Luckily for Fisher, pretty much everyone agrees that she fully pulled it off. Either way, her hair gets switched up in “Empire Strikes Back,” where she’s regularly seen wearing a more Earth-like hairstyle. She maintains the crown braid throughout the series, but the earmuffs are gone after that first film and they never return, not even in the sequels.
The treatment of Leia throughout the original movies has always been a source of debate among fans, particularly in regard to the slave Leia scenes in “Return of the Jedi.” It’s a sequence that gives us another cool variation on Leia’s hair, one that’s overshadowed by the ridiculous outfit she’s forced to wear. But even then, it’s Leia’s personality that makes the sequence bearable. “What redeems it is that I get to kill [Jabba],” Fisher explained. “I sawed his neck off with that chain that I killed him with.”
After all, Fisher had always maintained her love for the character of Leia, regardless of her questionable style. “I like how she handles things. I like how she treats people,” Fisher explained on NPR. “She tells the truth. She, you know, gets what she wants done.” Leia may have had some iconic looks throughout the original trilogy, but it’s her consistently-written, defiant-yet-kindhearted nature that really sticks with us, even nearly forty years after “Return of the Jedi” hit theaters. Earmuffs or no earmuffs, Leia was always great.