Star Wars Fan Favorite Needs To Stay Dead, No Matter How Much Actor Complains
When it comes to a fictional character’s demise, the unwritten rule in Hollywood is: if you don’t see a body, then they aren’t dead. Movies are constantly waving away implied death with convoluted excuses that basically amount to, “They got better.” Actor Samuel L. Jackson recently stated that he wants Star Wars to take this approach with Mace Windu, which, if we’re being honest, sounds like a terrible idea.
Mace Windu’s Death Marked The Beginning Of The End
While Star Wars fans didn’t actually see Mace Windu lying dead in a gutter on Coruscant, Revenge of the Sith heavily implied that the Jedi Master bit the big one. First, he was bombarded with force lightning, and then his arm was cut off, then more force lightning, all before being chucked out a window and left to plummet thousands of feet to his doom. Sounds like a pretty fool-proof recipe for death to us.
The force lightning alone should have killed him. To paraphrase Storm from 2000’s X-Men, “Do you know what happens when a Jedi is struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.” On top of that, there’s the fall. Even if Mace managed to slow himself down via the Force, there’s still a good chance a passing speeder turned him into street—er—air pizza.
Maul Came Back So He Could Actually Talk
Look, a miraculous recovery is fine once in a while. Darth Maul is literally bisected by Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace and, through sheer spite, manages to cling to life long enough to exact his revenge. Seems implausible, but it’s a fantasy movie with magic, so whatever, fans gave it a pass.
Palpatine Is A Perfect Example Of Why Windu Needs To Stay Dead
It also helped that when Star Wars brought Maul back, they gave him a good storyline. The same can’t be said for Emperor Palpatine. In Legends, it was explained that he used a younger clone body. In canon, it was “explained” with the infamous line “Somehow Palpatine returned.”
We should point out that The Rise of Skywalker heavily implies that Palpatine was resurrected the same way he was in Legends through a mixture of cloning and Sith alchemy. It doesn’t matter, however, because bringing him back is dumb, no matter how they did it.
How Could He Survive What Vader Couldn’t?
Bringing back Palpatine in any form ruins the third act of Return of the Jedi. Speaking of which, if Star Wars lets Mace Windu survive bathing in Force lightning after losing a limb, then why did Darth Vader have to die? And that’s not the only issue Mace Windu’s survival would raise.
Where Was He When Even The Ewoks Showed Up?
If he was alive, where the hell was he during the original trilogy? That’s the problem every time Disney brings back one of these prequel-era characters. They have to come up with some convoluted excuse for why they weren’t around for the biggest moments of the Galactic Civil War.
It’s especially hard with Star Wars characters so steeped in the Force, like Mace Windu. You mean to tell us Obi-Wan’s ghost, or Yoda never reached out telepathically to say, “Hey buddy, we sure could use your help training Anakin’s kid!”
Mace Windu’s Death Needs To Remain A Death
Samuel L. Jackson is a great actor, one of the greatest of his generation even, but he should quietly take the L on this one. For there to be any emotional stakes in Star Wars, characters like Mace Windu have to believe that death is an actual possibility. We, the fans, have to believe that death is an actual consequence in that universe; otherwise, why care about anything that happens?
Plus if offscreen deaths are fair game, where is our Aunt Beru & Uncle Owen Disney+ series? Those skeletons could have belonged to anybody.
