ST how different do you think a Lucas ST would've been?

But that has almost nothing to do with anything in regards to the OT characters and especially the new ones. Savage wasn't stolen. There's nothing for Savage in regards to anything that the current story would be about. There's no point to it. It might as well be Snoke for all that character's meaning would have.

You call that lame for Maul hating being replaced, but Savage just doing stuff because people did bad things to him that has almost nothing to do with our characters isn't lame? Come on.

But he wasn't exploded. Savage dying though is a cherry on the reasons why it doesn't work, not the main reasons why. It also works less than Maul because he's a character the general audience has no knowledge or regard for.

Savage has no meaning or reasoning for bigger motives than Maul does. You essentially just suggested a variation of Maul, but minus all the reasons why Maul works as a big bad, which is all his personal connections to the OT characters and motives, something Savage has distinctly less of.

Basically Savage is a cheap knockoff of Maul, with TCW.

 

Maul has almost nothing to do with anything in regards to the OT characters either. His beef is with Obi-Wan, who is long dead by the time of the ST.

I already said I'd want Savage to be different and have bigger motivations than his revenge story in TCW. And he easily could by the time of TFA.

I think a new character, or even a knockoff character, is still better than reusing the same character. At least you can make something more original. Because yeah, I think "My master thought I was dead and replaced me, grrrr the galaxy and all the Skywalkers must pay!" is very very lame, and not good enough for a Big Bad of the saga films, let alone bringing this character back a second time (third if you count Solo).

 

Obi is explicitly connected to Luke especially. That creates a natural connection and motive against them. Similar with an issue against Anakin from Maul. Even with a, what you may see as, tenuous connection, it's more than Savage has.

What's the purpose of it being Savage if you him to be a different character? Why not just change Snoke?

I think the whole point of it being Maul is to use pre-established lore and closer connections to the character instead of just introducing a whole new evil dark side wizard character and having to create new motives and goals for him.

He hates Obi-Wan and displaces his anger of his discardment onto Obi for defeating him, and hates Anakin for being his replacement. That's way more than Savage would have. What would Savage have?

There's no bringing him back a second time. It's only one that's a continuation of TCW bringing back his character. In TCW he was brought back and it was left hanging what was going to happen to him when Palpatine killed Savage and told him he wasn't going to kill him, and the comics had him used by Palpatine so Palpatine could kill Talzin and then he escaped and apparently the Ahsoka novel had him battle Ahsoka during the siege of mandalore like TCW season 7 eventually showed, though maybe slightly differently. As far as I know he didn't die again in canon and Solo came out after the ST had started. If he was in the ST, I think there wouldn't be much reason for him to be in Solo.

 

Like I already said, you could keep some of Savage's story. Or just resurrect him, if that's going to be a thing. Again, being conceptual here.

And him changing hardly sounds farfetched considering it's been what, 50 years in between TCW and the ST? And you'd still have a connection to the saga with him being Maul's brother, albeit it'd be a distant one. I think that's fine. I'd prefer Snoke was a completely original character too.

And like I already said, again, the Obi-Wan revenge thing isn't strong enough a motive. Neither is Anakin being Maul's replacement (and he was really more Dooku's at that point anyway.) What is Maul even supposed to be angry at Anakin about? Palpatine thought he was dead. He should be pissed at Obi-Wan and Palpatine, not Anakin or any of the Skywalkers.

I don't think having a pre-established character with lore connections is that important. More important to have a villain with big, believable motivation that's fitting to be the Big Bad for the Skywalker saga. To me Maul doesn't fit that, especially if all you're considering is his one film role in the saga where he's barely even a character.

For what it's worth though, I think Maul would've been a better choice for the whole "ultimate villain back from the dead" plot than Palpatine.

 

Inner Space in Outer Space.

 

/sigh. What coulda been.

 

Doesn't Leia basically say that sending Ben to Luke was a mistake? That she should have kept him home, because that's when she lost both Ben and Han.

