When Disney acquired Lucasfilm and set out to produce a Star Wars sequel trilogy, it vowed to move on from the past and focus on new stories revolving around new characters. That trilogy proceeded to rehash old stories, botch its new characters, and squander almost every single existing icon. J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson were wading in treacherous waters continuing the stories of characters like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Leia Organa, who have been close to fans’ hearts for decades.
One way to avoid this kind of disappointment could’ve been to bring back a character who was met with a negative reception and incorporate them into the grander narrative in a way that retroactively improved them. Without a doubt, the most controversial character in the Star Wars universe is Jar Jar Binks. But, if the sequel trilogy reintroduced a post-Galactic Civil War Jar Jar who had outgrown his silliness while living through large-scale conflicts that directly resulted from his own mistake (calling on the Senate to give emergency powers to Palpatine, effectively allowing the birth of the Empire), then Jar Jar might have fit right in with the sequel trilogy’s story.
After the overwhelmingly negative response to Jar Jar’s debut in The Phantom Menace, the character was quietly sidelined in Episodes II and III and the rest of the Gungans were benched entirely. Ahmed Best is a massively talented actor, but his performance as Jar Jar in the prequel trilogy was limited by very weak writing. Thanks to George Lucas’ juvenile sense of humor (the same sense of humor that came up with Temple of Doom’s monkey-brains banquet scene), Jar Jar’s role as the “comic relief” in The Phantom Menace is restricted to fart jokes and tired stereotypes. Lucasfilm managed to bring in Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz to come up with BB-8’s voice – they could’ve found some funny people (or even just kept Hader and Schwartz around) to come up with a few well-crafted Jar Jar gags for Best to work with.
Post-Revenge of the Sith stories that explore Jar Jar’s later life – few and far between, though they are – have focused on the guilt he feels for having unwittingly helped Palpatine’s rise to power. If the sequels leaned into this angle, Jar Jar could’ve seen the rise of Kylo Ren and the First Order as a second chance to be on the right side of history and joined the Resistance to help any way he could. Having been a close friend of Padmé’s throughout the prequel trilogy, Jar Jar could’ve developed a similarly close friendship with Leia as a part of the Resistance.
Alternatively, the sequel trilogy could’ve leaned into the “Darth Jar Jar” theory. It’s unlikely that Lucas was ever planning to reveal Jar Jar to be a Sith Lord, and a key player in Palpatine’s master plan as opposed to a pawn, but it does line up with some evidence in the movies. His ineptness is so over-the-top that it could easily have been an act to throw people off. He managed to infiltrate the Galactic Senate, so he must be smarter than he lets on. He gave absolute power to Palpatine (convincing Senators to vote in favor while waving his hands around, suggesting that he’s powerful enough with the Force to use the mind trick on the entire Senate), paving the way for the rise of the Empire. Plus, Darth Plagueis technically abolished the Sith’s “Rule of Two,” so there is precedent for Palpatine to have a few apprentices at once.
If the filmmakers had decided earlier on that they were going to bring back Palpatine, then they wouldn’t have needed to waste so much time on Snoke – who, by Rian Johnson’s own admission, was “fundamentally uninteresting” – and could’ve introduced Jar Jar as the zombified Emperor’s Ebony Maw-style right-hand man. This trilogy was painfully short on strong villains. After the unceremonious deaths of Snoke and Captain Phasma, an evil Jar Jar might’ve been just what the doctor ordered.
Although The Mandalorian has gleefully embraced the prequel era with pit droids, Ahsoka Tano, and even a Gungan reference, the sequel trilogy decidedly distanced itself from the prequels out of fear of provoking the same vitriolic response from fans (which didn’t work out so well). J.J. Abrams’ insistence on ignoring the prequels by reframing Vader as a straightforward villain and rehashing the original trilogy instead of embracing new ideas meant that including Jar Jar in Episode VII was incredibly unlikely. In fact, Abrams wanted to go the other way – he told an interviewer that he considered including Jar Jar’s skeleton in the Jakku desert as an Easter egg, which would’ve just perpetuated the unnecessary Jar Jar hate.
Including Jar Jar would’ve fit in nicely with Rian Johnson’s intentions to subvert expectations and give Star Wars fans what they didn’t realize they wanted. Very few Star Wars fans actually did want to see a bitter old Luke Skywalker who drinks milk straight out of the udder and couldn’t care less about fighting the good fight. But the unexpected return of Jar Jar Binks, either as a redeemed hero or a fully-fledged Sith Lord, could’ve won over the fan base with the right execution.
Colin Trevorrow’s original script for Episode IX didn’t include Jar Jar, but it was interested in bringing the saga full circle with references to The Phantom Menace, from the title Duel of the Fates to Coruscant’s major role in the plot. The reappearance of Jar Jar in the sequel trilogy would’ve been a genuine surprise for audiences. Since most fans don’t hold him as close to their hearts as Luke or Leia, the sequels’ filmmakers would’ve been free to subvert all the expectations they wanted.