Princess Leia’s role in the Rebellion’s theft of the Death Star plans was different in each of the two Star Wars continuities, though the canon version is worse for several reasons. The first Star Wars film was released in 1977, instantly becoming a pop culture phenomenon. In the film’s iconic opening crawl, the Rebellion’s first victory against the Galactic Empire was referenced, along with the theft of the Death Star plans. The original Star Wars timeline, Legends, depicted these events across multiple stories and mediums, while the current canon, established in 2014, retells the story in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Legends, formerly called the Expanded Universe, was the official Star Wars timeline for most of the franchise’s history. Legends material had relatively little live-action media, expanding the lore of the original and prequel trilogies through comics, novels, video games, and animation, for the most part. The Star Wars radio dramas of the ‘80s and ‘90s adapted the original trilogy films while simultaneously creating and referencing Legends lore. The first radio drama featured a drastically different opening act, delving into Luke Skywalker’s life on Tatooine and Princess Leia’s Rebellion leadership in the immediate prelude to the film’s events. This new prologue included Leia’s role in the theft of the Death Star plans.
After being purchased by Disney in 2012, Lucasfilm rebooted its continuity in 2014 to prepare for the upcoming sequel trilogy. The original and prequel trilogies, along with 2008’s Star Wars: The Clones Wars (which already didn't fit into the Legends continuity) were the only properties that remained in the now-ongoing canon continuity. 2016’s Rogue One was an action-packed retelling of the Death Star plans’ theft which featured a surprise cameo by Princess Leia in the film’s final moments. Compared to the Legends universe, Rogue One’s depiction gave Leia a less active role in the mission. Moreover, the Legends-era radio drama adheres to the dialogue and opening crawl of Star Wars more closely.
In Legends, the space battle over Toprawa was already won by the Rebellion by the time that Leia arrived aboard the Tantive IV. On Toprawa’s surface, Rebel spies, led by Bria Tharen, managed to transmit the plans (which had been combined on Toprawa from various partial copies on other planets, such as Danuta) directly to the Tantive IV before they were overrun by Imperial forces. In orbit, Leia and Captain Antilles stalled an approaching Star Destroyer by claiming they were on a diplomatic mission and having R2-D2 pretend to repair the ship’s exterior. Once the transmission was complete, Artoo came back aboard and the Tantive IV left the system, just as the Imperial warship fired on them.
In canon’s Rogue One, Leia’s mission was to travel to Tatooine and recruit Obi-Wan Kenobi but was present during the Battle of Scarif due to the Tantive IV undergoing repairs while docked with the Rebellion’s flagship, the Profundity. The Profundity and its admiral, Raddus, received the transmission from Rebel ground forces on Scarif, and his Rebel Troopers, pursued by Darth Vader, managed to bring a physical datacard aboard the Tantive IV and escape at the last possible moment. While entertaining, this depiction eschews much of the agency and leadership that Leia showed in the Legends version, and having the plans beamed to the Profundity instead of the Tantive IV contradicts dialogue in Star Wars.
Despite its obscurity, the Legends continuity is generally more consonant with the events and characterizations of the original and prequel movies than canon, and Rogue One demonstrates this in more ways than one. Rather than matching Vader’s description of a “technological terror,” Rogue One has the Death Star's superweapon powered by Force-imbued Kyber crystals. Reactors consistently cause catastrophic explosions when damaged in the Star Wars saga, but Rogue One establishes that the Death Star’s volatility was due to sabotage. Rogue One is a heartfelt film that deserves its fan-favorite reception, but it, unfortunately, did a disservice to Leia’s role in stealing the Death Star plans when compared to Star Wars Legends.
