Captain Phasma’s exit in The Force Awakens is one of the movie’s most questionable scenes. If you’ll recall, Finn, Han Solo and Chewbacca dumped her into one of Starkiller Base’s trash chutes, and then destroyed the planet. It was an ignominious moment for Phasma, and one that Last Jedi director Rian Johnson nearly made much worse.
Image: Disney
It’s no spoiler to reveal that Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) faces off again with her former underling FN-2187, otherwise known as Finn (John Boyega), in The Last Jedi. Johnson felt his original idea for how the scene was going to go down was killer:
“When I was first writing, I got really excited because I’d written a line where she said, ‘I was stuck in that garbage thing for three weeks,’ and he gives her a look and says, ‘What did you eat?’” Johnson explained to us.
… but then he had the realisation you probably just had.
“Then I realised, no, [Starkiller Base] blew up,” he said. “If she was in the garbage chute, that means she blew up with the planet.”
Of course, that didn’t happen. Her escape from Starkiller Base’s trash bin was chronicled in Marvel’s Captain Phasma comic book series, but more to the point, Johnson and Lucasfilm had bigger plans for Phasma than getting trashed and exploding. “We needed her alive here,” Johnson said. “Mostly because I wanted to hang out with Gwendoline Christie.”
Now Phasma is back, and eager to get revenge on the ex-Stormtrooper who almost made her eat dianoga for dinner for three full weeks. The Last Jedi is out December 14.