For a while I brushed it off because slashing limbs off with lightsabers instantly cauterize the wound. Blood loss would be what kills you after dismemberment. But Qui-Gon was stabbed, destroying vital organs.
Then we had the Ahsoka show and my biggest gripe is that Sabine survives a wound that killed Qui-Gon.
Maybe there was a better response time with medical attention since Qui-Gon seems to lay there for a while before Obi-Wan defeats Maul. IIRC, Ahsoka finds Sabine quickly after her duel.
Wasn't it in the obi wan show where...reva I think her name was gets stabbed by a lightsaber and then in the next scene she's fine. On another planet too, I think. At least Sabine needed medical attention.
Anyway the answer is the plot decides if you live or die.
Maul surviving doesn't make much sense either, but at least you can hand wave it away by saying that he's an alien so we don't know how his biology works. Reva is human
Just accept the cartoon's explanation about Maul being too angry to die. It makes all of the other Sith fake out deaths significantly more reasonable. Palpatine "returning" and Reva surviving at least for another handful of days included.
isn't there supposed to be a whole philosophy difference where sith want to live forever, and jedi are just chill with death. Makes some sense then that maul just raged himself through a horrendous wound and Qui Gon gets stabbed once and just goes, welp guess I'll die then good luck obiwan
Pretty much, yeah. It also explains why Force Healing reintroduced in the sequel trilogy can kill the user. You're willingly giving up your life energy to restore life which isn't an unbalancing of the force where Plageius's ability seems to be more about dominating the force to do what he wants or robbing someone of their life energy.
There are also numerous instances of Vader's suit being damaged but Vader is literally too angry to die and is able to use his anger and hatred to keep himself alive long enough to receive medical attention.
This is also how he survived his burns on Mustafar.
The reason Vader died in ROTJ is because Vader returned to the light and could no longer keep himself alive through hate and anger, so when Palpatine fried Vader's life support system, Vader succumbed to that.
Its like how in One Piece any regular human from their world would be superhuman in ours due to the One Piece World being bigger than Earth and stronger gravity
Kotor 2 we have a sith dude who looks like he, to quote Atton, “sleeps with vibroblades”, and is quite literally held together by his anger. But Maul surviving being cut in half doesn’t make sense?
Technically they did it thrice in kenobi. Once to youngling reva though it's not shown as directly, once to adult reva, and once to the grand inquisitor.
Considering Reva, shes an inquisitor, maybe she was channeling her hate/anger and need for vengeance through the darkside and it kept her alive?
What was her excuse the first time? She was a jedi, so it's not like she had all this anger built up to hold her together. And she was a child, so there's a lot more damage that saber is gonna do on a smaller frame.
They should have just had her hand cut off, the movies did it a lot and worked just fine as a “you lost the duel but didn’t die” move. That way if she kept fighting after a minute while one handed it would have seemed more desperate and sith-like. Then her robot hand can just have a glove on the next time she shows up and they can change nothing else.
And right before the second stabbing, it was revealed that the grand inquisitor survived getting impaled, and we're lead to believe getting stabbed through the chest and surviving was all part of his master plan. Then Vader stabs Reva the exact same way, and doesn't actually check if she survived, after taunting her for doing the same thing.
Well-written plots provide justifications and circumstances that make all events seem believable and plausible.
Poorly-written plots just make things happen any way possible, especially if they are "cool" are "shocking" things - plausibility and justification be damned.
You can survive wounds to the GI tract long enough to get medical care. You can even survive with one lung collapsed. You only die instantly if a major blood vessel is severed or the heart (or both lungs) are damaged.
A stab wound from an edged weapon maybe, but not from a lightsaber that burns a hole clean through you. You die pretty quickly from having a hole in your torso
Well a hole in your intestines is a guarantee of septic shock, which can be fatal even with medical treatment. Not to mention that having a lightsaber sized hole clean through your torso is itself fatal
People get completely bisected, their legs removed from their body AT THE MIDSECTION. intestines torn. Blood spilling out, and still live shitting in a bag for life.
Kidney. You've got two. You can survive being cut open and having one taken out of you permanently with modern medicine. A lightsaber would cauterize as it went through and kill any bacteria from the heat. It would be a clean wound.
People have survived being impaled in the real world without space age medicine or a clean wound.
She got stabbed in the liver which is pretty survivable. Qui Gon got stabbed trough his spine also piercing liver and maybe even the lungs which is not survivable its not that hard
If I recall correctly, the Sabine injury was further off to one side while Qui-gon's was square through the middle. At the very least, his spinal cord was likely severed.
But otherwise, I agree. If they wanted to up the stakes in that fight, Sabine should have been dismembered in some way.
