If there was one part of the generally unloved Star Wars prequel trilogy that all fans could get behind, it was probably Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu. However bad the writing in the prequels was, Jackson’s purple lightsaber-wielding Jedi Master was a consistently entertaining badass. So when he dies at the end of Revenge of the Sith, some fans took it pretty hard—perhaps no one more so than Jackson himself, who has gone ahead and revised the story in his mind.

If you ask Jackson, Windu never died from that precipitous fall.

In a fan Q&A on Twitter, Jackson said that George Lucas chose to kill Windu because he was the only character left in Revenge of the Sith whose death would mean anything.

“I was trying to figure out, ‘Really? Can’t you just, like, injure me—whatever?’” Jackson said. “But in my mind, I’m not dead! Jedi can fall incredibly high distances and not die.”

When Entertainment Weekly asked Jackson what Alive Mace Windu has been up to all these years—if he was just laying low like Obi-Wan was on Tatooine—he agreed that’s precisely what he’s been up to. And when E.W. asked Jackson if Windu was just going to show up at the end of one of the new movies? “That would be fine by me.”

But how does George Lucas feel about this theory? According to Jackson, he signed off on the whole thing.

For some fans who have grown up with decades-worth of expanded universe content—all of which was rejected as canon a few years ago—this decision could be baffling. But, as Jackson noted, “George doesn’t have anything to do with it anymore.” So his word probably isn't gospel in the same way that, say, J.K. Rowling’s still is in the Harry Potter universe.

It’s easy to make off-the-cuff remarks when you’re no longer the one in charge of steering the ship with new movies. Jackson’s idea might never be solidified as canon outside of Lucas's approval, but hey—we all have our fan theories, and at least this one makes the ending of the prequel trilogy just a little bit more bearable.

But if the new guard ever does decide to fold in a Windu cameo, Jackson told E.W., “that would be fine for me.”