Spotlight: Star Wars’ Forgotten Heroines, Part 3

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, this author posted a list of some of the greatest heroines in the original Star Wars Expanded Universe (or EU, for short). The list was so long and so detailed that it had to be split in two to give these many characters as much attention as they deserved. This post will follow the same lines, as I have learned more about other heroines in the EU since those earlier posts were released.

Not all the details about these characters will be in order. I may also mix a few items up, the way I did with the previous lists. To quote Mara Jade Skywalker, however, “I was young then.” My skills in research and my experience reading more Star Wars EU material has made it a little less likely that I will bungle my descriptions. At the very least, my mistakes won’t be as egregious now as they might have been had I attempted this list at an earlier time.

Still, be forewarned that this is not a comprehensive or perfect catalog. If you want to know more about these heroines from a galaxy far, far away, I suggest doing your own reading and research. There are plenty of other fans out there who know more about these ladies than I do, and they will be happy to tell you about them!

Now, let’s get started, shall we?

Tash Arranda: An Alderaanian girl with Force-senstivity, Tash and her younger brother Zak were orphaned when Tarkin ordered their homeworld destroyed. Why they were off-world at the time this blogger does not recall, since she has yet to read any of Zak and Tash Arranda’s adventures. I believe that, during the course of their books series, they travel around either with their uncle or with a recording of their uncle’s consciousness stashed in a droid. He may have come back in the flesh, having feigned death, but at this moment I cannot recall for certain which it was.

Both Tash and her brother have an interest in archaeology, just like their parents (who perished on Alderaan). This helps them in their adventures across a war-torn galaxy as they run across ancient terrors and present threats. I am not sure just what Zak did after rising to the rank of Jedi Knight, but Tash focused primarily on archeology. She may have done the occasional diplomatic mission or settled minor disputes, but that was the extent of her involvement with the new Jedi Order. Outside of the big battles, where it was all hands on deck, we didn’t see much of her after this. What a shame.

Xaverri: A stage magician of considerable skill, Xaverri makes her first appearance in A.C. Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy (which comes with a lot of Warnings for Younger Readers!). Not much is known about her history, as she only shares the bare outlines with Han during their six months together. Even so, we do know that at one point Xaverri had a husband and several children.

Somehow, she or another member of her family crossed the wrong people in the Galactic Empire. Or they were in the wrong place at the really, really wrong time. Either way, the response was swift and horrible; Xaverri’s husband and children were all killed. How she survived is a mystery, but the fact is that she did. And she made the Empire pay repeatedly for robbing her of the most precious people in her life.

After her six month stint as Han’s girlfriend, wherein he helped her grift and hoodwink numerous Imperial officials out of lots of money and into a lot of trouble, Xaverri disappeared from his life. He was able to call on her to help defend Nar Shaddaa, the moon that is a homeworld to thousands of smugglers and other criminals, from an Imperial assault. But she made it clear she didn’t want to get back together with him. In point of fact, she had sworn off marriage and motherhood altogether, determined never to be hurt as she had been before.

The last time we see Xaverri is in Vonda N. McIntyre’s The Crystal Star. In disguise, Xaverri watches the extra-dimensional alien Waru as it heals people with injuries – after devouring other lifeforms hoping for healing. Han watches this happen to an alien child and, as a father himself, is so sickened by the event that it takes Xaverri some time to help him calm down. This leads to an unfortunate misunderstanding between him and Luke, who is already suffering from the space/time warping effects of the titular crystal star.

Leia, thankfully, is only too happy to meet Xaverri when the woman helps rescue Anakin Solo in the novel’s grand finale. Having heard about her from Han already, though their meeting is brief, the two women reach an understanding that requires few words to pass between them.

Where Xaverri goes after this is anyone’s guess, but it is likely that she maintained her one-woman crusade against the Empire for the rest of her life, even after the Imperial Remnant signed a peace treaty with the New Republic. They had to have corrupt and/or bloodthirsty officials still in their ranks, after all. And that means they were perfect fodder for a grifter with nothing left to lose.

Rillao: Unfortunately, Rillao only appears in Vonda N. McIntyre’s The Crystal Star. A Firrereo, this Force-sensitive alien woman was once a student of Darth Vader. But she was a complete disappointment to him because he could not corrupt her to the Dark Side. Finding the Dark Side repulsive, Rillao used her skills to heal and help others rather than dominate and harm them.

Her Firrereo mate, Hethrir, on the other hand was the perfect apprentice. Vader was able to turn him completely to the Dark Side, to the point that when the Dark Lord told him to prove his “humanity” by destroying his homeworld, Hethrir did so. He loaded all the adults of his people aboard ships to watch their world and their children burn. Then he put the surviving adults in cryostasis and sent them on a silent voyage into the depths of space.

After this event, Rillao fled both her mate and Vader. Due to their strong ties to the Force (both Rillao and Hethrir used the Force rather than khyber crystals to power their lightsabers), Vader had hoped that any offspring they had would be even stronger. However, when Rillao and Hethrir’s son was finally born, he proved to have no Force-sensitivity at all.

Rillao didn’t care about that. She was content to have Tigris and to see him grow up. But she never told him about his father, a mistake that came back to bite her after the Emperor fell. Tracking down his erstwhile mate, Hethrir stole Tigris from her and imprisoned her in a torture web on one of the cryostasis ships holding the remnant of their people. He left her alone there for five years, until Leia discovered and freed her while searching for her own kidnapped children.

Nothing more is known about Rillao and Tigris’ fates after the two were reunited in the final battle of The Crystal Star. Finding his son had no Force-sensitivity, Hethrir abused him by treating him as a servant, promising him power he could never deliver. The five-year separation and the fact that his mother had refused to tell him about Hethrir at all severely strained Tigris’ relationship with Rillao, but Han thought it likely they would find happiness together at some point in the future. I rather wish the EU writers had shown them as a content mother-and-son team in other stories, but unfortunately they never got around to it. Le sigh…..

Cilghal: A Mon Calamari and a diplomat, Cilghal appears in Kevin J. Anderson’s Jedi Academy trilogy. She reappears in a minor role in the Young Jedi Knights series, when Jacen and Jaina Solo and their friends tangle with the Diversity Alliance. And she has a fairly substantial role in the New Jedi Order books as a member of Luke’s Jedi Council, from what I have heard.

From what little this author has read of her, Cilghal is a fairly calm character with a soothing bearing. In some ways, she reminds me of the X-Men’s Storm; motherly, regal, and fierce in defending those who cannot protect themselves. During the Jedi Academy books Cilghal has to use her still untrained healing abilities to save Mon Mothma from a debilitating illness.

