He’s the only character in the Star Wars universe whose fate matched his surname, and yet after Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) died in Revenge of the Sith, fans were still desperate to see him return to the franchise in some way, even after getting chucked from Senator Palpatine’s (Ian McDiarmid) office window. Back in 2022, it was revealed that Jackson himself pitched the idea to Bryce Dallas Howard, who, earlier this year, explained on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast that she was on board with the idea. Unfortunately, following a recent interview with The Direct for her new film, Deep Cover, Howard confirmed that a new Mace Windu story hasn’t made the cut among the many ideas she has run by Lucasfilm‘s CCO., Dave Filoni.
“Well, I mean, I want to work with Sam Jackson, just no matter what, in any circumstance. And I also love working in Star Wars,” Howard explained. “And so, you know, I harass Dave Filoni a lot about a lot of things, and that’s just one, but, yeah, no, that was a fun conversation, but didn’t add up to anything.”
Of all the notable characters in the Star Wars universe, Master Windu is one of the few characters we never saw suffer a fatal wound before falling out of view, seemingly to his doom. He lost some limbs, sure, but that’s just an occupational hazard. Since then, the likes of Boba Fett have crawled back out of a Sarlacc pit, Darth Maul got robot legs, as did his successor, Darth Vader. In that case, can’t Windu get some work done, too?
For now, the return of the legendary Jedi with the purple lightsaber is still a pipe dream, and we can only hope to see Bryce Dallas Howard and Samuel L. Jackson team up in another project instead. We’re not one to fan-cast, but if she hasn’t found a voice for the sentient spaceship, Max, in her Flight of the Navigator remake, we know just the motherf’ing guy for the job.