Mace Windu was such a badass. Whether he was decapitating Jango Fett with his purple lightsaber or deflecting Emperor Palpatine’s lightning, the dude was one of the Old Republic’s last lines of defense against the Dark Side.

So it was a damn shame when an easily-manipulated Anakin went and chopped Windu’s arm off, and then the Emperor dropped him out of a tower via the Force. But the man who played Mace, Samuel L. Jackson, says not to mourn the loss of the Jedi Master in Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith. Because according to Jackson, Windu is still alive! He said so himself in a recent social media Q&A with fans.

We then asked Jackson about his theory/wishful thinking that Mace was still alive when he stopped by Entertainment Weekly Radio (SiriusXM, channel 105) on Wednesday morning to chat with us on EW Morning Live and here’s what he had to say. “Of course he is! Jedi can fall from amazing distances. And there’s a long history of one-handed Jedi. So why not?”

So what then has Mace been up to since falling out of Palpatine’s tower — laying low like Obi-Wan did on Tatooine? “Exactly,” says Jackson.

Has the actor shared his views with the creative forces behind the Star Wars franchise? “Only George [Lucas],” says Jackson. “But George doesn’t have anything to do with it anymore.” And what was Lucas’ reaction? “George is like, ‘I’m okay with that. You can be alive.”