She soon finds, however, that this sickness is man-made – literally. Mon Mothma was poisoned with nanomachines that slowly kill her cell by cell. Desperate to save the New Republic’s Chief of State, Cilghal siphons off the microscopic machines with the Force one at a time.

The process takes all night but, in the end, Mon Mothma lives. Cilghal practically has to crawl out of the Chief of State’s hospital room, where she collapses in the arms of a nearby guard with a bowl full of the nanites that she removed. Filling the men in, she staggers off to her quarters and takes a well-earned rest. But this tediously courageous act won her fame and respect across the New Republic, which makes it easy to ignore her lightsaber skills – something the Diversity Alliance discovers the hard way. 😉

Kirana Ti: A Witch of Dathomir, Kirana Ti doesn’t pop up too often in the old EU novels, though she might have been seen more in the comics. We first meet her in The Courtship of Princess Leia, when Han and Leia have their fiery, days-long date on the forgotten world. After the Hapan Prince, Isolder, tries to convince Leia to marry him, a jealous and fearful Han kidnaps her to avoid losing her forever. He brings her to a planet he won in a Sabacc game: Dathomir.

Unknown to Han, though, the planet is ruled by women. Since most men cannot wield the Force and a fair number of women can, the women rule by rite of being able to fend off the natural threats of Dathomir with their “magic.” More disconcerting for the stranded Rebel hero and Princess, however, is the fact that the Empire has a base on Dathomir – a base run by Warlord Zinj, who has it in for Han Solo!

Kirana Ti is among the warrior women of the Singing Mountain Clan, which takes Han and Leia in after they are shot down over Dathomir. She helps pull the Millennium Falcon into the clan’s mountain abode. Later on, she helps her clan deal with the Nightsisters, the Dathomirian Witches who have gone over to the Dark Side and now seek a way to get off planet to spread their evil. When Teneniel Djo, mother of future young Jedi Knight Tenel Ka, uses the Dark Side in a fit of rage Kirana is there to see her do it. She bursts into tears at the sight of her sister warrior’s actions, jolting Teneniel back to her senses.

Sometime after this, Kirana Ti joins Luke’s first class of Jedi hopefuls. She leaves behind a daughter and a husband on Dathomir to do it, and I do not know if she continues to live on her homeworld or if she only visits it occasionally after completing her training on Yavin IV. My money is on her leaving home from time to time to attend to Jedi and galactic business. From what I can tell, the Witches of Dathomir like staying on their planet more than traveling around the galaxy. After a few missions Kirana Ti probably went home, where Luke or another Jedi could come by any time and pick her up for a mission if they really needed her.

Gara Petothel: Gara Petothel has a complex history. Born on Coruscant to Imperial intelligence operatives, when they died on a mission the Empire took her in and trained her in the same art. After the fall of Coruscant (or Imperial Center, as it was known under the Empire) to the New Republic, Gara decided to find a new career with one of the Warlords that had risen up to claim power, fracturing the Empire into dozens of little territories run by them.

After one of these battles saw Imperial Admiral Trigit betray his crew to save himself, Gara activated an escape plan to protect herself and the others on board. Furious that an Imperial officer and captain of a Star Destroyer would do this to his people, she leaves him and his command crew to die at the hands of a Wraith Squadron pilot. She ejects in an escape pod and is picked up by the New Republic, which she plans to stay in until she can get a job with Warlord Zinj.

In the process, though, she is hired by members of Wraith Squadron to clear a female squadron mate’s record. This woman is being blackmailed by a member of the New Republic military. Her male compatriots want him gone and their friend freed. At first Gara wants to say no, but she suddenly realizes this would be a great way to get into Zinj’s good graces. So she says yes – on one condition. If she pulls this mission off, she has to be guaranteed a place in either Rogue or Wraith Squadron.

The boys aren’t happy about this, but they can’t use official channels to help their friend. It’s Gara or no one. So they accept and, after she pulls it off (and ends up in the infirmary because the bad guy punched her hard), Gara is accepted into the Wraiths under her false name.

At first it’s just another mission. Just more data to compute. But then Gara soon becomes attached to her squadron mates, developing a sense of loyalty to them. She also starts to fall in love with fellow Wraith Myn Donos – the shell-shocked leader and sole survivor of an X-Wing squadron she helped destroy while under Admiral Trigit’s command.

These competing signals nearly drive Gara insane. When her identity is finally revealed she swears loyalty to the Wraiths and the New Republic. But Myn blanks out in a blind rage and nearly shoots her down. Only the speedy, smart actions of another Wraith pilot and her quick hand on the hyperdrive lever lets her escape.

Joining up with Zinj at last, Gara maneuvers herself into a position to beam information on his movements to her squadron mates. She escapes Zinj’s embarrassing defeat with a group of aliens he had modified mentally and physically. Once secure in a new identity to avoid prosecution (former spy and all that; the New Republic can’t just let her go, even if she did help them out…), she makes contact with Myn and invites him to come visit her to see if there’s still a chance for them to have a relationship.

According to later material, there was more than a chance. Gara and Myn got married and had a family. During the Second Galactic Civil War they managed to rescue some of their former squadron mates. Though Gara is happy to see them, she insists they not try to recruit her children into their ranks to fight in the war.

On the whole, Gara is probably one of the most interesting heroines in the original Expanded Universe. Her story is fantastic, a must-read for any Star Wars fan. You can find her in Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron books, which carry next to no Warnings for Younger Readers. The books are some of the best in the original EU, and Gara is a big reason why. Don’t take my word for it – pick up the Wraith Squadron books and read them to meet her “in person”!

Dia Passik: A Twi’lek from Ryloth, Dia Passik (or Dia’passik, as the Twi’leks spell it), was a slave for many years. Coaxing piloting lessons out of men who would stop off at her master’s pleasure barge, she eventually stole a ship and blew up said barge – with her owner on it. Eventually, she worked her way to the New Republic military and got accepted to Wraith Squadron.

During an undercover mission to Zinj’s Star Destroyer, one of her fellow Wraiths was caught and killed. To keep up the disguise for the rest of the team, Dia shot his dead corpse in the throat – and smiled like a predator when she did it. On the way back to the base she had a psychological meltdown as the enormity of what she’d done hit home. She’d shot a dead friend, someone they should have fought to bring home in one piece. And she did it without remorse or hesitation.

