It’s not the fall that kills you.
Luke, Maul, and Palpatine each lost something physical in their falls down the reactor shafts. Luke loses his right hand and lightsaber. Maul loses his legs. Palpatine loses his body. In addition to these physical losses, injuries, and apparent deaths, they lost more intangible things as well. Luke loses his innocence and the idealized version of a heroic father carried by a fatherless boy. Maul loses his apprenticeship and eventually his sanity. Palpatine loses his power and his Empire.
Luke losing his right hand while losing his duel to Vader symbolizes the loss of desire and power Luke had to avenge his father’s and his mentor’s deaths upon learning that Vader is his father. He is denied the honor and righteousness he thought killing Vader would bring him. The loss of his, formerly his father’s, lightsaber parallels the loss of the idealized image he held of his father, the Jedi who died a hero. I have a whole essay in me on the symbolism in the conclusion of Luke’s duel with Vader in Empire Strikes Back, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
With the loss of his legs, and seemingly his life, Maul loses his Sith master and his apprenticeship. He loses everything that led him to that duel on Naboo in the first place, and he also loses the ability to move on from this point in his life. Despite the mechanical legs he eventually acquires, Maul is stuck in place. He loses his sanity and fixates on revenge against the Jedi who ruined his life.
Like Maul, Palpatine seemingly died in his fall down the reactor shaft. But while Palpatine loses his body, his spirit and consciousness remain and he manages to survive at the expense of using clone vessels. He loses the entirety of his physical being, and his apparent death costs him his Empire and power. He had decades of accumulated power bought with fear and human lives. In ‘death,’ he loses the ability to live independently of other people but continues to subject them to his will. His body and empire is gone, but what power he retains in the continued existence of his consciousness is still at the expense of other people’s lives.
