Torture was a means of punishment, interrogation, pleasure or a combination, through causing physical pain and could result in death. It was considered unethical to torture a prisoner, but it was a practice used in the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Galactic Republic (in secret under certain officers), the Galactic Empire, Grysk, the Partisans and the First Order.
The Tusken Raider nomads of Tatooine practiced ritual torture of captives. Shmi Skywalker Lars was captured and tortured to the point of death.
The Confederacy of Independent Systems would torture its prisoners, but such practices were denied by its Head of State, Count Dooku. After a failed escape and insults, Hondo Ohnaka tortured Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker using electricity, in a Containment field, and was having fun. Doctor Nuvo Vindi tortured Padmé Amidala and Jar Jar Binks with electricity, to force Anakin and his clone troopers to surrender in order to escape.
Cad Bane tortured Bolla Ropal with electricity in a Containment field, to force him to open a holocron and ended up killing him. After capturing Ahsoka Tano, bane uses his wrist-comm and stuncuffs to electrocute her to summon Anakin. After being captured, Cad Bane taunted the Jedi if they were going to torture him.
Anakin (before becoming Darth Vader) was adept at it: even as a Jedi, he Force choked Poggle the Lesser to gain information on killing the brain worms. After capturing Eeth Koth, General Grievous had him tortured with a electrostaff from a IG-100 MagnaGuard in a transmission to the Jedi. Later, TV-94 tortured him with electricity in a Containment field, to prevent Anakin and Adi Gallia from rescuing him.
Prime Minister Almec tortured Duchess Satine Kryze with a Shock collar, to force her to sign a false confession, failing, he then attempted to use a shock collar on her nephew Korkie Kryze and his friends. However, Ahsoka got the collar on Alec and forced him to surrender.
Cad Bane put C-3PO through a tortuous experience for information on the Senate Office Building. During the Showdown on Teth, Cad Bane tortured Obi-Wan with electricity from his wrist-comm.
Savage Opress was tortured by Count Dooku with Force lightning during training and later for killing King Katuunko, after being told to capture him alive.
Even Piell was tortured with electricity by a medical droid in a Containment field, for the coordinates of the Nexus Route.
Riff Tamson tortured Anakin and Kit Fisto using Mon Calamari eels, in order to find Prince Lee-Char.
After being lured into a trap, Count Dooku used Force lightning to subdue Anakin. Later, he is tortured with electrostaffs by MagnaGuards, with Dooku negotiating a prisoner exchange for General Grievous.
Obi-Wan was whipped with a Electro-whip, after failing to rescue Gupat Roshti. Anakin Force choked Queen Miraj Scintel demanding his friends back. Atai Molec tortured Ahsoka with a shock collar after she made him fall of a balcony using the Force.
Obi-Wan was tortured with a electrostaff to his Shock collar and Tuktee with a Electro-whip, while they were enslaved at the Kadavo slave processing facility.
Count Dooku tortured Anakin with Force lightning after defeating him, who was defending Queen Miraj Scintel.
Anakin tortured a ithorian bartender with a Force choke, for information on Cade Bane, Moralo Eval and Rako Hardeen.
During the Battle of Dathomir, Mother Talzin used a Voodoo doll and Voodoo pins to torture Count Dooku.
Maul tortured Obi-Wan by beating him, for revenge of his defeat.
Saw Gerrera was tortured with electricity by Kalani in a Containment field, for the location of the Onderon rebels.
After killing Savage Opress and defeating Maul, Darth Sidious tortured Maul with Force lightning while laughing.
In a Dark illusion, Darth Sidious tortured Grand Master Yoda with Force lightning.
Rafa Martez was tortured with electricity by a 8D-series smelter droid of the Pyke Syndicate, for losing their spice.
Maul tortured Clone trooper Jesse with a Mind probe for information about Ahsoka during the Siege of Mandalore.
Darth Sidious tortured Mace Windu with Force lightning and threw him out the window of his office after their duel.
Wrecker and Echo were tortured with Shock collars by a zygerrian, after being captured.
Royce Hemlock tortured Crosshair with a Interrogation droid, for the location of Omega.
Royce Hemlock subjected clone troopers, (as well as Hunter and Wrecker) to a tortuous electrical experience, in the Tantiss Base training room, to turn them into Clone X troopers.
Trilla, Masana Tide and other Jedi were tortured with electricity in a Interrogation chair in Fortress Inquisitorius, in order to turn them into Inquisitors. Cere Junda was tortured but escaped.
