George Lucas Apparently Had Plans for Leia and Darth Maul in His Sequel Series
The Star Wars Archives: 1999–2005, an upcoming book from Taschen, will cover the making of the prequel trilogy and give insight into George Lucas’s plan for his version of the Star Wars sequel series, which Disney scrapped to make theirs.
According to Polygon, two of the major elements would be the return of fan-favorite Darth Maul and the intention of turning Carrie Fisher’s Leia into the new Chosen One of the series. That would have been nice.
Darth Maul would have survived his battle with Obi-Wan and ended up with “mechanical legs” as he has in other recent appearances in Star Wars canon, and Lucas said, “Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over.”
We’d also have gotten a comic book character brought into the film canon. “Darth Maul trained a girl, Darth Talon, who was in the comic books, as his apprentice,” Lucas said. “She was the new Darth Vader and most of the action was with her. So these were the two main villains of the trilogy.”
As for Leia, Lucas saw the Princess and General as the only one fit to be the leader. “I mean, who else is going to be the leader?” he said. “Luke is trying to restart the Jedi.”
So what stopped Lucas from bringing this to life? He wanted to be a father.
“At that time I was starting the next trilogy, I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up, I was also about to have a daughter,” he says in the book. “It takes 10 years to make a trilogy. I’d still be working on Episode 9! Finally, I’d decided I’d rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while.”
It is probably the lingering fart that is The Rise of Skywalker that makes this premise sound so appetizing, but we shouldn’t ignore that while Lucas has always been great at putting ideas together, it is the execution that is the problem. Still, a focus on Leia, especially with Carrie Fisher still in the role, would have been fantastic. We were denied so much of seeing Leia as a Jedi not only because of the passing of Carrie Fisher, but some idea that we needed to save her for last.
Seeing Leia as a Jedi was something we were denied in the original trilogy, so she should have gotten that at least as early as The Last Jedi, and that she didn’t is the fault of multiple people. Still, it will be interesting to see Lucas’s thoughts because, despite the fact that the prequels are not perfect, they showed that he was less precious about the series than someone like J.J. Abrams, so we’ll at least have some new material to debate at each other about. Which is really the point of Star Wars these days.
The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005 will be available to own in the U.S. starting December 13.
(via Indie Wire, image: Disney/Lucasfilm)
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