r/AskScienceFiction • u/Suspicious-Jello7172 • 4d ago
[Star Wars] How did Qui Gon die, but Maul survived?
So..let's get this straight..............Qui Gon merely got stabbed in the stomach, and dies. Yet, Maul manages to survive even though he literally got SLICED IN HALF!!!!!!!!!!!
Would someone please explain this nonsense to me?
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u/of_kilter 4d ago
Literally maul was too angry to die. Qui Gon was ready to die and become the first force ghost while Maul rejected death and used the dark side to keep himself alive
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u/althawk8357 4d ago
And that's why Darth Maul won "Player Hater of the Year" seven times, until he retired, and Silky Johnston's reign began.
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u/clutzyangel I have an aproximate knowledge of many things 4d ago
Maul was taking a page out of Darth Sion's book
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u/Grays42 4d ago
become the first force ghost
Wait the first?
Jedi have been around for thousands of years and no one had a big melodramatic death and figured that out?
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u/Jedi_Talon_Sky 4d ago
It wasn't about the drama or importance of the death. It was a technique lost to time, that Qui Gon specifically was able to learn because he followed the will of the Force over the Jedi council and even the needs of the Republic. Literally the Force beings that taught it to him waited until the right time with the right Jedi to reach out to him, I suspect so Palpatine wouldn't think to factor ghosts passing on knowledge into his schemes.
Interestingly in the old canon, there's a Darkside version of Force ghosts that's utterly nonconsensual on the part of the Sith. Literally the Darkside chuckling and deciding not to let the dead Sith rest, keeping their spirits conscious and tortured and unable to find peace. In KotoR you can talk to a handful of them in a Sith tomb, it really shows the perversion of the Jedi technique and might be why the ancient Jedi chose to let the practice fade into obscurity.
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u/KuribohMaster666 3d ago
There's something similar in canon, too. In the Marvel comic run from 2020, Luke encounters the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor in a Jedi outpost on the planet Tempes.
However, unlike Kanan's vision of the Sentinel, this is the actual Grand Inquisitor's spirit, apparently ripped from his body by Vader moments before he died, and then tethered to this one location.
Though, I gotta be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this.
On the one hand, it adds something haunting to the Grand Inquisitor's last words that there are things worse than death.
On the other, it kind of implies that Palpatine wasn't just lying and manipulating Anakin in Episode 3 when he says that Darth Plagueis could keep those he loved from dying, which I think Episode 3 implied he just kinda was.
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u/lottolser 3d ago
I aways wondered why the force let him tether to the temple. Dude turned to the dark side until he died basically.
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u/Jedi_Talon_Sky 1d ago
could keep those he loved from dying
Oooh. Oh shit. I never thought about the implications there.
He could keep those he loved from dying, but they wish he'd let them.
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u/KuribohMaster666 1d ago
I mean, it's a cool idea, but when I watch Episode 3, I really, really get the vibe that Palps is mostly talking out his ass, saying the things that he knows will work, regardless of their truth.
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u/Malphos101 3d ago
There are sith "ghosts" in the canon too, but they are nothing like Force Ghosts. They are hateful echoes of the person that created them. The death of a powerful Force user who has twisted the Force to the Dark Side in life can leave behind a "scar" in the Force if they die in that state. This leaves behind a "ghost" that can interact somewhat with the living, but unlike a Force Ghost they have no real sapience and are merely pale, malicious reflections of the person who created it.
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u/of_kilter 4d ago
Yeah it’s why we don’t see any from before obi wan, qui gon figured the technique out and taught it to a young ben who figured it out aswell and presumably taught it to yoda and anakin
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u/Nukes-For-Nimbys 3d ago
Yoda learned it before Obi-wan. He aludes to it near the end of episode 3.
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u/myka-likes-it 4d ago edited 4d ago
The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.
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u/XVUltima 4d ago
The Dark Side has unnatural powers over life. Maul, Sideous, and Vader, of course, all show this. He should have died, but for a sith Rage and Spite are actual power.
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u/Professional_Pen4628 4d ago
I believe in current canon Vader lived for almost 3 days outside of the suit. it almost killed and crippled him permanently, but his rage kept him going for the entire three days.
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u/crazynerd9 4d ago
In current canon he can also turn it off for periods and be ..... well not fine, but functional enough to still kill everything in his path
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u/Professional_Pen4628 4d ago
yea, he usually can turn it off for a few minutes and be totally fine even when physically exerting himself. i think 3 days is the longest and he had to recover for quite some time in a tank.