Garik “Face” Loran

Coupled with all the fighting she’d done beforehand and the abuse she’d received as a slave girl, Dia’s distress at this action led her to try to kill herself. Garik “Face” Loran, an actor turned New Republic officer and Wraith, was able to prevent her from committing this heinous act. The two entered a relationship thereafter that lasted at least as long as their stint fighting Zinj. After the Wraiths were disbanded, they apparently split up amicably.

That was Aaron Allston’s intent, anyway. Later writers had the two married. Dia had a daughter by this point (though apparently this girl wasn’t Face’s biological daughter – don’t ask me how that works), and they were very happy together. Dia had to take their daughter on the run when assassins came after them to get to Face, but by the end of the adventure the family was reunited and safe once more. Not a bad ending, all things considered.

Rhysati Ynr: Rhysati was a human woman introduced in the X-Wing novels. She joined the Rebellion after the Battle of Endor and became a member of Rogue Squadron when Wedge Antilles re-assembled it to fight the campaigns that would eventually win Coruscant for the fledgling New Republic.

Almost as soon as she joined the Squadron, Rhysati began a Romance Reel with fellow pilot Nawara Ven. Trained as a lawyer, the Twi’lek was an average pilot, but he definitely won her heart on the first go around. The two were an item not long after signing on to the Rogues, and this helped them infiltrate Imperial-held Coruscant more easily.

During a battle, however, Nawara lost the lower part of one leg when he was forced to eject from his X-wing. Though outfitted with a prosthetic, this severely limited his already standard flying and fighting capabilities, reducing him to a position in the administrative side of the Squadron. He and Rhysati still saw each other a lot during this time, and after a while they decided to quit the Rogues to get married and start a family.

Whether or not Twi’leks and humans could have children in the old EU, I do not know. Given how the new timeline treats the subject, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rhysati and Nawara did have children of their own at some point. In either case, ten years after Admiral Thrawn’s campaign against the New Republic, Nawara and his wife were happily helping smuggler and professional pirate Booster Terrik run his Star Destroyer-turned-casino, the Errant Venture.

Rhysati and her husband seem to disappear after this, but that might be a good thing. Considering how much of a mess the Yuuzhan Vong invasion made of the galaxy, this author prefers thinking that they found a nice, safe place to raise their family while all the fighting occurred somewhere else. Still, I expect they made an appearance or two at the Rogue Squadron reunions later in life!

These are all the heroines I have for you today, readers. If you can, check out the books in which they appear or read their files in the “Legends” section of Wookieepedia. These are ladies who deserve to be remembered – especially since Lucasfilm would rather they stay forgotten!

Until next time, readers:

“The Force will be with you, always.”

The Mithril Guardian

Book Review – Star Wars: Revan by Drew Karpyshyn

If you are thinking that this blogger is on a bit of a Star Wars kick, readers, you would not be far wrong. The main reason for this is that I have had time to explore both SW timelines further recently. With all of this new information and entertainment in front of her, this blogger has had little else on her mind except for a galaxy far, far away.

And before you ask, no, I have not seen Rise of Skywalker. Nor do I intend to see it. The film was never on my radar, in no small part due to the fact that the sequel trilogy lost me with The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson insulted this writer and at least half the fan base for Star Wars with that film, leaving J.J. Abrams to make the best of a bad situation – one which, arguably, began with the poor treatment of the original characters in The Force Awakens.

There were plenty of good stories from the original EU that Disney could have adapted for film. Most will automatically think of the Thrawn trilogy, and while that would have been a great animated movie series, I personally think Disney should have done damage control on the Yuuzhan Vong story line and following arcs. As stated elsewhere here at Thoughts, doing this wouldn’t have been terribly difficult. Rather than take that tack, however, Disney chose to do what they have done. The results speak for themselves, so this author will say nothing more about them.

With that less-than-positive introduction, we turn to today’s subject. Revan is a book based on the sequel to Lucasfilm/Bioware’s runaway video game success, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. At least, I believe the novel is based on the script for Knights of the Old Republic II. It may have left some details out, but that is not necessarily a demerit. Both KOTOR games could be played for hours on end, even when the gamer knew the story so well they could skip certain sections with ease.

The book is set two years after Revan saved the Republic from his former friend and Dark Side apprentice, Darth Malak. Now married to Bastila Shan, he and she are living quietly in an apartment on Coruscant, well out of the public eye. On a city world of millions it is easy for two people – even two powerful Jedi – to disappear and stay out of sight.

But while he is enjoying his hard-won peace and happiness, Revan is troubled. For the last three nights he has awoken in a cold sweat after dreaming of a world covered in perpetual lightning storms. Getting out of bed, he rinses his face in the refresher sink before stepping out onto the balcony.

The Capture of Revan 

He is not out there long when Bastila joins him, having awoken despite his best efforts to let her sleep. The two discuss the past, with the young wife reminding her husband that he is no longer a Dark Lord of the Sith. She also laments her part in his mind wipe, realizing now that it was not a good thing to do. However, Revan is grateful for the mindwipe. If it hadn’t been for that, he reminds her, then they would never have met or married.

With the problem seemingly settled, the two go back to bed. But only one falls asleep. While Bastila gets some rest her husband remains awake, trying to figure out what the dreams mean. So far, all that is clear is that a storm is coming, one borne on the wings of his past actions. And even though it is still far off, it threatens to wipe out the Republic, the Jedi, and everyone for whom the Prodigal Knight cares.

Meanwhile, on the storm world of Dromuund Kaas, Lord Scourge steps out of his shuttle. Dromuund Kaas is the heart of the Sith Empire, and Scourge has not been to the planet since his academy days. He has only returned now because a member of the Dark Council, Darth Nyriss, has requested his help ferreting out assassins who have attempted to kill her several times.

He quickly learns that he was not, in fact, summoned by the Dark witch of her own volition. The Sith Emperor has implied that members of her retinue are responsible for the assassination attempts. In order to quell the trouble, he “suggested” she employ Scourge to investigate the people of her house. And any “suggestion” from the Emperor of the Sith practically counts as an order.

Should the young Sith Lord discover that the Councilor has engaged in treasonous behavior, he will of course make that report to the Emperor, at which time Nyriss’ life will be immediately forfeit. The only problem with that plan, naturally enough, is that Nyriss might catch him before he makes his report – or even after he does make it – and kill him. If he wants to live, let alone advance into the upper echelons of the Imperial court, Scourge must tread carefully.

Between the two of them, Revan and Scourge grope their way to a horrifying realization. As one searches for answers from his past and the other is drawn into a present conspiracy, they each discover the same terrifying solution to the puzzle. For the Emperor is not only powerful; he is stark, raving mad. And that madness will sweep away all life in the galaxy if he isn’t stopped.

