Star Wars: 10 Things The Last Jedi Has To Explain
Conundrums to be answered by the next instalment in the Star Wars saga.
The Force Awakens, for all it granted the world a Star Wars film significantly less divisive than the prequels, left a lot of threads frustratedly hanging. It was full of hints and questions that audiences only accepted because of the promise of further movies that would answer them.
The questions posed by The Force Awakens have proved irresistible to fans, who have populated the Internet with theories about the potential answers to the most intractable conundrums.
Perhaps that was the point of the many unfinished threads in The Force Awakens, since they mean people have been talking about the movie non-stop since its release. Nevertheless, the Force Awakens feels very much like a story without an end, with most of its plot threads yet to be resolved.
The Last Jedi, the next stage of the saga released in December, has a lot of these questions to answer. The whole of The Force Awakens seems written to set up the mysteries The Last Jedi, and the unnamed Episode 9, will answer, and if they don't deliver then The Force Awakens will feel hollow, exploitative, and worst of all unfinished.
10. What Is Maz?
Maz Kanata, mistress of the pirate drinking den on Takodana, is one of The Force Awaken's most peculiar new additions. She seems to come out of nowhere as the landlord of a safe haven Han happens to know about, but her interactions with the film's heroes suggests she is Force-sensitive at the very least. She also has a connection with Luke Skywalker somehow.
What Maz actually is needs to be explained, otherwise she's just a convenient plot device who knows way more than an incidental character should. Even her species is uncertain, much as Yoda's was, fuelling the possibility Maz is to fulfil a Yoda-like role in The Last Jedi.
The nature of her Force abilities are uncertain, too, as although she doesn't seem to be a Jedi she can 'read' people with an accuracy explicable only as a form of mind reading.
Finally, is she really a thousand years old, or was than just Han's figure of speech?