Why J.J. Abrams Cut Out One of Maz Kanata's Star Wars: The Force Awakens Scenes

Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead.

We meet a lot of new characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens like Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and we got a fair amount of their story even though there are still mysteries surrounding them, but some characters Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) and Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyongo'o) got so little screen time that they didn't really have a chance to shine. We've previously heard reports that some parts with Maz got trimmed down in editing, and now we now why one scene was cut.

In the trailers for The Force Awakens, there is footage of Maz Kanata, voiced and motion captured by Lupita Nyong'o, handing a lightsaber to General Leia, but this scene was missing in the film, and now we know why this was cut. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, J.J. Abrams explained the reason:

That was a scene actually filmed, but we took out. At one point, Maz used to continue along with the characters back to the Resistance base, but we realized that she really had nothing to do there of value, except to have her sitting around…Lupita did film scenes on set for that sequence, but it felt like going right just to go left, and it was unnecessary. So we ended up leaving those things out.

A lot of us wondered where Maz went. the time we saw her is when Kylo Renn and his First Order Stormtroopers are attacking her watering hole on the planet Takodona, and she gets Finn to light up Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and fight some Stormtroopers. After that, we don't see her again.

I didn't really see her as an important character, and if, like Abrams said, she didn't have any further part to play in the larger narrative, it's easy to see why her scene was deleted for time and pacing issues.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now showing in theaters. Check out our Top 10 Best Moments from the movie.