As other reviewers have noted, the prose in this book is not the best. I suppose, though, that since the target audience for this novel is not the general Star Wars fan base. It is mainly meant for the people who played Knights of the Old Republic one and two.

Scourge receives more character development and “screen time” than Revan, which is a bit of a bummer. The writer may have also been told that he didn’t have to focus on the Prodigal Knight much. Still, the scenes we get with Revan are fun and give gamers who played KOTOR more time with the protagonist they pretended to be for the duration of the story.

We also get a nice look at Mandalorian culture in this book, along with some quality time given to Canderous Ordo, everyone’s favorite barbarian warrior. Although he is given too much of the limelight in my opinion, Scourge makes up for it by being an interesting guy. He is ruthless and horrible, as the Sith usually are, but he also has a twisted sense of honor that can’t help but win a reader’s affection.

There are no explicit or extreme content Warnings for Younger Readers that I noticed. Nothing the married couples in the book do is dwelt on, while the evil perpetrated by the villains remains at acceptable levels. To be perfectly honest, this blogger believes that Revan probably qualifies more as a novel for younger Star Wars fans than it does for the adult members of the fandom.

For that reason, I have no reservations about recommending it to them and suggesting more mature fans avoid the book. It’s not bad if you know what you are getting into and don’t care, but if you pick it up believing it will match the more adult entries in the Expanded Universe, you will be disappointed. This was a book designed for youngsters and die-hard fans of a video game, not experienced readers looking to spend some quality time in a galaxy far, far away.

May the Force be with you, readers!

The Mithril Guardian

Spotlight: Star Wars Rebels – Agent Kallus

You may or may not have seen my post “Star Wars Rebels’ Zero Hour and Season 3 Review.” It was a long post. In that article, one of the things about Rebels’ season three which I noted was Agent Kallus’ defection to the Rebellion from the Empire. Some people were surprised by his change of heart this season, and I admit to being taken aback that he became the new Fulcrum.

However, I was not in the least bit astonished that he turned Rebel. If you are in the mood to look up my previous posts on Rebels, you will find in one or two of them that I mentioned a belief that Kallus would change sides. I knew right from the start that Kallus had “the heart of a Rebel.”

Of course, this begs the question: How did I know?

A friend asked me that a little while ago. It is a good question, one I cannot answer in a scientific manner. I knew when I saw the first advertisements for Rebels that Kallus would be an Imperial goon; that he would be an antagonist. I knew that his name comes from the word callous, which means “being hardened and thickened…feeling no emotion; feeling or showing no sympathy for others: hard-hearted.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)   But even as I watched Spark of Rebellion, I looked at Kallus and thought, “You’ll be a Rebel someday, pal. Just you wait and see!”

How did I know? There were lots of little giveaways, I think. Not many people would notice them, especially among the show’s target audience. I have been a child before. I know how they see things. I gave up on lots of characters fighting on behalf of evil as a kid, only to be blindsided with shock when they became good guys later on. It is totally understandable that kids would see Kallus as nothing but a hopeless baddy, irredeemable and undesirable. One even gave him the nickname WAFAR: Walking Advertisement for a Razor, in reference to his huge sideburns.

Despite helping to create the moniker and adopting it myself, I did not see Kallus as a hopeless villain, and below are some of the reasons why.

From the get-go, I noticed that Kallus did not mind going into battle at the head of a legion of Stormtroopers. When Vader steps on the scene, he is usually the central point of the conflict. He is neither with the Stormtoopers nor goading them on from behind. If there are Stormtroopers present when Darth Vader enters the scene, they are in the background, firing at the heroes. Vader takes center stage whenever he shows up.

Kallus was different. He was not in front of the Stormtroopers, like Vader typically is, he was in the front line with them. This is also a departure from the aloof attitude demonstrated by most Imperial officers. They are all safely behind the Stormtroopers when they appear on screen. We have never really seen an Imperial officer, agent, or other bigwig dive into the thick of a fight against the Rebels. The obvious reason for this is that the Imperials are perfectly willing to dish out the pain, but they are not willing to experience it themselves.

Kallus is different. He is willing to fight. He is willing to brawl. Whether he is using a blaster, his Lasat bo-rifle, or his own fists, he enjoys the thrill of combat. He is not afraid of getting hurt, though he is not reckless and does not wish to get himself killed. Nevertheless, from the start it was obvious that he enjoyed a good scrap.

This, I think, was my first hint that Kallus had the makings of a Rebel. Another hint was that he was not prone to preening, as most Imperials in Star Wars are. I do not recall seeing Kallus boast over anything he did while with the Empire, even his successes as an ISB agent. One Star Wars encyclopedia claims that he turned down numerous offers of promotion in order to stay on the front lines. So he did not have an unhealthy, inflated opinion of himself. Hmm, not your typical Imperial reaction to success, eh, readers?

To the observant viewer, this shows that Kallus is not interested in power or advancement in the Imperial bureaucracy. He is interested in his job as an ISB agent because he enjoys it. He wants to be on the front lines, fighting what he thinks is the good fight. His scrupulous attention to his job, his lack of interest in prestige and power, his love of combat because he is at his physical peak, hinted that he had a sense of honor. Though he kicked a Stormtrooper down a Kessel mineshaft and did some other, similarly nasty things, Kallus definitely possessed an aura of real dignity which is lacking in most of Star Wars’ Imperial characters.

Hint number three about Kallus’ eventual change of heart was that he was smart. Most Imperials are so busy trying to “get ahead” in the Imperial power structure that they have lost whatever imagination they had before they became part of the Emperor’s machine. You watch them while they are working on the bridge of a Star Destroyer or some such place, and they are all vying for “their fair share” of the glory. This means that they never look beyond their own nose. Because they are so busy looking out for good ol’ Number One, they do not understand the Rebels.

The Rebels would never leave a man behind if they could find a way to save him. Kallus realized this at the start of the series and, like Grand Admiral Thrawn, he began to profile our heroes. He did not do it through studying art, as Thrawn does, but by assessing their actions in combat.

There are benefits to both kinds of deduction, obviously. Thrawn’s fascination with art and what it shows about a particular artist’s or species’ mindset is a superpower all by itself. It is what allows him to make such great, overarching plans. If there is one thing Thrawn is proud of it is his intellect, the fact that he is the smartest man (or Chiss) in the room, and so he holds all his subordinates and enemies in contempt. Kallus’ understanding of the Rebels is based more on their performance in combat, and so he never held them in complete contempt.

