interpretation of it is that someone around them – maybe even the Amaxines themselves – didn’t want this distraction to be too deadly. But there is a very interesting alternate theory that, though never confirmed, seems to be possible..
Two things give some credence to this theory. First, though Claudia Gray wrote the book, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson was a consultant on the story, and it was Johnson who came up with the concept of this event that came to be known as the napkin bombing. Second, the visual dictionary for The Last Jedi points out that we see by Ben’s bedside in the flashbacks at Luke’s Academy a calligraphy set, which is noteworthy because few people in the galaxy write hand-written notes any longer. So the fact that the director of the film came up with this event where a hand-written note saves Leia, and that it’s been stated Ben is the rare individual who still uses handwriting, it makes an interesting possibility: could it have been Ben Solo who snuck a note through to save his mom from this threat?
The key piece of the puzzle that we still don’t know is what the book’s timeline is surrounding Ben’s fall to the dark side. The novel states that he is off training with Luke, but that Leia hasn’t heard from him in a while. The book also reveals that she hadn’t told Ben about Vader being her father yet, and it’s reasonable to assume that deception also helped fuel his increasing darkness. So it’s not entirely clear what connections, if any, Ben would have had to the growing First Order factions at this time. Because of this, it’s nothing more than a theory at this point, and one that might never be confirmed one way or another. But it’s fun to think about, and it’s a theory I personally like. We know that Ben’s descent to the darkness was very real, yet unstable – and that there was a particularly close connection with his mother. Whether or not he was the one behind the napkin note or not, it’s absolutely something we could see Ben doing: trying to embrace the darkness, but not wanting Leia to be hurt as a result of it.
Star Wars Thoughts 