12 Most Ridiculous Star Wars Resurrections, Ranked by How Silly They Are

Star Wars is full of drama, high stakes, and heartbreaking losses… until the character you cried over shows up again a season later like nothing happened. In the galaxy far, far away, death is apparently more of a polite suggestion than a permanent condition.

Here’s the ranking of the 12 most over-the-top “back from the dead” moments in canon, from “okay, I can buy that” to “are you kidding me?”

12. Poe Dameron

In The Force Awakens, Poe and Finn hijack a TIE fighter to escape the First Order. Everything’s going well until the ship takes a hit and spirals into the sands of Jakku, exploding on impact. Finn wakes up alone, sees the wreckage burning, and figures that’s the end of Poe. Later, when the Resistance regroups, Poe simply turns up alive, explaining that he was thrown clear, made it back to base, and carried on with the mission. The film treats it as a casual reunion, even though it looked like a very final moment earlier.

11. Leia Organa

The Last Jedi delivers one of the most shocking visuals in the sequel trilogy when the bridge of Leia’s ship is obliterated by enemy fire. She’s blown into open space, floating still, her skin frosting over in the vacuum. It has all the weight of a character’s farewell. Then, without warning, Leia opens her eyes, reaches out with the Force, and glides back toward the shattered bridge. There’s no urgency in the movement, no explanation afterward,  just the unspoken idea that the Force can make even the cold void survivable.

10. Fennec Shand

During The Mandalorian Season 1, Fennec is left lying in the desert after taking a blaster shot straight to the stomach. The framing, the quiet aftermath, and the way the scene cuts away all sell it as the end for her. In The Mandalorian Season 2, we learn Boba Fett found her and brought her to a cybernetics expert, who rebuilt her damaged organs with mechanical replacements. By the time we see her again, she’s back in peak form and quick to show off the modifications whenever the topic comes up.

9. Chewbacca

In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey tries to stop a prisoner transport from taking off. She and Kylo engage in a tug-of-war with the Force until lightning arcs from her hands, striking the ship and causing it to explode. The audience is led to believe Chewbacca was inside, with Rey’s reaction sealing the moment as a devastating loss. Not long after, it’s revealed he was never on that transport at all — he’d been loaded onto another one entirely. The reveal comes quickly, turning what looked like a major turning point into a brief misunderstanding.

8. Ahsoka Tano

The Star Wars Rebels Season 2 finale ends with Ahsoka locked in combat against Darth Vader inside a crumbling Sith temple. The doors close, the building shakes apart, and everything about the moment suggests she won’t make it out. Fans assumed for years that this was the end of her story. Two seasons later, Ezra Bridger steps into the “World Between Worlds,” a strange plane within the Force, and physically pulls her out of that exact moment in time. She avoids the outcome entirely, vanishing from the duel and reappearing later without having to endure its ending.

7. Reva

Reva’s survival story in Obi-Wan Kenobi begins during Order 66, when she’s impaled by Anakin Skywalker as a youngling. The injury is shown as fatal, yet she lives on to become one of the Inquisitors. Years later, Vader drives a lightsaber through her in precisely the same spot. Once again, she survives, traveling across the galaxy and continuing her mission. The series never offers a detailed explanation, instead framing her endurance as a mix of willpower and the sheer determination to see her goals through.

6. Grand Inquisitor 

In the second episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Reva thrusts her lightsaber through the Grand Inquisitor’s midsection, and he collapses immediately. The other characters treat it as his death, and the audience is given no reason to think otherwise. Near the end of the series, he reappears without so much as a visible limp, delivering a sharp line about revenge strengthening the will to live. The lack of any visible recovery makes his return feel abrupt, as though the wound had been little more than an inconvenience.

5. Darth Maul 

Maul’s fall in The Phantom Menace is as definitive as they come: cut in half at the waist by Obi-Wan, tumbling down a reactor shaft, and disappearing from view. Yet The Clone Wars reveals that Maul’s rage and connection to the dark side kept him alive. He ended up on a junk planet, where he built himself a crude, spindly set of cybernetic legs and lived in isolation until his brother found him. Once restored, he resumes his quest for revenge, carrying the scars of both his injury and the years spent in exile.

4. Kylo Ren

In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey runs Kylo through with her lightsaber during their fight on the ruins of the Death Star. Moments later, she reverses the damage with a Force healing technique, leaving him alive but shaken. Later in the film, Palpatine hurls Kylo into a deep abyss on Exegol, a drop that seems impossible to survive. Yet he returns again in the final act, having somehow climbed back in time to intervene in Rey’s fight against the Emperor.

3. Rey 

After deflecting Palpatine’s lightning back at him in The Rise of Skywalker, Rey collapses, unmoving. The quiet in the aftermath makes it clear she’s gone. Ben Solo approaches, cradles her, and channels his own life force into her through the Force. Rey awakens while Ben fades away, leaving her to live on in the final scene. The sequence plays as a bittersweet reversal, where the cost of saving her is the loss of the last Skywalker heir.

2. Boba Fett 

Return of the Jedi sees Boba Fett knocked into the Sarlacc pit during the chaos at Jabba’s sail barge. The creature’s slow digestion is described as lasting a thousand years, and Fett disappears into its maw without a trace. In The Book of Boba Fett, he claws his way back to the surface after burning his way out from the inside, emerging battered but alive. The series shows him collapsing in the desert, where he’s eventually found by Tusken Raiders, beginning the next chapter of his life.

1. Emperor Palpatine 

At the climax of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader lifts Palpatine and throws him into the Death Star’s reactor shaft. The Emperor vanishes into a burst of energy, followed by the complete destruction of the station. In The Rise of Skywalker, it’s revealed that Palpatine survived by transferring his essence into a clone body with the aid of Sith alchemy and loyal followers on Exegol. The details are left largely unexplained in the film, making his return feel like the most over-the-top twist in Star Wars canon.