One of the things that Star Wars fans hated about The Rise of Skywalker involved J.J. Abrams’ decision to suddenly introduce several new Force powers into the lore, but we may have already seen one of them in play years ago.
In the last movie of the Skywalker Saga, Rey, the last living Jedi, uses Force Healing in several instances. The first time, she uses her powers to heal a snake on Pasaana, thus saving the crew the trouble of facing it head-on. Later in the film, when Rey and Kylo engage in a lightsaber duel on the ruins of the Death Star, the death of Leia gives the former a chance to deal Ben a mortal blow. Realizing that she’s given in to the dark side, Rey quickly uses her powers to heal the wound and save Ben’s life. In the movie’s climactic scene, Ben imitates Rey by giving away his Living Force and saving her life.
Of course, Force Healing didn’t come completely out of the blue. The Mouse House actually orchestrated this with a powerful marketing move by pushing the penultimate episode of The Mandalorian forward. As such, just a couple of days before Episode IX‘s premiere, we witnessed Baby Yoda using his Force powers to heal Greef Karga. But is this capability really something novel, or have we seen it before in the vast and immersive chronology of that galaxy far, far away?
Well, technically, Force Healing was introduced as far back as A New Hope. In one of the movie’s early scenes, Luke almost dies in the Jundland Wastes until Ben Kenobi comes to his rescue. Do you remember what he did to revive his soon-to-be padawan, though? The old Jedi Master put his fingertips on Luke’s temples, using Force powers to bring him back to consciousness.
Yes, the first piece of Star Wars media in history is responsible for making Force Healing a thing, and while we could argue that that scene wasn’t necessarily Abrams’ justification for adding that to the narrative of the last movie, we’d also be nitpicking if we said that it was completely and a hundred percent unprecedented.