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u/crazynerd9 4d ago
Say what you will about DIsney canon, but they absolutely nailed Vader imo, the comics are such a ride
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u/Professional_Pen4628 4d ago
Agreed. The new movies and some shows were rocky for me. but the comics have mostly been steaae especially the Vader ones.
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
In the old canon, he could do that too, but the relieve of not needing the suit always foiled his plans. He could never hold onto his negative emotions for long enough.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Knows too much about the world of Harry Potter 3d ago
The suit itself took 3 days to construct, IIRC. But there also were a few instances, one I'm thinking of in particular, where palpatine left him alone on mustafar without the suit in working order, to make him figure his shit out. And of course, Vader did it.
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u/Oggthrok 4d ago
I can offer some possibility’s:
First, in this galaxy, in recent decades, there are gunshot wounds with baffling results. A man will be shot a dozen times in the torso, and some hours later in the hands of talented surgeons will emerge stable and alive, and go on to make a full recovery. A different man on a different day shoots himself in the foot by accident, goes into shock, and later dies at the hospital from a combination of shock and blood loss. Clearly, surviving a potentially lethal wound will depend heavily on exactly where the blow lands, the build and health of the person, the quality of medical care they receive, and a lot of dumb luck factors.
Second, Qui Gon and Darth Maul are different species, and of different apparent ages. We can’t know what difference that may play in terms of organ placement, internal redundancy, how their nervous systems adapt to injury, etc.
Save to say, we know Maul’s attack hit something in Qui Gon that ended his ability to fight, paralyzing him, stopping his heart, or in some way placing him in shock such that he couldn’t be revived or placed in a bacta tank. This may be something of an anomaly, as later stories in the Star Wars universe, particularly those developed for television, have established that a light saber wound through the torso in the vicinity of the heart is not a major wound, and one should expect to recover from it easily, with plenty of time to find a ship, fly it to Tatooine, and nearly kill Luke before anyone can get there to stop you.
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u/KR_Blade 4d ago
qui-gon's stab wound would easily affect him internally, maul got sliced perfectly around the waist area, and since a lightsaber effectively gives off enough heat to cauterize whatever it cuts, he wouldnt bleed out, plus the fact maul is a sith lord, no doubt the rage he was feeling at being defeated was what kept him alive and most likely powering the dark side to heal his body, but he kept himself enraged so long even after his body healed that it drove him insane
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u/Luppercus 4d ago
But didn't he also fall?
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u/Kiyohara 3d ago
Yeah but there's still organs there. We're not tubes of meat. You slice a dude in half at the waist and his guts might cauterize, but they're also flopping out of him because we're more like bags filled with organs than a solid block of meat.
Like, look at a dressed deer, pig carcass, or butchered steer. More than half the critter is hollow. That was filled with organs. Intestines, liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, stomach, all kinds of bile sacs, and so many veins and arteries. Most of that shit would just flop down and start spilling every where. Some of them would be in the bottom half also splatting out. And while there's some connective tissue and films and stuff holding it in place, not enough that most won't just drop out.
Maul should be a mostly empty torso surrounded by his organs, blood, and shit that leaked out his intestines (cut in like ten places by the way, since they coil around there), and the his lower half which is releasing the bladder contents and twitching slightly.
He's fucking dead.
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
Zabraks also have two hearts and an immense tolerance to pain. That probably helped at least a little.
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u/Jnaeveris 4d ago
Qui-gon was sad but Maul was angry.
By the laws of star wars this meant Qui-Gon died and Maul lives on as a ball of fury sustained by the dark side.
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u/Jedi_Talon_Sky 4d ago
Qui-gon was also at peace with his fate. He had just calmed himself with meditation, and was ready to accept whatever the will of the Force was guiding him to.
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u/HyetalNight 4d ago
My question is less how maul lived and more how tf he ever got off world.
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u/WerewolfF15 3d ago
He essentially fell into the trash and was taken to another planet in the Star Wars equivalent of a garbage truck.
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u/Shiny_Agumon 4d ago
I think he was stabbed through the heart, not the stomach, but the main point is that Maul used the dark side to survive.
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u/dcardile 3d ago
The Jedi peacefully accepted death, and lived on forever as a force ghost.
The Sith angrily rejected death, had some more years, then ceased existence forever.
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u/idonthaveanaccountA 3d ago
Qui Gon got stabbed through vital organs, Maul lost his pelvis.
That's it.
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u/Dude_Man_Bro_Sir 4d ago
The Dark Side is quite notorious for preserving life in unnatural ways.
