Everything We Learned From The Force Awakens' Deleted Scenes

If this scene had remained in the film, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) would have been the first of the original trilogy's main cast to appear in The Force Awakens. (And Greg Grunberg’s Snap Wexley would’ve appeared much earlier.) She receives a distress signal from a Resistance officer that the village on Jakku has been destroyed along with Poe’s X-wing, and that BB-8 is nowhere to be found. Ever the wise leader, Leia ominously advises, “never underestimate a droid.”

Snap Wexley (Greg Grunberg) gets in a good line about lightspeed being "the only speed," but other than that, we can see why this moment with the X-Wing pilots was deleted in the first place: Had it stayed in the movie, it would have utterly spoiled the surprise of Poe and the Resistance flying in to save the day at Maz Kanata’s castle.

There’s a bit of a narrative gap between Kylo Ren first sensing Han Solo has landed on Starkiller Base and when father and son fatefully meet on that catwalk. This small scene, one of the most fully-rendered of the deleted bits, shows that there was supposed to be a lot more going on when Finn, Han, and Chewie go to rescue Rey. Kylo and a team of Snowtroopers check out the crash-landed Millennium Falcon, which Ben Solo presumably remembers from his childhood. There’s not a lot here, but it does help explain that Annie Leibovitz photo of Kylo in the snow from Vanity Fair last year.

The movie's third act shows Finn and Rey escaping Starkiller Base to face Kylo Ren in the woods, but this scene shows how they got there. It only has basic CGI, and must’ve been cut pretty early on in editing, but it’s still a nice team-up moment for Finn and Rey. They start out with Finn driving the speeder and Rey firing a blaster at oncoming Stormtroopers, but switch spots so that Finn can use his marksman skills to help them make a clean getaway.

After returning to the Resistance Base in the Illenium System, Rey watches over Finn as he’s tended to by medical staff. The medic (Dr. Kalonia, whose patronizing “you must be so brave” to Chewbacca was a big laugh line in the movie) tells Rey that Finn will be fine. It's just a bit of footage between the Leia/Rey hug and Rey departing the base to find Luke, but it’s indicative of the slack that was in The Force Awakens before it was trimmed down to its ultimate 136-minute runtime.

If there’s one scene we wish had been in the film, it’s this one—which actually isn't available on the Blu-ray, but only on last week's Digital HD release. How did Han, Finn, Chewie, and Maz get out of the basement where Finn received Luke’s light saber? Fight their way through a Stormtrooper unit, it turns out—but not before Han reels off some excellent quips. First he calls Supreme Leader Snoke “Smoke,” and then wonders aloud, “What makes him Supreme?” It also helps show how Han recognized Finn wasn’t who he said he was (his boots), and it’s a much funnier Close Call than the one with Han and the smuggler gangs earlier in the film.