9 More Star Wars Subplots That Went Literally Nowhere
8. Midi-Chlorians
![Star Wars Mace Windu](https://d2thvodm3xyo6j.cloudfront.net/media/2016/09/d0afce87d6e579aa-600x338.png)
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.