This is kind of the crux of the problem. The Skywalker family didn't act like a family. They were siloed. They were separate. They thought spending time with an uncle, was 'being sent away' when it could have just been "right next door". The training that was done to help Ben all too late, could have just been continuous from birth, because Uncle Luke was always over, or visiting, or they were just spending time with one another. And that's even if Luke hd to spend time away for Force reasons, or learning about the force, or building a temple.

The family just got together in EP 6. And then immediately ripped apart again.

 

I wonder what George's ideas for the Whills would be. I know some people believe the Whills to be microbiotic beings because of what George said about the microbiotic world, but I don't think that's what he meant. The way I view is that the Whills use the midichlorians as tools to control the galaxy and the Force, I guess the Whills would be angel like beings that resides in the Netherworld.
George also mentions that there's like a ecosystem, which makes me belive that Whills aren't necessarily bad guys but rather beings that are different. Though I do think we might have seen some dark side version of the Whills, demonic like beings. The Uber dark side villain George mentioned and that shadow behind Talon on one of the concept arts makes me belive that there was a greater evil pulling the strings.

So my guess is that Maul, Talon and the criminal underworld were just puppets of this greater evil. George mentioned that the Whills feeds of the Force, what if there are dark side Whills that feeds of the dark side and of imbalance. So these dark side Whills use Maul and co to sort of kickstart the dark side again.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that George's sequels would have been far more esoteric and Force centric than what we got. I think the Mortis arc and the Yoda arc from CW are hints of what George planned for the sequels.

 

Except George explicitly stated that they are micro lifeforms:

"The Whills are a microscopic, single-celled lifeform like amoeba, fungi, and bacteria. There’s something like 100,000 times more Whills than there are midi-chlorians, and there are about 10,000 times more midi-chlorians than there are human cells."

"The only microscopic entities that can go into the human cells are the midi-chlorians. They are born in the cells. The midi-chlorians provide the energy for human cells to split and create life. The Whills are single-celled animals that feed on the Force. The more of the Force there is, the better off they are. So they have a very intense symbiotic relationship with the midi-chlorians and the midi-chlorians effectively work for the Whills."

"It is estimated that we have 100 trillion microbes in our body and we are made up of about 90% bacteria and 10% human cells. So who is in service to whom?"

"It’s saying there is a big symbiotic relationship to create life, and to create the Force, but if you look at all the life-forms in the universe, most of them are one-celled organisms. I think of one-celled organisms as an advanced form of life because they’ve been able to travel through the universe. They have their own spaceships — those meteorites that we get every once in a while. They’ve been living on those things for thousands of years, they’ve been frozen, unfrozen, and can survive almost anything."

The Whills themselves are like the Force. The will of the Force, which you could say is the "will" of the Whills, is benign by definition. They rely on the Force and its growth to thrive. Those that use and follow the dark side are not listening or caring for the will of the Force, but for their own will. The Sith do that, for example. And it's by giving into and acting through the dark side, and making it grow, that imbalance is created.

Uber came from JJ Abrams, and it was a placeholder name for whoever happened to be his big bad guy, since by that point they had discarded Lucas' sequels and Maul as the big bad of the trilogy.

 

I like that one of the most - if not the most - powerful lifeforms in the galaxy is basically the smallest. Just as Yoda said. And it would have come around first in the evolution of life itself, so it kind of makes sense that they are essentially the gods/force.

 

I find Lucas' ideas fascinating but I just can't see how they'd dramatise it, especially given the generally negative reaction to midis.

 

I think a nice force vision, where Luke, or whoever the Jedi is, communes with them directly (as they are usually very shy) and they are represented as 'something else' entirely. So kind of dream like, trippy and maybe even a bit frightening. Where we never really see their world, or them. Just their force projection.

And just explain in it vague terms. Sometimes alien like. We are the Whills. We have taken this form so that you may feel more at ease speaking with us.

Or something.

 

I think Uber is Maul. It's not clearly from the Artbooks, but it's clear from the interviews in the Episode I-III Archive book that Maul is the main villain working in the shadows like Palpatine was in the Prequels. Which dovetails into the main theme of Lucas's sequel trilogy focusing on Luke and Leia rebuilding the institutions of The Republic (presumably the Senate/Supreme Chancellor and the Jedi respectively). And that Maul and his Shadow Collective were the elements trying to tear everything down and substitute it with their own vision (he compared it to the ex-Baathists/ISIS during the US Occupation in the GWOT). Per the artbooks, Uber is suppose to be Talon's boss and of course per Lucas, Maul is Talon's master (Lucas: “Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books, as his apprentice. She was the new Darth Vader, and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy. Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.”).

