9 More Star Wars Subplots That Went Literally Nowhere

The Phantom Menace caused a massive schism in the fandom by revealing that the building blocks of all life in the galaxy are Midi-chlorians, microscopic creatures which connect beings to the Force.

It's a choice by George Lucas which rubbed many fans the wrong way, who felt that the Force was better left as mystical rather than something defined within clear scientific parameters.

For a Force user's power to be quantifiably determinable by their Midi-Chlorian count robbed the franchise, in the eyes of many, of its more ambiguous, mysterious wonder.

It is, above all else, one of pop-culture's all-time most infamous examples of a fantastic concept being needlessly over-explained because... reasons.

And yet, despite George Lucas introducing such a lore-shattering concept, it's been scarcely mentioned in mainline Star Wars ever since. 

Midi-Chlorians have indeed been namedropped in a few episodes of The Clone Wars, but tellingly, a season two episode of The Mandalorian used only the short-hand "m-count" to refer to the Midi-Chlorians in Grogu's blood, almost as if the current creative regime is terrified of mentioning them.

While we absolutely know that Midi-Chlorians are still canon and out there doing their thing in the Star Wars universe, in story terms their utility basically hit a brick wall the moment the prequel trilogy was done and dusted.