LucasfilmIn an expansive — and truthfully, at $151, expensive — upcoming book called Star Wars Archives 1999-2005, saga creator George Lucas details what could have been if he’d undertaken the last three movies in the Skywalker saga.
ABC News’ parent company Disney purchased the franchise from Lucas in 2012 and with it, an outline for Lucas’ plans for what would happen after the events of Return of the Jedi.
However, Disney’s then-CEO Robert Iger later reflected he thought Lucas felt “betrayed” when he was told that the eventual sequels, which began with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, wouldn’t include Lucas’ plans for Luke, Leia, Han and the gang. The results were financially successful but many fans were dissatisfied, particularly with 2017’s The Last Jedi.
According to the new book, excerpted by the website Polygon, Lucas explained that Episode I baddie Darth Maul would have survived his being sliced in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi. As he did in the Clone Wars and Rebels animated TV series, and in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Darth Maul becomes an intergalactic crime lord. “As the Empire falls, he takes over,” Lucas explained, likening it to how ISIS grew after Saddam Hussein was deposed in Iraq.
Darth Maul would also have taken an apprentice, the female tattooed Twi’lek Darth Talon. “She was the new Darth Vader and most of the action was with her,” Lucas says, “So these were the two main villains of the trilogy.”
Perhaps most interesting idea involved the late Carrie Fisher‘s character, Leia Organa Skywalker. “She ended up being the Chosen One,” Lucas says — the person whom the Jedi once thought would bring balance to the Force.
By Stephen Iervolino
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