Summary
- Qui-Gon Jinn's death establishes that Jedi can die, breaking the belief that they fade away like spirits upon death.
- Qui-Gon's body being burned symbolizes the fate of all Jedi, mirroring the destruction of the Jedi Temple in Revenge of the Sith.
- George Lucas subverts the symbolism of Qui-Gon's death by bringing him back as the first Force ghost, ending his story on a hopeful note.
Qui-Gon Jinn is one of the few Jedi in Star Wars to foresee the fall of the Jedi before his untimely death in The Phantom Menace. But George Lucas didn’t kill Qui-Gon off merely because he’d figured out the truth about the Jedi too soon. Qui-Gon sacrifices himself at the end of the film in a duel against Darth Maul, one of the first Sith to appear in over a millennium. Till that point, the Jedi believed the Sith to be extinct. While Qui-Gon had trained and honed his skills under the tutelage of Count Dooku, he probably never expected to come face to face with a Sith assassin.
In a way, Qui-Gon was responsible for the fall of the Jedi, since he insisted Anakin be trained as a Jedi. But at the same time, if Qui-Gon hadn’t died, the audience would have missed out on George Lucas’ subtle foreshadowing of Order 66. Qui-Gon’s death left an impact on Anakin and Obi-Wan, yes, but his demise also served to teach the viewer more about what the Jedi were like during the Republic. He was one of the first on-screen Jedi Masters the audience got to follow.