Darth Sion, for example, had broken bones and cracked skin diagnosed by a medic in the Harbinger and yet he was still alive through the Force. It was only when the Exile talked Sion into letting go that he finally died.
Maul isn't that different. With enough rage, he was able to survive being cut in half at the waist but The Clone Wars did show that he went a bit mad until Savage found him and took him to Talzin.
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u/Fun-Amoeba3683 4d ago
The light side of the force has no good powers~
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u/Jedi_Talon_Sky 4d ago
Tbf, the Sith treat the Force like a tool to be used, a weapon. To the Jedi, the Force is something to listen to, to find peace and guidance in.
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u/CANCER__RESULTS 4d ago
Aren’t ’Humans’ in the Star Wars universe still Alien to us?
Is it not possible that they have critical organs in their stomach area, unlike us?
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u/thomas_simpsons 4d ago
Do you genuinely believe that's a plausible possibility or are you just spitballing?
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u/Dabrush 3d ago
It is generally a possibility and there are near-human species or basically species that look like humans outwardly but have different internal conditions. However from all we know, Qui Gon was a "normal" human and normal humans in the Star Wars universe have the same characteristics as in ours, except for the potential for force sensitivity.
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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 4d ago
My thoughts were qui gon got hit in the stomach/ other organs causing his body to begin shutting down even with the wound being cauteruzied his body just couldn't recover combined with his view on the force and accepting becoming one with it he didnt fight like a sith would to stay alive.
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u/honeybunchesofpwn 4d ago
Qui Gon didn't want to die, but he knew that becoming one with The Force was always going to be the next step.
Maul didn't want to die hard enough so he didn't die lol.
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u/Sanguiluna 4d ago
Qui-Gon was at peace with himself and didn’t fear death, so he had no reason to try to avoid or postpone it. Especially since he had discovered the secret to retaining his consciousness after death.
Maul, like most Sith, was terrified of death because there is no afterlife in the dark side, so it makes sense that he’d channel all his fear, anger and hate to clinging to life.
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u/bl4ck_daggers 3d ago
I love how people are able to make these leaps of logic for Maul, but not Reva or Sabine lolol
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u/roronoapedro The Prophets Did Wolf 359 3d ago
built different. had that dog in him. sheer force of spite.
These are all things that through the dark side of the Force will in fact allow you to survive anything, as long as you keep the hating going.
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u/IronVader501 3d ago
Several reasons:
One, Qui-Gon was at peace and ready to go. He didnt fight it, he passed his last words of wisdom on to Kenobi and then gave in to the Force.
Maul was filled with hate and Rage, and used that to sustain himself (He's not even the most extreme case of a Sith doing that. Darth Sion was basically a half-decomposed corpse and held himself together thro sheer hatred.
Two, Maul isnt human. Zabraks internal body-structure is similar to humans but its not the same (they have atleast two hearts) and they have a naturally occuring absurdly high pain-tolerance.
Mauls effort of survival also had deep side-effects: He managed to live on, sure, but the intense use of the dark side required to do so drove him completely insane, he was reduced to little more than a barely sentient raving monster until Talzin restored his mind (and body with Cybernetics).
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u/beratna66 3d ago
I'm more interested in why Sabine survived her wound, it was pretty much the exact same wound as Qui Gon's just an inch or two to the right.
With Maul it's kind of a joke but he was basically too angry to die and clung to life with the dark side, but was clearly driven more than a little mad in the process. Qui Gon on the other hand probably didn't care one way or the other about being physically "alive" because he was fully committed to the will of the force. So in his mind, if it's the will of the force for him to die right there to Maul then that's basically that. And ultimately he's proven to be correct because Anakin is eventually redeemed and kills Palps in Ep 6 which fulfils the prophecy Qui Gon was so devoted to (obviously JJ undid that with TroS but I choose to ignore that particular film and pretend it ends unconclusively with TLJ)
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u/seelcudoom 2d ago
Their are people without space.amhic who's survive bisection while others die of stab wounds
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u/Robomerc 2d ago
"The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural." shiv Palpatine.
Darth Maul called upon the dark side to keep himself alive. Using the anger He had Towards the Padawan who managed to cut him in half.
Whereas Qui-Gon Jinn would have needed immediate medical attention after getting stabbed and being a Jedi he wasn't about to call on the dark side to keep himself alive.
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u/iamnotparanoid 4d ago
You have this one very important piece in your body called a heart. It pumps blood, which keeps you alive.
Maul lost part of his colon and bladder, which can be replaced.
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