He is easy to miss. But if you slow down the Anakin and Obi-Wan fight scene in Revenge of the Sith, you can spot a hidden character on Anakin’s left shoulder. Just who this person is was uncovered through an interesting tale of investigation. In the end, we almost know the identity of Mustafar Man, but his legacy lives on.
A Hidden Character: Mustafar Man
If you watch the Obi-Wan and Anakin fight scene closely, you can spot Mustafar man. At least, that’s a name that has developed for the hidden figure toward the end of their duel in Revenge of the Sith.
This past Reddit forum broke down the scene and gathered a vibrant discussion about the mystery figure behind Anakin’s left shoulder. Follow-up posts revealed that Mustafar Man had piqued the interest of many fans and prompted further investigations.
This 2024 Star Wars Gaming article delved into this “hidden cameo” and situated it as a filming mistake aligned with the “Jeans Guy” in The Mandalorian, a crew member mistakenly shown in a shot. For those not familiar, we can see the accidental Jeans Guy in the background in this scene.
So, the trail for Mustafar Man first led to identifying a “quirky mistake,” as the above article conveys, that contributes to unknown aspects about the movie. In this case, this background figure was detected by fans almost twenty years after Revenge’s release.
Yet, we were still left with questions about Mustafar Man, such as whether he was actually intentionally placed in the scene or not. If so, who is the person behind the mystery character?
Who Is Mustafar Man?
This video started to take up the challenge of answering these lingering questions. The commentator concluded that it probably wasn’t a Force Ghost or anything along those lines. Instead, the figure was most likely “a stunt person” who was standing behind Hayden Christensen during the filming with a blue screen.
As speculation circulated on social media, Todd Vaziri, visual effects artist at ILM, took up the challenge. Vaziri analyzed the greenscreen footage to determine what exactly had happened. He catalogued Mustafar Man along with other movie mishaps, such as in Glory and Goodfellas.
Vaziri conveyed through Ian Kinzler’s article, “The Force Ghost in the Machine” (in the same link above), how he figured out that Mustafar Man was a stunt rigger. Vaziri said he discovered “a man—likely a stunt rigger–wearing not a robe, but a peculiar shirt that resembled one, standing behind Hayden.”
The face of this stunt rigger, whose identity still remains a mystery, matched up “frame-for-frame” with the speculated “Force ghost” of online discussions. Vaziri also revealed how there were efforts to remove Mustafar Man, but in “the process of refining the edges of the green screen extraction,” the stunt rigger’s head was exposed again. So, Mustafar Man remained in the scene.
How Does Mustafar Man Fit in with Star Wars?
While we may dismiss this filming error as just that, we may also be inclined to view Mustafar Man as part of the endearing legacy of the Star Wars saga.
This article tends to support that point of view, agreeing with Vaziri that these imperfections add to the human element of making Star Wars. One that is frequently pointed to in this respect was when a stormtrooper hit his head in A New Hope. We may think of it as clumsy filmmaking, but with time, it adds an element that is similar to an easter egg.
We may be inclined to view mistakes in The Last Jedi more negatively, but also with time, we may reconsider them. How a Praetorian guard lost a knife while fighting with Rey fits into this category. This video takes on that misstep toward the end of its assessment of Star Wars movie mistakes.
The first one inspected in the above video concerns the Gonk droid in Return of the Jedi. Similar to Mustafar Man, if we slow down the movie, we can spot how the burning hot poles didn’t actually touch the droid, and that steam came up from the feet. We might call this a “stupid” mistake, but we may also think it’s part of making the saga.
Mustafar Man Revealed
Although we don’t know the identity of the actual stunt rigger, we know that this crew member was Mustafar Man. He was mistakenly caught in the fight scene between Anakin and Obi-Wan. His inclusion is what makes the film more memorable–these small mistakes clue us into the process of making Star Wars.