Han Solo, Chewbacca and Sagwa were tortured by Pyke sentinels with electrostaffs, during the Raid on Kessel.
Reuniting with Obi-Wan on Mapuzo, Darth Vader uses the Force to force Obi-Wan into flammable rocks, for revenge of his injuries.
The Third Sister threatened to torture Leia Organa, for information on the Hidden Path.
Cassian Jeron Andor and a group of prisoners that arrived at the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex, were tortured by the warden with the Tunqstoid steel floor, to show why to behave.
To force information out of Bix Caleen, the Imperial Security Bureau used a sonic torture device on her that forced her to listen to recordings of the dying screams of massacred Dizonite children.
The Grand Inquisitor attempted to torture Kanan Jarrus with a Mind probe for information on other rebels, when it failed, he was then tortured with electricity in a Interrogation chair, for information on Fulcrum and the Rebel network.
The Seventh Sister used a Mind probe to torture Ezra Bridger, in order to find Ahsoka.
Admiral Brom Titus tortured Rex with a Interrogation droid to surrender his rebel friends.
Saw Gerrera tortured Klik-Klak with electricity from stuncuffs, for information on what the Empire was building at Geonosis
Hera Syndulla was tortured with electricity in a Interrogation chair, by Governor Arihnda Pryce for pleasure and for information on the Rebel fleet, after the failed Attack on Lothal.
Saw Gerrera had Bodhi Rook tortured by a Mairan, in order to see if he was telling the truth about the Death Star.
The Galactic Empire used interrogator droids equipped with mind probes to torture subjects, though they proved futile against resilient subjects like Leia Organa.
Darth Vader tortured Han with a Scan Grid, Chewbacca with sonic sounds and Leia unknown, so their pain would reverberate through the Force and draw out Luke Skywalker.
EV-9D9 and 8D8 enjoyed torturing droids in Jabba's Palace. A GNK-series power droid was tortured with a hot iron to it's feet and Eightyem on a vertical torture rack.
The Emperor atempted to torture Luke Skywalker to death using Force lightning, after failing to turn him to the Dark side.
After the New Republic supplanted the Empire, the new government enacted anti-torture laws, which did not prevent the First Order from secretly developing a new model of interrogator droid.
Morgan Elsbeth tortured civilians of Calodan in electrocution cages.
Kylo Ren tortured Del Meeko with a Mind probe and discovered that Lor San Tekka had the piece of the Map to Skywalker.
Kylo Ren used a Mind probe in order to torture Poe Dameron in a Interrogation chair, for the piece of map that led to Luke Skywalker. He later attempted to do the same to Rey Skywalker but failed.
Jockeys and Bargwill Tomder would torture Fathiers with Electrocrops and Whips.
Supreme Leader Snoke tortured Rey with a Mind probe for the location of Luke Skywalker, then made her watch the destruction of the Resistance navy through a Oculus.
CB-23 pretended she was going to torture Lechee for information on where Bounty hunter Ax Tagrin took Agent Norath Kev, by flashing one of her grappling arms and scratching the side of a stone table twice.
Commander Pyre and Agent Tierny tortured CB-23, Synara San and Jarek Yeager with electricity in Interrogation chairs, for information on the Resistance.
- Assault
- Dismemberment
- Electric shock
- Fire
- Hot metal
- Sonic sounds
- Voodoo
- Watching
- Whipping
- Strength of will
- Force resistance
In the rough draft of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Darth Vader tortures Princess Leia with powerful electroshocks. In the incarnation of the second draft of A New Hope, Leia is replaced by Deak Starkiller, the brother of Luke Starkiller (who would become Luke Skywalker in later drafts). When the heroes find Deak inside his cell, there's a strange yellow glow in his eyes. In the third draft, Vader steps into Leia's cell, the door slams shut and "her screams can barely be heard." The IT-O torture droid didn't appear until the fourth draft. According to actress Carrie Fisher, one discarded draft had Leia being found by Han and Luke while she was unconscious and hanging upside down in a beam in mid-air, bruised and beaten up, with yellow eyes, with the princess having been exposed to "some form of radar torture". However, the idea was abandoned because Chewbacca would have to carry her around "for, like, the next fifteen minutes."
In the movie, the door to Leia's cell slams shut before the viewer gets see what actually happens to her. In the Star Wars Legends Star Wars radio drama from 1981, the interrogation session is vividly depicted in a psychologically intense scene which was so chilling that it prompted some complaints from a concerned listener. Here, Vader employs mind-altering drugs and subliminal suggestion in his sessions with the princess, which make Leia believe that her skin is on fire and her flesh being torn apart, causing the same reaction the real thing would.