Kallus is not a genius, like Thrawn, but he is intelligent. He analyzed the Ghost crew’s patterns of attack and would be ready to meet them when they came running to the bait he had set up. His hand-to-hand battles with the Ghost crew, particularly Zeb, taught him their personal strengths and weaknesses.

In a way, this knowledge gave him a more realistic and basic picture of the Rebels than the one Thrawn has drawn up. Thrawn understands how they think; Kallus knows why they think the way they do. Thrawn is detached from his knowledge of the Rebels. With very, very few exceptions, he has not engaged them in personal combat. He has studied their tactics, yes, but he has done so through secondhand reports. Though thorough, these reports do not equate to actual experience.

Kallus has not engaged the Rebels simply with his head but by fighting them physically. He knows, therefore, that they will do the totally unexpected, not because of a picture they painted on a wall or a mask they left lying around. They will do the totally unexpected because they are determined to survive long enough to get a Rebellion against the Empire up and running. If someday they have to die so that a Rebellion can be born, then they will do it. But if they can find a way to survive they will take that chance, however slim or insane it seems to be. That is all there is to it.

Thrawn thinks he can synthesize thousands of years of art and battle tactics into an efficient metric by which to plan out the perfect battle. To an extent, he is right. But what Kallus knows and what Thrawn has not recognized is that heart beats brains every time. The Ghost crew’s determination to win, to look out for each other, trumped his every plan to bring them to face what he believed was justice. And all of his plans were remarkably neat, for an “average” Imperial. So how can someone so smart get beaten so often by people who, logically, should be easy to defeat?

The writers finally answered Kallus’ question in The Honorable Ones. After bushwhacking the crew in an Imperial factory orbiting Geonosis, Kallus follows Zeb as the Lasat tries to return to the Ghost via an Imperial escape pod. The two end up fighting while the escape pod jettisons, damaging the controls in the process and landing on an ice moon as a result. Zeb is knocked cold by the landing while Kallus breaks his leg.

The episode is actually nothing special, from the point of view of the plot. Two enemies who hate the other end up stranded together and have to work with one another if they hope to survive to rejoin their respective forces. We have seen this device used time and time again. It is not a particularly spectacular plot and, if handled badly, it leaves an awful taste in viewers’ minds.

But The Honorable Ones pulls it off very well – and not just because of all the “freak-out noises” Kallus makes. Having watched Zeb for so long, we know how he is going to react when he realizes that Kallus cannot fight because of his busted leg. Kallus, however, believes that Zeb will take the first opportunity to kill him. He repeatedly tries to get his hands on a weapon, but Zeb disarms him and does not hurt him, in spite of pointing out how easily he could kill the ISB agent.

Zeb then makes a crack about how Geonosis is supposed to be a desert planet. He knows very well that they are on one of the planet’s moons – a frigidly cold one, at that. But in order to ease the tension of their situation, he makes a joke about it. Kallus misses the joke and takes him seriously. He lectures Zeb as though the Lasat was a child, asking how he could be bested time and again by an ignoramus like him.

Zeb’s curt reply – “Get a sense of humor, Agent!” – must have surprised him. Due to a bad experience with a Lasat mercenary some years before, Kallus held all Lasat in contempt. Because of this past encounter with a member of Zeb’s species, he probably knows more about the Lasat as a race than anyone but Zeb and Thrawn. This hatred of his for the Lasat blinded him to their better qualities.

So Zeb pointing out that he was joking and Kallus not grasping it is one of the things that makes the Imperial agent sit up and pay attention. Zeb is not a genius but neither is he stupid. He was having a bit of fun at their expense, like any soldier who still held hope of rescue would. If Zeb had been a human or a fellow Imperial, Kallus might have understood that his comment was a joke. Instead, his bias blinded him to Zeb’s sense of humor.

Throughout the episode Kallus slowly learns to take off his dark glasses and look at Zeb as he is and not how his hatred has painted him. What he finds is an intelligent, honorable Lasat who is tactically bright. He also realizes that Zeb has something he does not. Several somethings, actually…. He has friends. Friends he believes in and trusts to come for him no matter what. Friends he knows will risk their lives for him because they have done it over and over again. Friends he will in turn risk his life to protect and help.

Kallus has no friends, not because he does not want them, but because they do not want him. With the Imperials, friends are extra baggage. They can get you demoted or put you on the chopping block for their mistakes. The Galactic Empire of Star Wars reminds me a great deal of Lewis’ description of Hell in The Screwtape Letters. Almost everyone in the Empire loves nothing greater or better than himself. They all hate each other to some extent and cannot wait to show up the person sitting next to them so they can climb the ladder to the Empire’s upper echelons.

And in The Honorable Ones, this is what Kallus finds out. He finds out that he has not been fighting for the right side at all. He has been working for an evil Empire, doing evil deeds in its name.

The way this is shown in the episode is when he apologizes to Zeb for what happened on Lasan. The initial mission statement was not to massacre the Lasat. At least, this was not the mission statement that Kallus and everyone below him saw. The Empire meant it to be a massacre from the beginning, but they knew that not all of their soldiers would gleefully agree to exterminate an entire species. So the Empire had to feed them this idea that they were fighting just one little battle but it spiraled out into an inevitable world-clearing assignment.

Kallus bought the lie hook, line, and sinker because he already hated the Lasat. Though he admired an individual Lasat’s honor and courage by accepting that warrior’s bo-rifle before the latter died, he did in general despise the species. It made him willing to listen to and obey the Empire’s lies even when part of him balked and said, “Maybe this isn’t actually the right thing to do.”

The real clincher comes at the end of the episode, when Kallus watches Zeb’s reunion with the Ghost crew from a distance. The kids rush up to Zeb, shouting with relief, while Hera offers the milder, “You had us worried,” line. Kanan’s brash, “I told you he was all right,” is the more manly way of expressing relief. It is clear that the crew is genuinely happy to see Zeb, that they love him as part of their battle family.

Kallus’ reception aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer is the exact opposite. No one rushes up to see if he is okay or even to take him to sickbay for his broken leg. The one man aboard whom he knows by name, Admiral Konstantine, has his nose in a datapad when Kallus tries to get his attention. Konstantine’s brush-off is totally at odds with the Ghost crew’s joyous discovery of Zeb, alive and well, on that Geonosian moon.

Disappointed and shocked that no one aboard cared whether he lived or died, Kallus limps to his austere quarters and sits down on his bed. The one colorful thing he has is a meteorite Zeb found and gave to him because it generated heat, which Kallus needed more than he did because he could not walk. Somehow, I think Kallus realized then that, if he and Zeb had been friends and he had been lost, the big Lasat would have welcomed him back to the ship heartily.

