How could Padmé tell there was still good in Anakin? Was it a force thing or just unwavering faith?
I don't feel that "just unwavering faith" carries the right connotations. She sure had trust and confidence in the fact that good cannot be fully eradicated from someone, as good and evil are conjoined and interdependent and consisting each other, but this wasn't exactly a new information for Obi-Wan, that's not the point of her last words.
Padmé knew that there is still good in Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the same way Luke and Vader knew that they're actually father and son: "Search your feelings. You know it to be true." I think it's appropriate to call this a "Force thing", but it has nothing to do with one's natural ability to wield the Force, rather, it's the Force itself, that encompasses all living things but also goes beyond them all. It's to know things in the heart, through the heart, it's being told by the little voice inside you, it's being told by your inner feelings. So, she knows this for a fact, and because of this, she dies in a state of hope and profound confidence that it all will be fine, rather than in a state of despair, and she is using her last breath to share it with Obi-Wan.
Also, I'm pretty convinced that Padmé and Anakin were connected when Darth Vader was born, so she was able to actually experience the unity with him, sharing his being, thus, being able to see and feel that goodness within Vader. Just like Luke was able to reach out to Leia in Episode V, that ounce of good that was left in Anakin was able to let Padmé know that it's there and waiting to be given power to.
That makes sense, but I thought she died of a broken heart and was sad right before she died? Also wouldn't sensing good in someone be a sign of being force sensitive?
The core of that interpretation is that "she lost the will to live" is the cause of Padmé's death. However, I have four issues with this:
- The medical droid explicitly and clearly and repeatedly stated, it has simply no explanation for why she is dying. "Medically, she is completely healthy" it says, "for reasons we cannot explain, we're losing her.... we don't know why [she is dying.]
- It's proposed that Padmé responded with traumatic stress with "give-up-itis": developing extreme apathy, give up hope, relinquish the will to live and die, despite no obvious organic cause. However, she is not going through the stages of "give-up-itis", and she is not showing any symptom of apathy. In fact, she experiences joy when she is looking at her children and she is dying in a state of hope, insisting, there is still good in Anakin Skywalker.
- If the droid is familiar with the medical condition of losing the will to live as a cause of death, a.k.a. "give-up-itis", why it states, "medically" she is completely healthy and denies that it has any explanation?
The movie itself is not supporting the idea that she died of a broken heart. I am not buying into the "Palpatine drained the life from her to resurrect Vader" theory, because that power became canon only with Episode IX.
I have my own explanation. The older one is that Padmé's connection to Anakin allowed her to feel his emotional torment of turning into Darth Vader, just like she was able to feel Anakin's emotional pain in the "Padmé's rumination" scene, and this experience of oneness was lethal when Anakin not just physically, but spiritually burned up, and the torment of fear, anger, hate, aggression burning away Anakin and leaving the charred shell of Vader.
I developed the new one after I heard Lucas summarizing attachment in an interview as: “If you have a bird in your hand and you hold it too tight because you don't want it to go and fly, eventually you'll crush it. The important part is to let it go and fly off and be on its own. It will come back. And the love will be even stronger.”
I think, Anakin's attachment to Padmé - grasping her, clinging to her, grabbing her, not wanting to let go of her, holding too tightly - that manifested itself in him reaching out with the Force and grabbing her, choking her, didn't end when he let her go on Mustafar.
Visually, it’s important to note that the audience is left without any clue, apart from Sidious makes it clear that it was Anakin who killed Padmé in his anger, and we could see him angrily grasping into her, and she is choking. From that point, Padmé is dying, and as Anakin becomes more and more Vader, her condition worsens. Everything is pointing to the notion of suffocation. It was shown numerous times that the Force, for it is greed or compassion, knows no distance. Padmé felt Anakin’s pain in the scene, Padmé’s ruminations, Leia felt Luke in Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi. Also, Obi-Wan and Yoda are both attuned to the Force as a whole, feeling the shifts from Light to Dark in Revenge of the Sith and in A New Hope. Anakin was still grasping into Padmé, even after she was taken to the edge of the galaxy, hold on to her so strong, that he crushed her soul, spirit, Living Force, killing her. When he finishes his transformation to Vader, entirely giving himself away to his greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, fear, anger, hate and pure attachment, taking his first breath as Darth Vader, Padmé takes her last breath and dies.
So, "she lost the will to live" doesn't mean, she lost the conscious wish to be alive. It should refer to “will to live” like “testament of the will of a living body to cling onto existence” or “the patient is at the will of her body.” Padmé, as a living thing, her biological form lost the "will" to function, to live, to uphold and preserve her, to cling into existence. The medical droid describes the dying process, not the cause of her death – what it was repeatedly stated that was beyond its understating.
Oh. OH. OH. “If you have a bird in your hand and you hold it too tight because you don't want it to go and fly, eventually you'll crush it." I generally never really considered that Anakin had actually killed her, I tend to lean towards the idea of Padme died in a very fairy tale kind of way, of a broken heart because her beloved Republic that she worked so hard to fix and her beloved Anakin that she worked so hard to fix, had both been burnt down to ashes, but the concept of Anakin desperately clinging to her in those moments, so hard that he reaches out and crushes her through the Force, like a bird in his hand just hit me like a truck. Because you're right that it's a continuation of his actions towards her on Mustafar, that it's important that he strangled her on Mustafar so you can see that he hasn't stopped, not really, when she dies not much later.
Padme being out of breath on Polis Massa, the way she and Anakin mirror each other, the way you can hear the heartbeats, they're connected in those moments... what if Anakin was holding onto her so tightly he did crush her? "It seems, in your anger, you've killed her." sounds like a lie from Palpatine, especially when Anakin denies it, he felt that she was alive! He felt her, he was still connected to her, he was still holding onto her. But what if it wasn't on Mustafar that he killed her. What if was on Polis Massa that he killed her. Because we know Vader can and has choked people from a distance before and boy does it look familiar: