Star Wars composer John Williams “mistakenly” wrote an extremely awkward love theme for Luke and Leia

John Williams
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Star Wars composer John Williams didn't know Luke and Leia were siblings when he was scoring the first movie – and to be fair, we're pretty sure George Lucas didn't know either.

"I mistakenly wrote a love theme for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker," Williams told Variety. "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!"

Considering that Leia quite literally kisses Luke on the lips at one point in the flagship film, we understand the confusion. George Lucas later revealed in the book Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays that making them siblings would be motivation enough for Luke to battle Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi's infamous 'Throne Room' scene (H/T ScreenRant).

Williams rewrote the score – resulting in an Academy Award win for Best Score and arguably some of the most important music in pop culture history. He would go on to score The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and returned to the franchise in 2015 with The Force Awakens. He went on to provide the music for The Last Jedi, Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Rise of Skywalker, and Disney Plus's Obi-Wan Kenobi series.

For more news from a galaxy far, far away, check out our list of all the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows you need to know about.

Lauren Milici
Senior Writer, Tv & Film

Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for 12DOVE currently based in the Midwest. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.

Read more
Star Wars: A New Hope
32 movies that inspired Star Wars
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
After 26 years, a secret Star Wars reference to George Lucas has been uncovered: "We got a new Phantom Menace Easter Egg before GTA 6"
The Rise of Skywalker
New Rey movie screenwriter reveals what his vision might have in common with Star Wars creator George Lucas
Werner Herzog in The Mandalorian
Star Wars fans are sharing their favorite unbelievable canon cameos – and some of them are seriously deep-cut
Ridley Scott says Blade Runner's financiers didn't know who Harrison Ford was and the director had the perfect response: "You're going to find out"
Star Wars timeline: a screenshot of The Empire Strikes Back.
Star Wars timeline: Every major event in chronological order
Latest in Sci-Fi Movies
Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, and Ke Huy Quan in The Electric State
$320 million in the hole, the Russo brothers' new Netflix movie debuts to their worst Rotten Tomatoes score even though it's one of the most expensive films ever made
Zoe Saldaña in Avatar
James Cameron had "too many great ideas" for Avatar: The Way of Water, so the cut content became Avatar 3 which "will actually be a little bit longer" than its 3-hour predecessor
Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17
Director Bong Joon Ho explains his new sci-fi film Mickey 17's surprise end title card: "It's a coming-of-age-story"
Claire Danes as Juliet and Miriam Margolyes as Nurse in the movie Romeo + Juliet.
The 33 greatest movies based on Shakespeare
Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette in Mickey 17
Although the Mickey 17 cast were at first baffled by the unique way Parasite director Bong Joon Ho works, now they want it no other way
Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt in The Electric State
The Electric State review: "Although this may be their most visually stunning movie yet, it looks like the Russos are yet to find their footing outside of the MCU"
Latest in News
Balatro
Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"
Death Stranding 2 Collector's Edition
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Kingmakers
Kingmakers is a strategy game about taking on medieval armies with a gun, but its devs thought the giant mech was too much
The Witcher 3 lead says "not many games" were trying to match the RPG back in 2015, and that meant "there was a risk" to making it in the first place
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Witcher 3 dev says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker wants to challenge genre conventions, but only if "we're changing them to actually achieve some goal"
Daredevil recap: The Defenders
Marvel fans are discussing which of the Netflix series characters would have survived the Blip