 

I wonder how George planned to combine the underworld element and Maul with the Whills.

 

I imagine Maul would've given a pompous speech about it being his turn to reshape the galaxy; that his survival and success against all odds prove that it's his destiny.
Someone might then have responded that Maul is defying his destiny by giving in to the dark side and that would then have tied into what the trilogy would've told us about the Whills.

I do not think the Whills would've been more prominent in the story than the midi-chlorians are. Introducing that concept would just have been about teaching us more about the cosmic aspect of the Force so we would have a better understanding of how destiny works in the Star Wars mythology - and why.

 

The Whills offer destinies to those who want them. You can reject them if you want, as we have free agency, or you can accept the offer. This is Anakin's life in a nutshell. He rejected his true self, and his destiny, in favor a selfish one for 20 years, but in the end ... finally fulfilled the prophecy and balanced the Force by eradicating the Sith.

Everyone's happy, right?

Maybe not. Because I also seem to remember that Lucas said at one point that in the ST we'd finally meet with the true puppet masters. I hardly think that's Maul, or even Palpatine. He's also referred to the life in the galaxy as nothing more than cars and trucks for the Whills. So I have to wonder if the Whills are the true puppet masters that Lucas is referring to, and if, they in some way might be the ultimate big bad. Especially if Star Wars at it's heart is also about rebelling, freedom, and overcoming oppression. If the Whills are really in charge of us, even if we have a supposed choice in the matter (which is suffer or do as we set up for you), then how is anyone in that GFFA really, truly ... free.

Think about it. Suppose they set up a destiny for Luke, or Ben Solo. And Luke realizes this is all BS. That his family are nothing more than tools for the Whills. And they can't ever really be happy as long as they are just these tools. These cars. That they're not in control of their destiny at all.

It would be a major twist to the franchise and its lore. And a very conceptual one that I could imagine Lucas throwing at us, 40 years after he's set it all up.

Maybe true freedom in the galaxy comes from Luke or Ben, or whomever, cutting the strings.

 

The Force has always been described as controlling your actions, that’s not some new twist. And the message George wanted to impart was not that this was detrimental

 

Partially. It also obeys commands.

 

I don’t think Lucas meant for the Whills to be seen as villains. They are the closest lifeforms to the Force, and thus they know from it what each being’s ideal destiny will be. To communicate with them is to learn your purpose, to know the will of the Force for oneself and for others. Each being is still free to act how they will, but the path the Whills offer to those who can listen is the best one available.

My thinking is that Lucas’s sequels would’ve been more about the Jedi, and the galaxy through them, regaining the close connection to the Force that they had lost over the years because of the interference of the Sith and the dark side. The movies would be about healing those wounds, helping the ecosystem of the galaxy restore its balance for the long run as every organism within it finds out once more what it can do and be to best help maintain the greater whole.

 

Being told in Lucas' own words that the we are like cars and trucks for the Whills and that the Whills feed off of the force, has a touch of detriment to it. There's mutual benefits, for sure, and then there might also be a line when there is not.

And gods are always good, and on the side of humanity, until they aren't. And humanity rebels and new gods are invented.

 

Paul Duncan, who wrote the Star Wars Archives books that had the most comprehensive look at the Lucas sequels yet, mentioned on Twitter today that Rihanna was considered as a potential casting choice for Darth Talon by at least some of the people working on the sequels. It wasn’t a formal casting decision, but her name was being thrown around by at least some of the Lucasfilm employees.

 

Do you think Maul would end up being the big bad of the sequels or did George perhaps have plans for another evil, like Palpatine?

 

sounds like it was maul. though George did say dark empire was closest to his ideas for a sequel.

 

I wonder that myself. George might have planned for an evil Whill (a Whont?) to be the “final boss” of the Saga.

Where did George say that?

 

It was an old quote I don't know the source.