I was not really a Maz Kanata fan. I didn’t really like her design, she felt like a stand-in for Yoda, and she had too many things going on despite her relatively minor appearance in the story. But the character is set to return for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. However, director Rian Johnson reveals that we’ll be seeing less of her in the sequel.

Speaking to EW, Johnson says, “She has a smaller part in this than she has in The Force Awakens, but it’s a really fun part, and Lupita is so awesome,” Johnson says. “I’m just happy I got to work with her.”

When you consider that Maz doesn’t have a lot of screentime in The Force Awakens, I can only imagine that she’s in one or two scenes tops in The Last Jedi, which is fine. This is not a major loss to the franchise, and while I love Lupita Nyong’o, she deserves better characters. Maz is Abrams doing a riff on Yoda and providing an exposition dump that could be handled better in a tighter narrative.

Additionally, when you consider that there are new characters that need screentime like Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo and Benicio Del Toro’s DJ as well as the return of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), there’s not much time for a force-sensitive bar owner who already imparted a great deal of information to Rey (Daisy Ridley) the last time around. If there’s less Maz in The Last Jedi, I’m not exactly shedding any tears over it.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens December 15th. For more on the film, click on the links below:

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