PT Did Mace Windu Survive?

I just wondered what people think about the idea of Mace surviving the confrontation with Palpatine and being sent out of the window to his death. Jackson claims George thinks Windu could have survived and there is that Fan film out that is on Mace having survived.

Would anyone be onboard with the idea of Mace Surviving in canon and maybe appearing again? or would it ruin the moment in ROTS?

 

Mace surviving would be fine, as long as his “death” scene is used as a huge turning point for him. He needs to come out on the other side a significantly different person. Otherwise, Anakin’s betrayal and Palpatine’s victory won’t seem to have mattered all that much to him and the whole idea of bringing Mace back would be kind of pointless.
I think.

 

That is a pretty good point @Lulu Mars .
Although I always thought Mace coming back would cheapen Anakin's turn. Mace is a symbol of the Old Jedi Order, and Anakin betraying him when Mace had arguably just started to trust Anakin is pretty symbolic of Anakin burning all bridges to his own Jedi identity. I always liked that while we don't see much of the Temple raid, Mace's death and Anakin's implied slaughter of the younglings really sold the theme that Anakin was destroying himself.

And I also think (in maybe a twisted way) Mace doesn't retain his identity because of Anakin's greedy decision. So Anakin is kind of essentially dooming the Jedi Order to failure and purgatory. If Mace survived this would be lost.

 

IIRC, a long time ago (before TFA) I expressed the hope that, if Coruscant is featured in the ST, we should get a Sam Jackson cameo as a one-armed homeless man uttering insanely to himself. I'd have thought that funny.

That said, I don't think he could or should have survived. I think it works better for the story if he doesn't.

 

The ROTS novelization is pretty clear that he's dead. Maul survived being cut in half but Windu didn't just lose his hand and fall. He took quite a bit of Sith lightning.

"Before he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord’s hands and without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine’s hate struck him full-on.

He had been so intent on Palpatine’s shatterpoint that he’d never thought to look for Anakin’s.
Dark lightning blasted away his universe. He fell forever."

 

This pretty much sums it up as far as I am concerned. Mace Windu is one of my favourite characters in Star Wars. As much as I want more Mace, I just don’t think that there is anything to be gained from his return. To be honest, as much as I enjoyed the return of Maul in the Clone Wars, resurrecting other characters from the prequels would cheapen the dramatic resonance of their deaths and, thus the importance of the movies themselves.

 

He didn't survive as far as we know,



But they can change their mind, if something big happens. Like a direct order from Disney etc. Otherwise, Filoni and the Lucasfilm didn't want to resurrect Maul, they only did it because George Lucas directly told them to do it.

 

No

 

Bringing back Maul has really opened up a can of worms now. It essentially means that no character we presumed is dead, is 'actually' dead.

So is Mace dead, probably! Will he return, possibly!

I totally get that SW is a fantasy space opera but there needs to be some semblance of realism.

For that reason I sincerely hope he didn't survive. Disney please don't bring back Mace, please don't mess with a perfectly fine and universally accepted storyline!

 

I disliked the return of Maul for the reasons described above so this one I consider even worse: exactly because Mace is so central character for the old Order (and Maul is just a side character who was brought back because he was you know, "cool").

 

George said he lived so he's alive.

 

Maul had to go through an extreme ordeal to stay alive. That radically changed who he was. It's also revealed later that Maul had special help that allowed him to survive and escape Naboo. His mother, the Night Sister and powerful Force users Talzin used her dark side magicks from a distance to sustain him.

After Mother Talzin was killed Darth Sidous said Maul would no longer be any concern.

It all gets pretty complicated. So it's not like they are just hading out extra lives in Star Wars.

 

Thanks for the insightful info, I don't know much about the EU so I'm greatful for your input.

However this still doesn't change the fact that any death we now see may in fact only be a temporary death or in actual fact no death at all.

In fact the info you have supplied reinforces this notion that the writers / production team will go to any lengths, no matter how farfetched to bring a character back.

Thus if they wanted to there's no reason why convoluted story lines could not be made up to bring back Padme, Han, Boba Fett etc.

It's just too convenient that ANY character that is previously known to be dead can potentially be brought back. Where does it stop?

If a character has died (or is implied dead as in the case of Mace), they should stay dead imho. Otherwise the next time a major character is killed you will inevitably 'second-guess' the implications of their death knowing there's every chance you'll see them again.

Even fantasy must have some semblance of realism to keep an audience / fan base engaged.

 

I agree. I was sure The Clone Wars would have jumped the shark when Maul returned. To my pleasant surprised it was handled in such a way that it believable worked while not opening the door for everyone. It's like the Force Ghosts. It's an odd loop hole that logically only works for a very few characters.

It's fiction so anything can be imagined, but the way Maul returned couldn't be used for Palpatine or Vader to return. Care was taken to create a very special set of circumstance for Maul that even Maul could not repeat again by the time the Clone Wars ended.

 

That sounded more like George humoring Sam, to be honest.

 

True. Also Filoni compared Maul's return to Vader's survival at Mustafar.



So we can say that this is a special thing to Sith only. And it's kind of a one time thing as far as I understand, since it's not healing, it's just sustaining yourself with the dark side of the Force.

 

@Erkan12 - That's it exactly. This video is from the premiere of season 5, before they revealed what part Mother Talzin played in assisting or augmenting Maul's own Dark Side abilities to stay alive.

Basically at some point Darth Sidious studied how Force powers of the Night Sisters with Mother Talzin. Talzin expected to become his apprentice, but instead Sidious stole her young son and trained him as the apprentice. I guess it was Sidious who named him Maul.

During the Clone Wars Talzin had the potential to become a serious threat to Sidious's plans. I'm not sure if he thought she could defeat him or she'd tip off the Jedi. It's unclear if she knew Sidious was also Palpatine. But we learn for the Sith to take over the galaxy they need to remove Talzin.

Long story short, Maul was used as bait to lure Mother Talzin out. She was such a threat that Sidous dealt with it personally. After she was killed Sidious said the Sith didn't have to worry about Maul anymore, without Talzin his future was erased.

 

Well, Maul got sliced in two and usually that kills people, he still managed to survive.

 

[Cliegg] he ded son! accept it


Anything is possible at this point though. Wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a new series of Rebels with a mysterious masked character only for the last ep reveal it's a horribly burned Mace.

It's the nature of the business, but would be extremely poor storytelling IMO

 

Did Mace Windu Survive? From this angle, well ... all I can say is that it does not appear that way!

 

I think Mace survived. In the Arena in AOTC, when Jango used his flamethrower on Mace, he was able to jump off the balcony and guide himself safely via the Force to the ground. Leia would demonstrate even more command over the Force by flying in the Force field. Other substantial evidence is that when Anakin and Obi explore Courscant, there are thousands of vehicals ans buildings that Windu could have ended up on.

I imagine Mace went back to the the Temple and found the warning programmed by Kenobi that all Jedi should flee into hiding. I imagine Windu like Jolee Bindu (KOTOR) living on Khyssak or some planet in isolation as he processes the Jedi Purge, his failure to stop it and kill Palpatine.

 

Well, I hope not but you never know in SW, lots of examples of supposed dead characters coming back in some way.