There’s an abnormally large amount of Samuel L. Jackson news this week. First, he hosts the Spike VGAs, now he might be reprising his role of Mace Windu in Star Wars Episode VII.
E! Online reports that Sam Jackson (we’re still not sure what we’re supposed to call him) is “totally peeked by the idea of there being more Star Wars.” While his character was presumed to be killed in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, we don’t actually see him die. Of course, his hand is cut off and he is thrown off what we can only estimate is a 2000-foot ledge, but these Jedi have a way of bouncing back sometimes.
Sam explains, “It’s like, okay, Obi-Wan was dead when [Episode IV] started, so maybe everyone thinks I’m dead and we’ll find out what happened to Mace Windu. I can come back as one-armed or a one-handed Jedi that’s still around that didn’t actually die.” Aside from the fact that Obi-Wan didn’t actually die until the end of Episode IV, Jackson is right in that he could come back if the team at LucasFi… uhh, Disney, comes up with a plausible explanation for his survival.
And of course, a plausible explanation for him being absent from the entirety of the original trilogy.
And a plausible storyline for why he’d be back in the thick of things now that everything has begun again.
What is probably most realistic is for Mace Windu to return as a ghost, if he is to return at all. Windu was very wise (with the exception of the whole dying thing) so he could be brought back as a teacher hologram of sorts, but we’d prefer to see him in a very subdued role. Sam Jackson can have a small cameo in Episode VII, but he certainly shouldn’t be a main or even supporting character.
It’s worth noting that, in usual Sam fashion, when prodded about whether he’d return for Episode VII, he said, “Hell yeah! I just always loved it. I always loved the idea of it, that there’s this whole civilization out there somewhere else that’s just as much fun and different and diverse and wild as we are.”
About a week ago, we found out that Ewan McGregor, known for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original trilogy (not to mention being a splitting image of a young Alec Guinness, the original Obi-Wan), also wants to return to the Star Wars franchise in some capacity. Like Sam Jackson, however, he admits that he doesn’t know how that would be, whether as a ghost, hologram, or reincarnation somehow.