Though he always respected the Rebels’ fighting abilities, Kallus finally realizes after this episode that they are in the right and he has been wrong this whole time. It must have hit him hard; finding out that you have been fighting for and doing the work of someone evil is pretty awful. But the interesting thing is that Kallus does not let his feelings overwhelm and destroy him. Instead of staying in bed, wracked with guilt, he follows Zeb’s advice: he starts asking questions, looking into what the Empire is actually doing, not what it says it is doing.

The answers he finds spur him to join the Rebels as a spy, feeding them vital information from the first episode of season three onward. Despite not being a hundred percent successful in helping the Rebellion all the time, Kallus’ information comes in handy more often than not. It is so valuable, in fact, that when the Phoenix cell gets word he might be discovered, they try to get him out of the Empire.

In this way, they recognize Kallus’ true value more than he does. They see Kallus as more than a useful tool that can get them intelligence which could mean the difference between life and death. They see him as he is: a man of inestimable worth in and of himself, a man who does not deserve to be murdered by the Empire. They are willing to sacrifice any future lifesaving intel he could gain to save his life.

But Kallus’ more practical, Imperial-tinted view of his role in the Rebellion means he is not yet ready to break away from the Empire. He stays behind to keep feeding the Rebels information, feeling he can do more good from the inside than from without. A noble idea, certainly, but in the end his decision is almost disastrous. Thrawn uses Kallus’ next transmission to find Phoenix Squadron’s base, methodically destroying the Rebel fleet assembled overhead to put a halt to the TIE Defender factories on Lothal. Kallus’ warning barely alerts the Rebels in time, allowing them to mount a defense against the attack.

It is, however, a costly defense, with many Rebels lost in the battle, along with most of the supplies they stored in the base which they are just able to abandon. Kallus is forced to watch the people he decided to help get killed before his eyes, held as he is aboard the Chimera’s bridge, powerless to act on their behalf. Though he eventually manages to escape it is clear he is not very happy with the day’s events at the end of Zero Hour, Part 2.

It is not too hard to guess why. Kallus thought he could be of more help to the Rebels from inside the Empire, that he could be useful to them as a spy. Instead he got them discovered, which led to many of their men being killed in action and lost them a well-stocked hidden base. He is lucky that they decided to take him in despite all that, which is why he thanks Kanan for accepting him.

Kanan, through his Force-sensitivity, must sense what Kallus is feeling. He also knows the man will not accept coddling. He cannot. He is a grown, responsible adult, which means he has to deal with his feelings as an adult should.

This does not mean that Kanan cannot tell him how much the risks he took on behalf of the Rebellion, on behalf of the Ghost crew, mean to them. He thanks Kallus for risking so much for them, for doing the right thing.

Kallus’ expression after Kanan leaves is very interesting. In fact, it is comparable to Ezra’s expression after he helps Sabine and Zeb take crates of food to feed hungry Lothal refugees in Spark of Rebellion. After one of the denizens of Tarkintown thanks Ezra for the food, thinking he is part of the Ghost crew, Ezra’s face falls with shame. “But I didn’t do this,” he mutters. “I didn’t do anything.” He was looking out for himself when he got caught up in the Ghost crew’s raid, but the people in Tarkintown did not know that. To them, he is a new member of the crew of benefactors that supplied them with the necessities they could no longer acquire themselves. This leaves Ezra feeling guilty, a guilt which helps spur him to join the Rebellion because it helps bring him out of himself, showing him that there is a larger battle to fight. That he can, in fact, make a difference and help people in a way that matters.

From Kallus’ expression, it is clear he is running up against the same feelings Ezra did. He does not think that he risked much, not the way the rest of the Rebels have been for years. He is a Johnny-come-lately to the Rebellion; it has been building for years, and he never considered it anything less than evil until recently. In fact, he actively worked to destroy it. Kanan, Hera, Ezra, Sabine, Zeb, and even Chopper saw this evil for what it was from the beginning. Kanan has paid for his Rebel service with his eyes, for Pete’s sake, yet he is thanking Kallus for risking his life as a mole in the Empire! They have been fighting it, risking their lives to defeat it, far longer than he has. “But I didn’t do any of this,” he is thinking as Kanan leaves. “I didn’t do anything.”

Kallus is a big boy, and sooner or later he is going to realize that this assessment is not entirely true. Yes, he was not an enemy of the Empire from the beginning. Yes, he fought and killed Rebels before he joined their fight. Yes, he will be making up for lost time now that he has become a Rebel.

But he did risk his life to give the Rebels important, lifesaving information. He did warn them in time, not just in Zero Hour but in Warhead as well. He did throw off Governor Pryce’s command capabilities by upsetting her, reminding her of the consequences of failure in the Empire. He did, at last, escape the Empire’s clutches and join the Rebellion. He is, finally, becoming more of the person he was meant to be.

That makes him pretty darn important. It makes him worth thanking. It makes him worthy of the Rebels’ respect. And it is going to make him a heck of a Rebel, readers. I cannot wait to see him kick some Imperial backside in season four!

Journeying with Kallus has been almost as much fun as following along with the Ghost crew. I hope he gets to the party on Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi, where our Phoenix Squadron friends can slap him on the back and offer him some of the local cocktail. Maybe, in whatever series follows Rebels, we will get to see more of Kallus. He is an intriguing character I would hate to lose as a viewer. As a writer, I would have to have a pretty good reason to kill him off.

But we will have to wait and see what Dave Filoni and his crew have in store for our heroes. The final season of Star Wars Rebels is going to big and probably painful on a series of levels. As the song says, “We may lose and we may win/But we will never be here again/So open up, I’m climbin’ in.” I’ve followed the Ghost’s hyperspace vectors this far, readers. I cannot turn back now. If you have come this far with us, I know it is the same for you.

So…may the Force be with you, readers and Rebels alike!

A Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens – More or Less

Good day, Star Wars fans! Well, I got to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens some time back. This post is way overdue, huh? I know it is, but life is like that. Some things take a little extra work before they are presentable. This post is one of those things.

The Force Awakens was better than I had expected it to be. While I do not like the film nearly as much as I enjoy the original trilogy, I did like it more than the three prequels we saw ten years and more ago.

That being said, like some people, I had a few issues with The Force Awakens. Not just the fact that the previous films were a complete set already (Lucas has been promising us a much longer saga for years), once Disney bought Lucasfilm, they would have been stupid not to run with its storylines. It was not necessarily something I was looking forward to – it was more something I could understand them doing. They bought a money-making machine. Why on Earth would they not run with it?

