10 Star Wars Moments Deeper Than You Think
8. All The Severed Hands
There are few tropes in the Star Wars franchise more commonplace than a character having one of their limbs - typically their hand - cut off by a lightsaber strike.
And while this might seem like nothing more than a recurring visual motif for the sake of poetry, there's actually much more to it than that.
In the 2007 reference book Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force - which, while not officially canon, contradicts nothing in existing Star Wars lore - it's revealed that the act of cutting off an opponent's hand during a lightsaber battle is a technique known as "cho mai."
Cho mai, meaning "to cut off the weapon hand," is a lightsaber skill taught to Jedi as an honourable way of disabling an opponent without killing them.
Given that George Lucas was heavily influenced by samurai iconography when constructing the Star Wars universe, it totally tracks that he'd reimagine an act of dismemberment as one of dignified mercy.