These ‘Star Wars’ Deleted Scenes Would Have Totally Changed ‘The Last Jedi’

If there is one thing that is guaranteed to move copies of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it is the promise of more Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) scenes. The extras deliver in that department with this cut scene between the Resistance pilot and the ex-stormtrooper, which takes place right after the good guys jump to hyperspace and escape from the First Order and right before Leia slaps Poe with a demotion.

Originally in-between those scenes, we got to see Poe catch Finn up on everything that happened while he was recuperating. This scene is one of two scenes that help underline Finn’s arc in The Last Jedi. Here, he flat-out tells Poe that he’s not a soldier and he did not sign up to join the Resistance. Poe responds by giving Finn his jacket (although he’s not a whiz with needle and thread so the thing’s still a little cut up from Finn’s lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren back on Starkiller Base).

After the First Order’s second attack on the Resistance fleet, the one that killed Admiral Ackbar and left Leia in a coma, we find Finn clutching the transceiver transmitting the fleet’s location to the faraway Rey (Daisy Ridley). Finn looks paralyzed, totally inactive, and not even BB-8’s cheerful chirps can get him to snap out of it. And then BB-8 does something totally tearjerky: he plays a hologram recording of Rey’s last words to Finn from The Force Awakens. This rouses Finn, who also notes to BB-8 that it was weird the droid recorded that private moment. This scene, along with the previous one, show early on that 1. Finn is not a member of the Resistance and 2. He only cares about saving Rey.

The one deleted scene you absolutely, positively need to see is this one, because it gives us what we really wanted from The Last Jedi: More! Fish! Nuns!

This scene slides in right after Luke’s (Mark Hamill) big speech to Rey about the failings of the Jedi, how they let Darth Sidious rise to power right underneath their Force-sensitive noses. It also serves as Rey’s third test, the one we never got to see in the film. The test is as follows: Rey sees a fleet of ships arriving on shore, and Luke tells her that they’re raiders that show up once a month to pillage the village of the Lanai (a.k.a. the fish nuns). Rey wants to dive in and save them, but Luke responds with some harsh Jedi wisdom: if Rey uses extreme force to save them, then the pillagers will just come back even stronger next month–and Rey likely won’t be around to save them next month. Rey doesn’t care; she jumps into action, charging into the fray with lightsaber drawn. But when she arrives, she finds something less frightful and more…footloose and fancy-free. She crashes a Lanai party where the fish nuns get down with their fish dudes! Even Chewie and Artoo are in on the action (er, the partying action, not the frisky action). Luke pulls the classic “point-of-view” line defense when Rey confronts him, and he tells her that the Resistance needs a fighter like her and not an old man like himself.

This scene is great because it includes more fish nuns, obviously, but it’s also great because it really underlines Rey and Luke’s differing mission statements. It sets up their conflict clearly, and it allows Rey to flat-out tell Luke that he’s nothing at all like what the man she looked up to and that he’s really disappointed her. You get this sentiment from other scenes that were left in the movie, sure, but it’s kinda cathartic to see Rey actually say those words to her not-quite-master’s face.

By the time you get to Finn and Rose’s infiltration mission in The Last Jedi, there’s a lot going on and the movie is barreling towards its explosive finale on the salt planet Crait. That’s why the Resisters don’t face all that much resistance when they sneak on board, grab Imperial disguises, and go about their mission. Originally, though, the tension was ratcheted way up and writer/director Rian Johnson used Finn’s history as a stormtrooper to heat things up. After donning their black duds, the trio (which includes Benicio del Toro’s hacker/traitor DJ) walks across what looks like the First Order’s answer to Dunder Mifflin. Just some evil drones in their evil cubicles doing evil! BB-8 even bumps into his evil counterpart, BB-9E.

Then our heroes reach an elevator and, just as you think they’re safe, a squad of stormtroopers gets on one story up. Finn, Rose, BB, and DJ are now in closed-quarters with a handful of stormtroopers–and one totally recognizes Finn! The tension gets thick as Finn confronts the leering trooper, and Finn even slides his hand on his holstered blaster, ready for a shoot-out. But just before things can explode, the stormtrooper reveals that he’s just impressed to see his old buddy in an officer’s uniform. Congrats on the promotion, Finn! Shoot-out avoided!

The deleted scenes also give us more of Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose, including this feisty moment that shows an edgier side we don’t get to see in the film. This one comes right after DJ sells Finn and Rose out to the First Order, as they’re handcuffed and on their knees in front of General Hux and Captain Phasma. Hux approaches Rose, picking up her necklace and placing it as an artifact from the Otomok system. Basically, Hux is calling out Rose’s hometown and calling all of them vermin, even hinting that he had a hand in the downfall of Rose’s colony. Hux taunts Rose by placing his finger under her chin–and then she bites it. She bites the poodoo out of his finger! And she doesn’t let go, not easily! Hux finally pulls his finger back from her and orders their execution.

You don’t lose much plotwise by this scene getting cut, and you still get to see plenty of shades of Rose throughout the film. Still, this deleted moment shows Rose’s ferocity unlike anything else in the movie. Don’t mess with Rose!

When it comes to big adventure movies like the Star Wars franchise, character deaths are always big moments. You spend entire movies wondering whether or not a character is going to bite it, because a death either means a character is off the table or the story’s going to have to figure out a workaround to bring them back. That’s why this deleted scene is so important, because it puts a new spin on Captain Phasma’s (Gwendoline Christie) apparent demise.

The scene takes place after she falls to her presumed death in the movie. Instead of being engulfed in flames, we see cracked-helmet-Phasma clawing her way back onto the platform along with a few stormtroopers. Surrounded and outnumbered, Finn resorts to telling the truth: he tells everyone within earshot that it was Phasma who lowered the shields on Starkiller Base, thus ensuring its destruction. He says that all he had to do was put a gun to her head and she complied without hesitation. Just as the stormtroopers seem to consider turning on Phasma, she takes out all four of them with a succession of blaster shots. But before she can attack Finn, he’s grabbed a big ol’ cannon and blasts her away.

The big difference here is, though, we don’t see where she lands! In the film, we see her fall to a fiery death on a crumbling spaceship. In the deleted scene, we just see her get blasted offscreen. The former is way more definitive than the latter! This scene leaves way more wiggle room to bring Phasma back, but it’s place in canon is totally contradicted by what we see in the final film. Sorry, Phasma, but your best chance at survival has been rendered non-canonical!

Where to watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi