Since the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens last week, fans have obviously been poring over every single scene in the movie to see what they can discover about the secrets it holds. As a result, it took no time at all to realize that a number of scenes from the trailers didn’t make it into the final version, including one which appeared to point to a fairly major subplot being left on the cutting room floor.
That is, of course, Maz Kanata handing Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber over to General Leia. Director J.J. Abrams recently shed some light on why they decided to cut the character’s role down in the final act, saying that it just felt unnecessary:
“That was a scene actually filmed, but we took out. At one point, Maz used to continue along with the characters back to the Resistance base, but we realized that she really had nothing to do there of value, except to be sitting around. Lupita did film scenes on set for that sequence, but it felt it unnecessary. So we ended up leaving those things out.”
It’s going to be interesting now to see if Maz makes any sort of return in Star Wars Episode VIII. After all, had she been left in the Resistance base, the door would have been wide open to continue her story there, but Rian Johnson can now choose to entirely omit her from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens follow-up if he so chooses. Hopefully that doesn’t end up being the case though, as it would be a huge waste of a great character.
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