‘Star Wars’ Still Hasn’t Explained How Maz Found Luke’s Lightsaber – Some Fans Say It’s ‘Irrelevant’
Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz is one of the most mysterious characters in recent Star Wars memory. The wide-eyed alien introduced in The Force Awakens has been around for thousands of years, and it’s implied she’s seen a lot.
However, she may have also taken a lot. When Maz revealed she had Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, we never got a reason why.
‘Star Wars’: Who is Maz?
According to her page on Fandom, Maz is a former smuggler who worked alongside Han Solo and several other morally gray members of the galaxy far away. However, like Solo, Maz is not the bad guy. She’s another desperate space-dweller trying to do what is right in a system that has made her life a living hell. However, despite her flaws, Maz is a good person whose drive to skate the line may be good for the galaxy.
It was this drive that attracted Nyongo into taking on such a small but vital role. She spoke about this with The Source.
“I think why we all love Star Wars, why it appeals to so many people, is it’s a classic human journey where there’s a boy who goes on a mission to find his purpose, and he goes on this odyssey, and he meets all of these interesting creatures and characters on his way. That’s a playground for the imagination. I think we like that, and we identify with that desire to find a higher calling, a purpose, a drive-in our lives,” she said.
This drive gets her to some memorable places. However, fans are most curious about not how an ancient alien-like herself got so powerful but how she acquired Luke Skywalker’s iconic lightsaber.
Maz shows Rey a secret
In a poignant moment from The Force Awakens, Rey sits in Maz’s tavern when she’s drawn by an unseen presence toward Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. However, she never actually acquires it. Instead, Maz uses it as an opportunity to connect the woman in front of her with the power necessary to yield such a weapon.
However, when the Empire attacks, Maz gives the lightsaber to Finn while a puzzled Han Solo asks how she got it. Maz skates around an answer only to imply that it was time for Rey to yield it, and Finn was to be the one who gave it to her. As anyone who has seen the movie can tell you, Finn fulfilled that promise. It doesn’t mean that fans are happy with the acquisition’s ambiguity, however.
Fans want to know why she has it
Star Wars fans like filling in the holes left by the script as much as they enjoy watching the adventures on the screen. As such, Maz’s lack of answer confused many fans who want to know why a Jedi like Luke would ever let his prized possession get into other hands. While not the green lightsaber he got after the fight with his father, the fact that Maz acquired the one he lost might be even stranger.
However, while people want the answer behind Maz’s acquisition, Reddit user u/No_Improvement_7884 explained why it doesn’t matter in a thread about the mysterious story.
“Honestly, I find it baffling that people want some elaborate backstory on how Maz got the lightsaber and claim that it’s a plot hole because it wasn’t explained in the movie. Like, what does it matter it’s irrelevant to the story,” they wrote.
It’s true. Part of the Star Wars’ appeal is that we accepted a universe that ended up in its current state from the first movie on, without the breadth of background we have now. Audiences in 1975 took this for what it was, but as the amount of information grew along with the means for spreading it, people started turning off the ability to accept what is unseen.
Maybe fans can get an answer in a future movie, series, game, comic, or book. If they don’t, however, Star Wars exists so that we can fill in lines ourselves. If everything that happened on the screen came with an explanation, they’d never answer everything that’s asked inside the universe as a whole.