And I have to admit, I kind of missed having Star Wars in the theaters. Marvel, Star Trek, and the other franchises can only fill so many holes in the modern cinemas, after all.

While I do not think Disney did a bad job with The Force Awakens, it is possible that they could have done better with it than they did. Below I will endeavor to get the issues I have with the film out of the way, before going on to what was enjoyable in the movie.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW! Read at your own risk!

First up, Kylo Ren. Why in the galaxy did Leia and Han name him Ben?!? Han and Leia were not that friendly with Obi-Wan Kenobi – Luke was!!! That is why his son in the books was named Ben! Now I am not saying the writers should have called the Solo heir Anakin – that is just poor imagination. Even the Expanded Universe writers waited to do that. But, come on, did they have to use Ben?!?! Jacen was a viable option, was it not?! If not, there were other alternatives, people!!! Ugh!

Second – who cast Adam Driver as Han and Leia’s son? He looks nothing like either of them!!! I can forgive the long hair, but he has the wrong face! How in the name of the Force can he play their son?!? They should have been able to find someone in Hollywood who looked like Leia or Han – and could play the part as well!!!

BB-8 was more impressive than I thought he would be, admittedly. Since he is positioned to take R2-D2’s place, I was quite prepared to hate him. However, “Billiard Ball” 8 managed himself quite well. The scene where he is rolling down the staircase in Maz Kanata’s castle is especially good. I admit that R2 could not have done that. However, I will not, under any circumstances, accept this Wookiee soccer ball with a head as a viable replacement for R2-D2. R2 is my favorite droid, and I will not be swayed to love BB-8 more than I enjoy R2. So there!!!

How can Ben Solo be a Dark Side user and not a Sith? Is he like the Dark Side Adepts – strong with the Dark Side, but unable to become a full-fledged Sith Lord? If that is the case, then no wonder he is not as powerful as Vader! The Sith were always more powerful than the Adepts. Everybody – inside and outside of the Star Wars universe – knows THAT!!!

Who – and what – is Supreme Leader Snoke? Seriously, they could have just made him a creepy old bald human in dark robes, and that would have been enough. Andy Serkis is terrifying in his role, but his character looks more like a monstrous, damaged version of Gollum than somebody new to the Star Wars mythos. Knowing our luck, he will probably be an alien who is smaller than Yoda when we get a good look at the real Snoke later on.

And that speech of General Hux’s before he blew up the New Republic Senate and the Hosnian system? LAME!!! They went too far with the Nazi nods for the First Order. Honestly, we will hate them no matter how they are dressed up, or what they say they believe! They are the heirs to the Empire – the bad guys!!! Their whole purpose in the films is to be hated!!! Do the writers not understand that?!?!?

To quote Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang: “AUGGHHH!!!!”

And we have another super weapon capable of causing galactic destruction in this trilogy…? It was not that bad, as super weapons go, but really? I mean REALLY?!? *Smacks forehead and whimpers in exasperation.* I never liked this trope, even when they did it in the books. Do Star Wars writers really need to revisit this story gimmick over and over again? Bad enough we had the Sun Crusher device in the novels, now we have Starkiller Base! *Slaps forehead on the desk several times, moaning in aggravation.*

(Okay, yeah, I am not going to damage my desk. But you get the idea!)

Now we come to Rey. I have mixed feelings about her Force usage in this film. I can buy her having a Force vision in Maz Kanata’s cantina castle after touching Luke’s lightsaber – you do not need training to have Force visions. And I can buy her having Force-dreams about the island where Luke is hiding, since you do not need training for those, either.

I can even buy her resisting Kylo Ren’s mind probe. The novelizations for the original trilogy hint that Leia’s ability to resist Darth Vader’s interrogation was possible in part because she instinctively used the Force in a small way. This hint is not exclusive to new novelizations of the old films; the original novelizations included this speculation as well. So, thinking about it, I can actually acquiesce to Rey’s ability to tell Kylo to butt out of her brain and her ability to keep him out. Her getting a glimpse into his mind in the process is also something I can buy, after a little thought on the matter. When she pushed him out of her head, she probably pushed into his mind in the process.

Rey pulling off a Jedi mind trick on the trooper guarding her – that takes a little too much suspension of disbelief. One could say that, as a scavenger, Rey has trained herself to pick up and learn skills fast in order to survive. And at least they had her fail to trick the trooper twice before she managed to pull it off properly. Still, this incident seems to have been added to the film solely to make her the Amazon warrior who can save herself. She does not have to wait to be rescued, like the damsel in distress, but can rescue herself. All well and good… but she could just as effectively have gotten out of her situation with a feigned medical emergency. This would get the trooper to open her restraints, allowing her to grab his blaster and bludgeon him with it.

Problem solved. 😉

Instead the writers had her use a Jedi mind trick to get out, something an untrained Force-user should not be able to do. Ezra Bridger, the fifteen year old hero of Star Wars Rebels, who is still training, took a long time to learn how to pull off a mind trick!

The writers really should have done this scene differently. It was cute to see the trooper drop his gun on the floor at her command, but continuity wise, her ability to pull off a Jedi mind trick after accepting her Force-sensitivity is rather suspicious. Did they actually confirm that Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One in the prequels? ‘Cause if they did not, then that prophesied position might just belong to Rey at this rate!

As for Rey Force-grabbing the lightsaber and her skill with the weapon later on, that is easily explained, even if it is not a satisfactory explanation. One can do many things when she makes a concentrated effort at it, which explains how Rey called the lightsaber to her. (And it was “calling” to her, so that might have had something to do with it, too.)

As for her “skill” with the lightsaber, we see early in the movie that Rey is good with a quarterstaff. Staff fighting and sword fighting actually have a lot in common, according to a friend of mine who saw the movie with me. This means that, after a while, Rey can figure out the rudiments of lightsaber fighting. Her switch from defense to offense after she “opens herself to the Light” side of the Force, while not extremely satisfying or believable, is meant to be reminiscent of Luke’s letting go and trusting his feelings when he fired the torpedoes that destroyed the Death Star in A New Hope.

This explains Rey’s switch from defense to offense; her skill with a quarterstaff explains her ability to defend herself with the lightsaber in the first place. Not a perfect answer, but… *Shrug.* As a final note on this subject, Daisy Ridley’s stunt trainers need to work on her choreography – or they should get her a new outfit without tassels that can get in the way and trip her up. Some of her footwork in that duel with ‘Kilo’ looked too slow to match his attacks. It was obvious he was waiting for her to get back up and turn to fight him a couple of times. Not something you want in a film like this.