An altered version was presented in the current Star Wars canon. In the 2015 junior novel A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, the interrogation droid injects Leia with a truth serum inducing an inclination to talk without inhibition and to reveal withheld information, and clouding her grip on reality, making her think that her interrogator is someone from the Rebel Alliance who needs the information. The story briefly mentions physical torture as well, saying that "the pain that lanced through her arm as the needle punctured her skin and the serum seeped into her system was unbearable", and that "she hadn't broken under any amount of agony".
A darker version is presented in the 2016 novel Bloodline, where Leia explains to Ransolm Casterfo that Vader tortured her for hours, while a couple of his Imperial stormtroopers watched (in the film, it's a couple of regular troopers) and thinks about how she was "writhing on the floor and screaming for mercy that never came." Later, she states to Casterfo that Vader tortured her until she screamed and shook and thought she would die just from the pain alone.
In the short story "Change of Heart," published in the 2017 anthology From a Certain Point of View, an Imperial Navy Trooper watches as Vader and the droid interrogate Leia about the location of the rebel base. The story describes how the trooper finds the interrogation painful to watch and how he struggles to control his emotions during the "exhausting" session, and how Leia is "wrung out in a quivering heap of emotional and physical collapse" afterward. The story also makes a reference to "the physical torment the young princess had borne with such fierce determination, as Vader had probed her mind beneath the hungry needles of the interrogator droid."
The 2022 novel The Princess and the Scoundrel describes the truth serum as "worse than any physical torture", and states that it induced powerful hallucinations of the people Leia loved dying in front of her when she refused to talk. At the end of the session, Leia's heart heart was "exhausted from racing, her eyes red and dry, her lungs ravaged from screaming—both her mind and her body were broken, but her secrets were still kept." The book also briefly mentions physical torture, but does not elaborate any further; saying Vader had tortured Leia "mentally and physically, leaving her with scars that no one could see but that she still felt."
According to producer Gary Kurtz, Luke and Leia were not supposed to be siblings originally; Luke's sister was originally going to be a different person who was going to show up in a later episode that never came to be. Leia being Luke's sister was added to "to wrap up everything neatly". The revelation that Leia was Luke's twin sister, and Darth Vader's daughter, made the scene from A New Hope more eerie in retrospect: J.J. Abrams, the director of and , described the scene as "the most jaw-dropping-est" Star Wars moment for him: "When you think of it later, it's like, 'Oh my God, that's his daughter.' He's going to torture his own daughter. At the time, it's just scary. Then it gets just really creepy when you think about it. It's the worst. It's horrible."
The scan grid equipped with needles in the comic issue Darth Vader 12, an element that was deleted from The Empire Strikes Back
For Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, director Irvin Kershner originally filmed more shots of Han Solo being tortured, which showed the machine in operation with spikes and needles and electronic things going, and flashes of electricity everywhere. It was cut because the filmmakers were afraid that this would be too intense for children. Some of Han's screaming off-screen was also taken out for the same reason. According to the director, everyone felt that the cut material was too much for a film of this type. However, a brief flashback panel in the comic issue Darth Vader (2020) 12 shows the scan grid equipped with several long sharp needles.
In the movie, Luke Skywalker has a vision of Han and Leia "in pain". Later, it is revealed that Darth Vader had Luke's friends tortured because he knew that their anguish would reach Luke through the Force and draw him to Bespin where he could be captured. The movie shows Chewbacca in a cell, being subjected to ear-piercing noise; the Legends novelization states that the Wookiee was subjected to sonic torture and searing lights. The movie also shows Han Solo being tortured via electricity on the scan grid, but what happened to Leia is never revealed; the princess is merely shown being pushed into the cell later and asking Han, "Why are they doing this?". The Legends novel Heir to the Empire states that both Han and Leia were tortured, and the Legends novel Dark Tide I: Onslaught briefly mentions that Han and Leia both went through an ordeal with a torture machine on Bespin, but does not provide any further explanation.
The canon junior novel The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to Be a Jedi? sheds a little more light on the subject and describes what Luke sees in his vision as "They are being tortured. Leia is screaming, her eyes bulging from her head. Han is straining, his back arched, his neck on the verge of snapping." Later, Luke thinks of what he saw, as "Before your eyes are your best friends. Screaming in pain. Writhing under needles and blades, barking with fear and whimpering in horror."