Keira Knightley's Sabé Has A Deep, Dark History Outside Of The Star Wars Movies
The handmaidens of Naboo are some of the coolest — and probably least explored — characters in "Star Wars" history. They served queen-turned-senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) dutifully in "Episode I – The Phantom Menace" and its sequel, "Attack of the Clones." But aside from the odd switcharoo and near-death situation, the films don't reveal much about the handmaidens' interior lives, or their personal connection to Padmé.
Worse still, Padmé's most famous decoy, Sabé (Keira Knightley), was never seen again after her introduction in "The Phantom Menace." That's probably due to the fact that Knightley was off shooting a new franchise, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, while George Lucas continued work on the prequels. But that left a kind of void in "Attack of the Clones" and "Episode III — Revenge of the Sith," one that novels and comics would only fill years later.
A recent Darth Vader-centric storyline even Sabé's arc in earnest. It established a more emotional throughline between the prequels and the original trilogy, but it also brings a new significance to the most underrated characters from the prequels.
The Queen's shadow
Novels like E.K. Johnston's "Star Wars Queen's Shadow" helped to flesh out Sabé's adventures in the lead up to the Clone Wars. After serving Padmé dutifully during her term as Queen, Sabé was tasked with a mission on Tatooine. Padmé's exposure to life there made her determined to free beings like Shmi Skywalker from slavery — and though Sabé was unable to find Anakin's mother, she worked to free hundreds of slaves from captivity and find them new lives offworld.
"Queen's Shadow" also paints a clearer picture of Sabé's loyalty to Padmé. The handmaiden harbors an intense allegiance to the senator, usually at great expense to her own sense of self. "She can order me to my death, and I will go. And she knows it," Sabé tells an ally in the book. "As far as I can see, she will always pick Naboo, and I will always pick her."
That loyalty was tested after the events of "Attack of the Clones," as Padmé was working hard to keep her marriage to Anakin under wraps. She grew pretty distant from Sabé in the novel "Queen's Hope," despite their shared goal of bringing peace to the galaxy. Padmé's secrecy forced Sabé to cut ties with the senator, but after Padmé's death at the end of the Clone Wars, Sabé renewed her allegiance to her old friend in the name of revenge.
Together with Padmé's former handmaidens, Sabé established a collective in her name. Known as the Amidalans, the group vowed to find Padmé's killer and avenge her death. Their search eventually brought Sabé face-to-face with Darth Vader himself, nearly 20 years into the reign of the Empire.
Dark heart of the Sith
Vader first encounters Sabé in writer Greg Pak and artist Raffaele Ienco's 2020 comic run, "Darth Vader." This storyline kicks off just after Vader's big "I am your father" reveal in "The Empire Strikes Back." After Luke Skywalker's escape, Vader sets off to figure out who hid his son from him (and, naturally, kill them). His search takes him from Luke's old home on Tatooine to his birthplace on Polis Massa, to Padmé's apartments on Coruscant, and eventually to her memorial on Naboo. There, he meets Sabé and the Amidalans, who believe that Vader killed Padmé and Anakin and try to destroy him once and for all.
Naturally, Vader overpowers the rebels easily. Sabé and her fellow handmaidens manage to escape, despite fighting Vader head-on — and after infiltrating the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, Sabé attempts to sabotage Vader's operations. She succeeds in turning Vader's troops against one another, which brings Vader to recognize Sabé's true value as an operative. He also learns that he and Sabé want more or less the same thing: not just retribution for Padmé's death, but a sense of order in the galaxy.
The galaxy has always been divided into warring factions, but the rise of the Empire has only brought more chaos. Sabé doesn't necessarily agree with the Emperor's methods, but she's willing to team up with Vader in order to bring the disparate factions under control. Plus, she seems to have put two-and-two together regarding Vader's true identity. Sabé knows that Vader was once Anakin — and having heard Padmé's last words, she wants to believe that there's still good beneath all that black armor.
Handmaiden no more
Sabé and Vader worked together to free a group of former slaves from Tatooine, many of whom Vader knew as a child. As Vader fights through his past memories as Anakin, he grows closer to Sabé — albeit in a not-so-healthy, "you remind me of the wife that I accidentally killed" kind of way. For what it's worth, Sabé's own relationship with Vader isn't the healthiest, either. That the dark lord has any sense of loyalty to her whatsoever imbues her with a kind of savior complex. She makes most decisions with Padmé in mind, and works hard to redeem Vader ... because that's obviously what Padmé would have wanted, right?
Eventually, though, Sabé's ultimate goal grows more and more complex. Her loyalty to Padmé feels more like an excuse the longer she works with Vader: since her late friend believed in Anakin's goodness to the end, Sabé finds herself turning a blind eye to Vader's darkest crimes.
Things get even more complicated with an appearance from Emperor Palpatine. He butts in to punish Vader for essentially going rogue on a handful of emotional sidequests, and to remind him of his ultimate goal: bringing Luke to their side. He also attempts to remove Sabé, Vader's chief distraction, from the equation. But after meeting her face-to-face, he sees just how different she is from Padmé. He senses the anger in her heart, but he also realizes that her efforts to redeem Vader aren't as effective as she's hoped.
"With every moment she spends in your service, you are molding her," the Emperor tells Vader of Sabé. The lines have blurred between duty and desire for the former handmaiden — but her fellow Amidalans aren't ready to give up on her just yet.
A new hope
After hearing about Sabé's partnership with Vader, Padmé's surviving handmaidens attempt to rescue her in "Darth Vader" #28. With the help of a smarmy Sith assassin, Ochi, Dormé leads the effort to save Sabé from Vader' influence. Complications obviously ensue, and Vader tries to recruit Padmé's surviving handmaidens to his side. His mind games don't work on the Amidalans, but Sabé is way too far gone to give up on Vader. She abandons her sisters and commits herself to Vader once and for all — a choice that Dormé reluctantly realizes is in service to Padmé's memory.
In the end, Sabé's determination leads to her downfall. Vader eventually loses control of his powers in something called a Force maelstrom, and while stranded on a desert island with Sabé, he tries to bring her to the Dark Side once and for all. During their battle of wills, Sabé is actually given a Force vision. In it, she sees her dreams of restoring peace to the galaxy, glimpses of Padmé before she died, and Luke Skywalker himself. She realizes that Luke is the true key to Vader's redemption, and having done all she could to set him on that path, she eventually decides to let go.
Vader unleashes the full scope of his power, sending Sabé out into the sea. She hasn't been seen in the comics since, which seems to suggest that Vader killed her. That said, no one's ever really gone in the "Star Wars" universe. There's a chance that Sabé could return in a future storyline. Either way, her sacrifice is incredibly important to the larger saga, and to Vader's eventual redemption. His return to the light didn't happen overnight. It was the work of many, some working in service to Padmé, that eventually restored Anakin Skywalker, and brought peace to the galaxy.