Star Wars Composer John Williams Made An Awkward Mistake On The First Film
One of the more fascinating aspects of the "Star Wars" franchise is just how many of its most important bits of lore don't arrive until the second movie, and sometimes not until the third. Yoda isn't in the first movie at all, for instance, nor is there any initial indication that Darth Vader is Luke's father. In perhaps the most awkward example of a creator not quite knowing where the story was heading, "A New Hope" also spends an uncomfortable amount of time lingering on the idea of a Luke/Leia romance.
Although everyone now knows that Leia and Han are the true main couple of the "Star Wars" franchise, back in 1977 it sure seemed like there was a love triangle being established here. Would Leia end up with the bad boy Han or the goody-two-shoes Luke? In the wait for "The Empire Strikes Back," it felt like anyone's guess. Composer John Williams seems to have been on the pro-Luke/Leia side of things, because when he composed the score for the first film, he gave the two a love theme. As he explained in an interview with Variety:
"I mistakenly wrote a love theme for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. I learned later that they were brother and sister, so it was an incestuous idea to have a love theme for them. But George never told us there was going to be a second film!"
An understandable mistake
In the scene where Luke and Leia first meet, the background music suggests plenty of romantic intrigue. The dialogue between the two (not to mention Leia's pose when Luke walks in) really leans into the trope of the hero saving his beautiful damsel love interest. Shortly afterward, there's a (now-erased) moment where Leia gives Luke a kiss on the cheek for "good luck," as well as an exchange between Luke and Han where Luke shows jealousy at the idea of Han and Leia getting together. As far as the incest vibes go, the blame clearly goes to Lucas first, Williams second.
Williams also told Variety about how he got to redeem himself a bit in the second movie, by writing for Leia "a new, non-incestuous theme for 'The Empire Strikes Back.'" This was a particularly wise choice on Williams' part, because it's still not clear if the sibling twist was planned by the time "Empire" was being made. Sure, this film leaned much harder on the Han/Leia romance at the expense of any Luke/Leia shippers, but it still included that infamous moment of Leia kissing Luke. (All while that pervert R2 sits there and watches, letting it happen.) Sure, she's only doing it to piss off Han, but somehow we don't think she would've gone that far if the writers had already known Luke was her brother.
Fortunately, as the success of "Game of Thrones" (and "Rick and Morty") have made clear, audiences are way more forgiving of incest in their sci-fi/fantasy stories than you'd probably assume. Williams may have accidentally thrown in some extra twincest vibes to an otherwise wholesome story, but the impressive legacy of the original "Star Wars" trilogy is still in tact.