How would Luke have known that Leia was his sister?

After watching Return of the Jedi for the gazillionth time and reading my old copy of the Original Trilogy collection paperback I'm curious about how Luke would have known after talking with Ben that Leia is his sister? How would Luke right away figure out that Leia is his twin sister?

 

Uh... I'm gonna go with the decided lack of other prominent female characters?

 

Why would his sister have to be someone he already knew?

 

Woman's intuition.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Leia: Luke! What a coincidence! We have the same birthday!
Luke: And we're the same age!
Leia: And we're both short!
Luke: And our names both start with the letter L!
Leia: We must not be related!

No, I'm kidding.

I always wondered why, during the years between ANH and ESB that Luke and Leia never found all of those points suspicious.

But, going back to this thread's original point, Luke's connection to the Force had probably led him to realize the kinship he shared with Leia.

 

It was the Force. You can see on Luke's face in that scene that when Ben is talking, Luke isn't really paying attention to him. Instead, he seems to be looking off somewhere else. This is him searching the Force to discover the answer, which is precisely what he did moments later.

 

That was actually used as the explanation back in the 1980s in the Mad Magazine parody of ROTJ.

Personally, I would love to have seen this scene:

LUKE: Yoda spoke of another.

BEN: The other he spoke of is your twin sister.

LUKE: But I have no sister.

BEN: Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous.

LUKE: Mon Mothma! Mon Mothma's my sister!

BEN: No, you moisture-farming hick! It's Leia!

 

I'm guessing that they would have used the 'same' birthday - Owen and Beru wouldn't have known, and Bail for security would have probably not made it too obvious.

Technically, wasn't the story originally going to be that someone else (not Leia)was going to be Luke's Sister, but when the story was cut down to six episodes, they just made Leia Luke's Sister, hence the reason why Leia could walk right up to Vader, and get tortured by him, which, I would think, probably did involve the Force and not be discovered, yet Luke in a X-Wing could be found - 'The Force Is Strong in this one'

Daft-Vader

 

His insight serves him well.

 

Technically, wasn't the story originally going to be that someone else (not Leia)was going to be Luke's Sister, but when the story was cut down to six episodes, they just made Leia Luke's Sister, hence the reason why Leia could walk right up to Vader, and get tortured by him, which, I would think, probably did involve the Force and not be discovered, yet Luke in a X-Wing could be found - 'The Force Is Strong in this one'


Luke was deliberately using the Force to help him destroy the Death Star. When was it confirmed that Leia was using the Force to resist the torturing?

 

No, I was saying it was likely that Vader was using the force to intergoate Leia - the Empire really wanted to know where the rebel base is, and I am sure I heard a tape which had Vader use the Force to help pretend he was her father (as in Bail)

 

Why go to the trouble of weaving a revelation organically into the narrative, when you can just resort to the ol' "It's the Force!" explanation?

 

It wasn't. "Her resistance to the mind probe is considerable" is all we got.

 

Well, the Force doesn't have to mean a supernatural power, conveniently trotted out to explain some otherwise inexplicable plot point; it could be taken as merely symbolic of purely natural forces, such as insight and intuition. As a Jedi attuned to the flow of life, Luke may have benefited from his Force use in this instance. But he also might simply have put two and two together -- all the physical evidence of their kinship (cited comically by a poster, above), plus his instinctual, "gut-level" sense that he and Leia shared a special connection that transcended their natural attraction.

 

Maybe he recognized that the taste of her spit was strangely similar to his own...

 

Anyway, what I meant by the Force during the torture was that I was pretty sure Vader wouod have used the Force on Leia to get the location of the Base, so surely by him using the Force on Leia, he would have felt something...

 

As stated earlier, it was the force, the force grants great intuition. Remember that when Luke told Leia, even she said that she somehow always knew that she was his sister.
And Leia had not even been trained in the ways of the force yet.

 

If she 'always knew' what was she doing smooching him on Hoth? And who knows what else they did while Han was carbonated.

Leia (to luke, after sex): "that was so wrong". -Robot Chicken Star Wars

 

The force told him. After he opened the thoughts that he had a sister, it kinda bit him in the ***.

Also, who else would it be. He couldn't exactly say "Oh my sister was that girl I threw worms at in Kindergarden but never actually spoke to. IT WAS HER!"

and it couldn't exactly be Mon Mothma, either.

 

The force was not strong with him

 

Line of inquiry using Bespin. When Luke calls out to Leia in ESB, he has no special reason other than desperation, a possible knowledge that Fett's carbonite box was carrying Han Solo, certain knowledge that Obi-Wan has communicated with him through the force before and would answer him if possible, uncertain knowledge Chewbacca or Lando would hear, reasonable confidence the droids would not hear, and the one person left had already resisted mind probes. After Leia DID respond, Luke could logically conclude that he had at least reached out through the Force and contacted her. That alone would not be enough to make him quite certain she was a force-user, nor enough to argue that she was related. But combining 1) the Jedi were wiped out (ANH) with 2) another person who can use the Force or at least listen quite well through the Force (ESB Bespin) with 3) 'the Force runs strong in his family' (ROTJ Yoda) with 4) 'there is another Skywalker' (ROTJ Yoda) allowed an hypothesis, at least, that the one other peer in age, who had interacted with him through the Force (Leia) might be a red-neck. I mean, his sister.

 

Perhaps, Obi-Wan shed some light on it when he spoke and Luke was then able to know through the Force.

 

Luke knew all along, but?

[image=http://www.icanhasforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/star-wars-denial.jpg]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhS0FWt_ELw

 

Maybe he noticed their astounding resemblance?