Who knows. I keep hearing there was stuff cut from this film due to runtime and to keep it tight. I hear we lost a couple of Maz Kanata bits because Nyong’o “wasn’t delivering” and we may have lost a scene with Luke (though, I’m a big, big fan of how they actually left us wanting more rather than breaking the tension with anything additional).
That’s surprising, she did a great job in the scenes she had. I heard one similar rumor that they cut the character completely due to her performance, but it seemed like a reactionary rumor based on her not being in the trailers. Really, I think the CG characters didn’t fit enough with their marketing, or they feared that a short glimpse would have people dreading another prequel type character. If anything was cut, I wonder if it wasn’t the visuals they were unhappy with rather than performance. They had forever to get better performances out of her, and we know she’s capable.