I probably spend way too much time thinking about this, but every time I watch either Episodes 2 or 3 I’m left with the feeling that the key tragic sequences in the series both involve Mace Windu.

The first one is the most obvious. In Episode 3 he had a chance to kill Palpatine straight up but hesitated, leading to his bungee jump out of the Chancellor’s office without a bungee cord after Anakin’s betrayal. Cool cat, but died like a punk really.

The less obvious one is his beheading of Jango Fett in Episode 2. Don’t get me wrong, the Geonosis sequence is probably one of the best fight scenes in the prequels. But if you think about it, Jango was the weak link in all of Palpatine’s plans. There were probably only 3 characters in the whole galaxy that knew the details of Palpatine’s gambit to rule the galaxy by playing both the Republic and the Separatists against the Jedi. The first was Palpatine himself. The second was arguably Dooku, who lead the straw-man Separatist movement until Anakin relieved his shoulders of his head. The last had to be Jango, who was the source of the clones used by Palpatine as well as Dooku’s bodyguard on Geonosis. Capturing instead of killing Jango could have unraveled the whole plot.

But even still, it strikes me as unbelievable that at least Obi-Wan, if not Yoda and Mace, wouldn’t have been able to connect the dots on Jango. Obi-wan confronted him on Kamino and then sees him again on Geonosis. It probably doesn’t take too much brain power to wonder why the guy’s popping up on both sides of the fence.

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