SNOKES: Luke Skywalker Gets Carrie-d Away

We all know the moment. Having triumphantly landed back on Yavin IV after blowing up the Death Star, Luke climbs out of his X-Wing. Leia runs over shouting Luke, and as Luke embraces her, it sounds like Mark Hamill, caught up in the moment, flubs and calls her by the actress' first name "Carrie!", instead of the character's name, Leia.

It's believable, after all, because this is also the movie that includes a blooper where a stormtrooper accidentally hits his head going through a doorway. That error has since been highlighted with a sound effect being added to the hit in all post-1997 versions of the movie, a purposely added moment of Jango Fett hitting his head while boarding his ship in Attack of the Clones (even though stormtroopers are not clones of Jango), a short story in the anthology novel From a Certain Point of View that gives an in-universe explanation, and a short documentary examining the claims of three actors who all say they were the stormtrooper who hit their head on set.

Hamill himself has weighed in on the alleged "Carrie!" flub on Twitter, in October 2015 and again in July 2019. He claims that Luke was saying "There she is!", only saying "There she..." before being cut off. He further claims that the line was not on-set recorded audio, but instead recorded in post-production and added into the movie's audio. If that's the case, why wasn't a clearer take used than what is featured in the movie? After all, three different audio mixes were created for Star Wars's original theatrical run. First a Dolby Stereo mix was created, then a six-channel mix was created for 70mm screenings, and then a mono mix was created for the majority of movie theaters. According to Ben Burtt in the audio commentary for A New Hope, slight changes were made during the creation of the six-channel mix and the mono mix. There was plenty of opportunity to use a better take of Luke exclaiming "There she..." if indeed it was from the ADR process.

The DVDs, Blu-rays, and most digital copies did not make any attempt to subtitle what Luke says, until Disney+ in November 2019 which claims he says "Leia!". Since Hamill had already gone on record before Disney+ launched, Disney+ (or DVDs/Blu-rays) could have added "There she..." if that was Luke's intended line, but they didn't.

Like with George Lucas' claim that Greedo always shot at Han, that it just wasn't clear because of the way the scene was edited, if it was always the intention for Luke to shout "There she...", it didn't appear anywhere else outside of the movie. In the 1976 novelization by Alan Dean Foster (credited to George Lucas), Luke does not say anything to Leia when she runs to him and embraces him.

As they laughed, a lithe figure, robes flowing, rushed up to Luke in a very unsenatorial fashion. “You did it, Luke, you did it!” Leia was shouting.

She fell into his arms and hugged him as he spun her around. Then she moved to Solo and repeated the embrace. Expectantly, the Corellian was not quite as embarrassed.

In the 1977 Marvel comic book adaptation, the scene plays out in a very similar way to how it does in the novelization.

But the novel and comic book were both written and published while the movie was in production, and wouldn't reflect any script changes made during shooting or post-production.

So what about adaptations post-1977? In the National Public Radio dramatization, the published script has the following lines:

LEIA: (COMING ON) Luke! Oh Luke, we won! We won!

LUKE: We never would have if Han hadn't changed his mind.

The audio recording plays out the same way, but includes Luke responding "Leia!" after she first exclaims his name.

Ryder Windham's 2004 junior novelization, which transcribes all of the lines from the movie verbatim, records the scene like this:

After landing in the main hangar at the Rebel base on Yavin 4, Luke climbed out of his battered X-wing to be greeted by a throng of cheering Rebels. As he descended the ladder beside his ship, he searched the crowd for one face in particular, and then he saw her.  

“Luke!” Leia shouted as she rushed to him. She threw her arms around his neck and they danced around in a circle. As Luke spun, he saw C-3PO make his way through the crowd to stand beside the X-wing, then saw Han and Chewbacca come running toward them.

If Luke's intended line was supposed to be "There she is!", it would make sense to be included here, where it specifically states he was searching the crowd for her. Instead, Windham does not, like the DVD and Blu-ray subtitles, attempt to attribute any exclamation to Luke.

Alexandra Bracken's 2015 junior novelization, The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, describes the scene in the following way:

    “Luke!” Leia ran toward him, a blur of white pushing through the crowd. “Luke!”
    He somehow managed to catch her as she slammed into him, laughing. He swung her around in a huge hug, setting her down just as Han came up behind them, grinning from ear to ear.

Once again, no attempt is made to give Luke an exclamation. (The book was published 20 days before Hamill first tweeted alleging the line was "There she is!")

None of the sources from outside of the movie contradict Hamill's assertion, but neither do they support his claim either. You'd think if it had been known since 1977 what Luke was supposed to say, it could have been included in a secondary source. Also, the movie has famously had alterations given to it in 1997, 2004, 2011,  and 2019. At any point, an alternate take of Luke saying "There she..." could have been added to the audio mix if one existed.

The sources would support the idea that Luke was supposed to respond with "Leia!" as he does in the NPR drama and which the Disney+ version now claims he does. But, in an on-set error that wasn't caught, like with the stormtrooper's bonk, Hamill accidentally said the wrong name, and it's been preserved for nearly 50 years in the movie, but ignored in the subtitles, novelizations, and comics.

Edited on January 19, 2024 to include information about the multiple theatrical audio mixes.