Obi-Wan Kenobi Survived in the Original Star Wars Script

Spoiler alert (a 39-year-old spoiler alert, but still): Obi-Wan Kenobi is killed in a lightsaber battle with Darth Vader in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). It's a hugely important part of the story, but earlier this week, Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew shared on Twitter that Obi-Wan's fate was actually quite a bit different in an early draft of the script.

Mayhew has been using the hashtag #chewscript to post photos of old Star Wars script pages, and on Wednesday, he blew fans' minds. As written on the page, Obi-Wan not only survives his brush with the Sith Lord, but proceeds to mow down some Stormtroopers as he makes his way to the Millennium Falcon. He then makes it aboard with a little help from his friends, and they hightail it out of the Death Star into space.

Needless to say, had this significant detail been kept in the final script, the iconic film would have been very different. Mayhew's tweet ends with the escape, so Star Wars fans are left to guess what might've happened next in this particular version of the story. Thank goodness for fan fiction.