Samuel L. Jackson insists that Mace Windu is alive, would obviously play him again
Mace Windu died in the Star Wars prequels, but that's never stopped a Star Wars character before
Empire Magazine is currently going wild for the Star Wars prequels, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace with a bunch of features on the once-derided, now-tolerated trilogy, and one of those features is a new interview with Samuel L. Jackson in which he makes a bold claim about Star Wars canon. According to him, Mace Windu—the character he played in those movies—is still alive. Actually, he said, “HE’S NOT DEAD!!!,” which sells it better and lets you read it in his voice, but the point remains the same.
But here’s the thing: No he’s not? Windu was one of the Jedi who went to Chancellor Sheev Palpatine’s office to confront him with the evidence that he was, in fact, Darth Sidious, but the secret Sith Lord zapped him with evil Force lightning and knocked him out a million-story window. As the official Star Wars Databank puts it, “Sidious then blasted Mace with Force lightning, sending the great Jedi champion plummeting to his death.” To. His. Death. There you have it, straight from the Sacred Texts.
But here’s the other thing: Nobody ever dies in Star Wars. Boba Fett is the obvious example, in both the old canon and the new, but also Darth Maul survived a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half, Palpatine returned somehow, and also Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin all came back as Force Ghosts. A character could just still be alive, they could come back with robot parts, they could get a “somehow,” or they could become a ghost. That’s four options for Mace Windu to return.
But would Samuel L. Jackson even be interested in coming back to the Star Wars universe? Would he do another movie? Or a Disney+ series? Of course he would. This is Samuel L. Jackson we’re talking about, he doesn’t just refuse an offer to revisit a character or a franchise or a filmmaker he had a good (or well-paying) experience with before. When presented with this hypothetical situation by Empire, Jackson’s response wasn’t “I’ll do it for the right story” or whatever, it was “EVERYTHING YES!!”
Just try and keep this man away from playing Mace Windu again. We dare you.