7 Crazy Star Wars Fan Theories People Actually Believed
No Luke, R2-D2 is your father (and it kinda makes sense).
It doesn't take much to get the rumour mill for Star Wars going. As Episode VIII speeds through production we're becoming inundated with theories about what secrets the sequel trilogy could hold.
Who are certain actors playing? What is this mysterious galaxy shattering reveal that Luke Skywalker will reportedly spill in The Last Jedi. And if you think it's bad now by the time we reach a point where December isn't some far off point imagine things to be as intense as a pod-race on death sticks. But don't forget the existingmovies, which in their four decades of existence have come with their very own theories, some disproved by subsequent releases, other existing purely to tie together the more conspicuous continuity errors across the saga.
One of the cutest has to be the one involving E.T.; Spielberg's alien race pops up in The Phantom Menace, which makes The Extra Terrestrial a Star Wars spin-off of sorts, beating Disney to the punch by almost three decades. The alien playing with Star Wars action figures makes it all very meta, but still pretty cool.
But let's move into the realms of vague plausibility (for some fans at least). Today we're going to highlight seven of the best theories that fan's actually believed (for a time at least) were true.
7. General Grievous Is Darth Maul
In a film that already had a lot to cover - Anakin's fall to the dark side, the end of the Clone Wars, the destruction of the Jedi Order, the birth of Luke and Leia - the addition of new villain General Grievous to proceedings caught fan's attention. Obviously an evil cyborg with a breathing problem has some direct parallels to what happens to Anakin, but some expected there to be more to this character than met the eye.
With his past initially a mystery and released material showing he would share quite a bit of screen time with Obi-Wan Kenobi some deduced Grievous was actually a cyborg resurrection of Darth Maul.
Everyone's favourite thing in The Phantom Menace, Maul had been seemingly killed by Kenobi at the end of the film, which in retrospect was a poor decision on Lucas' part; think of all that merchandising. Of course, the release of the film confirmed this wasn't actually true.
In supplementary material Grievous' real backstory was revealed; he was Kaleesh warrior Qymaen jai Sheelal who had worked with the Separatists to help reclaim his home planet before their relationship went south. In a bid to control him, Dooku and co. staged a ship crash and turned him into the mechanical general.
Maul has been resurrected multiple times in the Expanded Universe, most canonically in The Clone Wars, where he once again faced off against Obi-Wan.