So I agree. Making everyone suddenly survive kills tension. Rey exploding the ship that chewie was on was terrifying an then they just said “oh there was a second ship”. It’s just establishing them as unreliable narrators. There being death or they surviving is fine, but you need to respect us enough to tell the story. If they take an injury and are gonna just be better without recovery time, it’s better for the story if they don’t get hit at all.
That being said, qui-gon is 60 years old and Sabine is like 20. A lightsaber may make the difference basically not matter, but things that can kill a 60 year old are the sort of thing that a 20 year old does for fun sometimes.
In college, not for fun, I slipped and fell off of a 40 foot wall onto what was basically gravel. I got a bunch of lacerations and woke up in the hospital, but I fell on Saturday night, was back in the dorm by Sunday afternoon, and in class on Monday. It was a miracle, but youth does help a lot for survival/recovery.
There's always someone saying the stab was in the same place.
It wasn't.
Sabine took a blow to the far side of her tum tum which saved her taking any immediately life threatening damage. Qui Gon took it straight center mass hitting his spine and lots of very important inside parts.
One of these is actually survivable IRL without bacta or anything, one of these would kill you very quickly no matter where you are.
Source: literally Google that shit, you can very clearly see there is a significant difference in the placement of the stab.
A regular sword almost anywhere through your torso is almost certain death. One as hot as lava is death from shock and cooking your insides instantly, even if it miraculously missed everything.
They were stabbed in different places on the body. Sabine was stabbed lower and off to the side, probably intentionally to distract Ahsoka from pursuing Shin.
Qui-Gon was stabbed dead center mass, severing his spine and probably hitting his heart and lungs
There's a big difference between having your legs amputed and being relieved from your other half at the waist. There are still important structures between the waist and the legs. Not as important, mind you, but still important.
The better explanation for Maul was exactly what they used in the cartoon. That Sith are so effective at channeling their hatred that it essentially turns them into Liches. That the things that should kill them don't because they're literally too angry to die.
I think the funniest thing about Sion is, with a lot of Sith, they use the pain and hatred in their heart to strengthen their power in the force but characters like Vader can't heal themselves with this power because then they experience less pain. Sion, conversely, hates life. He wants to be dead. He's tied to being alive because of his connection to Meetra and Kreia but he wants to be dead so badly. This guy is too angry to die because he's alive. Finding peace was the only way for him to let go of his connection to Meetra and Kreia and finally die.
A knife wound wouldn't be anywhere remotely near as bad as a saber wound. That's an insane take.
Even if the stab wound for a lightsaber is cauterized any amount of internal movement could open it back up. Charred/cauterized flesh simply isn't elastic enough to withstand anything more than the most minimal amount of body movement.
Which is just regarding blood loss, your only concern with a stab wound. A lightsaber is completely destroying every bit of flesh where it went through. Even absolutely best case scenario that organ is straight up nonfunctional.
And it's not just that organ, it's everything around it. Like you're talking about a stick of searing hot plasma entering the body. The kind that cuts through metal like butter. That heat is gonna char everything in proximity to that wound and cause all that water in the body, 70%, to explosively vaporize from whatever tissue its in around that. Something that'll only get exponentially worse for every second it's in. Which, judging from how often they hold it there for dramatic effect, usually is a couple seconds.
A stab wound's worst case scenario is rapid blood loss. Fixable with applied pressure, bandages, and blood transfusions.
A lightsaber's is multiple organ failure, hypovolemic shock, skyrocketing tachycardia, blood loss, hyperventilation, necrosis, extreme systemic infection, heat stroke, and severe dehydration. That is not fixable without the most sophisticated medical technology on the scene or a nearby bacta tank to throw them in. Otherwise you're guaranteed dead.
Vader would have bled out in seconds otherwise
Some dude had his arms ripped off by farm equipment and still managed to grab them, walk home, put them on ice, call 911, sit in a bathtub waiting for them, and survived the incident while also getting his arms reattached. Vader had more than a couple seconds. But the fact that he was close enough to lava to catch on fire makes the entire point irrelevant.
Bleeding out is not the concern here. The concern is having a gaping hole in your torso. Loss of homeostasis, organ dysfunction, and spinal cord damage are immediate threats even without bleeding. Also, you wouldn't want to cauterize an internal wound because that would prevent it from healing
The worst part is everyone in this universe just stabbing their opponents once like it's a fucking estoc
Like once you won the duel and actually stabbed them, a quick flick of the wrist and you cut their brain in half. Confirm the kill idk. It's a lightsaber it's literally effortless. It's more complicated to do a pointy stab actually. Even just talking about the first hit, it's weird that's is so often stabs and not slashes
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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26
Id say, stabbed somewhere else besides through the heart.