Isabella 🌙 rots 20th anniv era ❤️‍🔥

“She has lost the will to live.” 

The cause of Padmé Amidala’s death in Revenge of the Sith is one of the most controversial storylines in Star Wars. Many fans feel that the conclusion of her character’s story was not fully fleshed out or made clear to the audience. I disagree. 

Here are 25 stress inducing and life altering moments in Revenge of the Sith that set up the audience for her tragic death.🧵

1. The war reaches the Capital. Padmé is pregnant during the Battle of Coruscant,  the pinnacle of The Clone Wars, as it rages over her home, heightening danger and stress.

2. Chancellor Palpatine is kidnapped. A destabilizing political crisis increases fear and uncertainty across the galaxy.

3. Padmé is completely alone, hiding her pregnancy. She keeps her condition secret from everyone, including her family, except for a few members of her private security team, which isolates her emotionally, and her husband is away fighting on the frontlines of the war for most of her pregnancy. She has no support system, even as a high-risk mother-to-be.

4. Anakin insists his visions of her death in childbirth will come true. Padmé is forced to carry the emotional weight of a literal death prophecy from the Chosen One. His prophetic fear becomes a self-fulfilling source of anxiety that she is not able to help him with.

5. Her career, identity, and political influence, core to who she is, are slipping away. She will not be able to continue her work as a senator once the child is born. 

6. If discovered, Anakin will be expelled from the Jedi Order. Constant fear of losing him and the future they’ve risked everything for causes chronic stress and anxiety.

7. Anakin and Padmé’s differing points of view on the war and the republic cause frequent arguments. They rarely see each other and when they do, they fight constantly, especially about the war. He even calls her a separatist for voicing her concern about the failing republic.

8. Anakin becomes increasingly secretive and shuts her out. Their emotional bond starts to erode as he isolates himself. Communication continues to break down between them.

9. She helplessly watches the Jedi Temple ablaze in horror from her apartment, not sure if her husband is dead or alive. She later learns Anakin lead the march on the temple. 

10. Anakin returns home with a smile on his face after committing genocide against his own people, including children which she also later finds out. He tells Padmé that the Jedi have committed treason and attempted to murder the Chancellor in his office.

11. Anakin leaves for Mustafar to kill the Separatist leaders including Gunray, ending the war and a conflict that began over a decade earlier. She doesn’t know if he will return safely. 

12. Liberty dies with thunderous applause. She realizes that Palpatine manipulated the Senate, and her, a personal friend and fellow Naboo, for decades to amass an incredible amount of political power and control. She witnesses the fall of the Republic and the rise of tyranny.

13. The Republic becomes the Galactic Empire. Everything she worked to preserve in the Senate is gone. Her idealism dies as authoritarianism takes over. Democracy is no longer. 

14. Obi-Wan tells her that Anakin has turned to the dark side and committed unspeakable crimes. Padmé is torn between what she wants to believe and what her instincts are telling her.

15. Obi-Wan reveals that Chancellor Palpatine is the Sith Lord they’ve been looking for the entire time. The architect of the war was the head of state all along.

16. Obi-Wan adds that Anakin is Palpatine’s new apprentice, and probably has been since he killed Dooku. If this is true, the man she loves has joined the ultimate evil. He is no longer the man she fell in love with.

17. Obi-Wan admits that he will have to kill Anakin, as he is too great a threat. Padmé is in complete disbelief. The five stages of her grief begin with denial. 

18. Obi-Wan realizes Anakin is the father of her child. Their deepest secret has now been exposed with the worst possible timing. Obi-Wan leaves her to face Anakin.

19. Padmé, eight months pregnant, races to Mustafar to find out the truth, hoping all these claims about Anakin are false and tries to convince him to run away together to live peacefully.

20. In full panic mode, Padmé exits her ship without any protective gear. The atmosphere on Mustafar was harsh and dangerous, characterized by volcanic activity, heavy pollution with toxic gases and ash, and extreme temperatures. She is willing to risk it all to save Anakin.

21. Padmé pleads with Anakin to run away with her, but he chooses power and revenge over her and their child. His priorities are no longer about love.

22. He accuses her of betrayal and aligns her with Obi-Wan. Anakin’s paranoia and delusion replace love and trust. This misunderstanding sends Anakin into a blind rage.

23. Padmé puts the pieces together and realizes that Palpatine was behind it all. The man who first encouraged her to begin a career in politics orchestrated the Invasion of Naboo, ordered her assassinations, and spent years with her in the Senate playing both sides. He played her, their people of Naboo, and the entire galaxy.

24. The man she loves physically assaults her while eight months pregnant. This is her emotional and physical breaking point. She realizes he could've killed her and their unborn child, the ultimate emotional and physical trauma a mother could face. 

25. Padmé goes into premature labor and her birth plan goes out the window. Instead of giving birth on her home planet with her family, she gives birth at the nearest underdeveloped medical facility on an asteroid colony without her husband. During agonizing labor, she laments her worst nightmares of what she confirmed on Mustafar.

“She has lost the will to live” is a line that is delivered by a medical droid who is incapable of properly understanding or communicating why someone who is physically healthy would be dying. Droids don’t have bedside manner, they give it to you straight. 

The delivery of this line is jarring, and that is the point. Padmé should not have died, but in Anakin’s obsessed with controlling her life or death, he ultimately caused it. It is a tragedy, and the audience is supposed to feel frustrated by this conclusion. This scene did exactly what it was intended to do.