One last issue I have with Rey is this: the way her name is spelled is wrong. Rey is Spanish for king; the way it is spelled, her name should be a boy’s name (tell me that does not seem suspicious and silly to you). Rae, the feminine form of the name, would have been a better and more proper spelling for the writers to use. But they did not do this.

I found Kylo Ren’s temper tantrums completely scoff-worthy. The kid loses his temper far too easily. He is right to be afraid of not living up to Vader’s legacy. Darth Vader, even when we saw him as an apprentice in The Clone Wars, was more intimidating and deadly than ‘Kilo’ Ren. Ren’s just a whiney crybaby who breaks stuff when he cannot get what he wants. Yeah. I have seen four year olds do that, too. Totally scary. *Insert eye roll here.*

Of course, the point of these tantrums is in part to show that Ren is simply a Vader wannabe. He is not Darth Vader – he is not even a Sith! His heart’s not really in it, not the way Anakin’s was. Ren is an open and shut case of the quintessential copycat. He is fascinated with the power of the Force and his grandfather’s use of it. He wants that power and to be feared like his grandfather, and he wants it yesterday.

Whoop-dee-doo, I am so scared. (NOT!!!) Can I please haul off and slap this kid? He needs some sense knocked into him.

And did anyone get a look at that dress Leia was wearing at the end of the film? Ow, it resembled one of Padmé Amidala’s dresses!!! For some reason, seeing Leia wearing that dress just hurt. I do not know why, but I hated it. It seemed so wrong on her. That was not the type of dress she would wear. Why not put her in something more her style than her mother’s? Ouch….

Poe Dameron did not come out so well in the later scenes in the movie. In contrast, Finn actually did pretty well. He seems to have been handed Han’s role from the original films. In the original trilogy, Han was the one who wanted to run out on the Rebellion. In this film, Finn is terrified of the First Order and wants to disappear into the galaxy’s dregs to escape it. The interplay between him, Han, and Chewie was some of the funniest and best in the movie.

Speaking of our “scruffy-looking,” nerf-herding rogue, Han had some great time in this film. It was wonderful to have him, Chewie, the Millennium Falcon, Leia, and Luke back. And it was awful when ‘Kilo’ Ren killed him.

Something about that scene makes me think it did not need to happen. I suspected the writers would begin killing off the original characters in this new trilogy, but I thought for sure Luke would be the one to die in The Force Awakens. I was probably not the only one who thought this, which means that, to be unpredictable, the writers decided Han should be killed first.

All I have to say about this is – ow, Ow, OW, OW!!! I read spoilers on the film for a friend not long after the movie came out, expecting to find that Luke had died. So when I learned it was Han who was killed, the news was something of a shock. I never realized how much affection I had for our cocky smuggler until the news that he had died came out. I almost broke down and cried on the spot.

This part of the film – pardon my uncouth language, readers – really sucked. I am glad that Chewie shot ‘Kilo’ in the side and that Rey slashed him across the face, not to mention put a hole in his shoulder. Let him bear the wounds for the shameful atrocity he committed!

And I have a warning for the writers of the film: they had better watch their shins. There is someone I know who wants to “put a foot to J.J. Abrams’ shin” for Han’s death. Myself, knocking Ben Solo down and beating him up very badly is a more appealing option. Failing that, I hereby challenge J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Simon Kinberg to each dump a BIG bucket of icy water over their heads. It is the least they can do in penance for killing Han!

Ranting and personal feelings aside, the scene was a poignant one for Han, who showed Ben he loved him no matter what he did. Ben came out the loser in that conflict – as he did in his fight with Rey, and the destruction of Starkiller Base. Some Vader he is turning out to be!! *Add derogatory snort here.*

Now we come to the parts of the film I enjoyed and promised to talk about above. Rey is a very interesting character. We do not know her last name as yet, and her history is barely given the light of day in the movie. We know she was left on Jakku and grew up there on her own, scavenging parts from downed Imperial and Republic ships in order to survive.

But who would leave their child on such a world? This is not something we have seen in the Star Wars mythos before. Luke and Leia were hidden on Tatooine and Alderaan, as Rey was apparently hidden on Jakku. But they each had guardians to love and care for them. Rey, in contrast, was left to fend for herself.

That does not sit well with the previous stories in the Star Wars’ saga. From what we can see, Rey’s heritage is related to the original trilogy somehow. She is Force-sensitive, and that is not an accident. Hints are scattered throughout the movie that she is somehow related to Han, Leia, and Luke. But the clues are proposed in such a way that we cannot be sure just how she is related to them.

‘Kilo’ mentions while interrogating Rey that she considers Han to be the father she never had. Rey learned to be a pilot by using a simulator she scavenged from a downed Y-wing; she learned the droid language (binary), and Wookiee tongue from a translator device she repaired. Besides these languages, Jakku’s populace uses many different languages, which Rey is well versed in, too. Wookiees sometimes dropped by Niima Outpost while she was growing up, and she had experience talking to them. That was where she heard stories about the Rebellion, Han and Chewie, Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader.

The point here is that her skill flying the Falcon and her knowledge of machinery seem to point to her being Han and Leia’s daughter. At the same time, though, she is drawn to and makes use of Anakin and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. Not to mention she refers to the Falcon as garbage, a notable homage to Luke’s description of it as a “piece of junk” in A New Hope. She also grew up on a desert world, and she puts on an X-Wing pilot’s helmet near the beginning of the movie. We all know that neither Leia nor Han flew an X-Wing!! Plus, Rey “opens herself” to the Force to beat ‘Kilo’ Ren, the way Luke made use of the Force to destroy the first Death Star in A New Hope.

Also, Rey has green (others say hazel) eyes. Han and Leia both have brown eyes, as did Padmé Amidala. Shmi Skywalker’s eyes were brown, but Anakin and Luke both had/have blue eyes…

Mara Jade, notably, had green eyes. If they bring her into the new Star Wars timeline (and since Mara was the only Expanded Universe character who ever made it into the top twenty favorite Star Wars characters’ list, I think they would be nuts not to bring her back), then she might have married, or at least fallen in love with Luke in this new timeline as well.

In which case, Rey’s mother may be/may have been Mara Jade, and she left their daughter on Jakku to keep her safe. Add to this the fact that when Maz says the belonging Rey desires is not behind her but before her, Rey responds by saying Luke’s name. All at once you have a very convincing case that argues the heroine of The Force Awakens could be the new Skywalker in this trilogy.

This suspicion is only compounded by her meeting with Luke on the island on Ahch-To. Luke was not at all surprised to see Rey. He looked like he was seeing someone he had expected to see for a long time. And he looked like it made him happy while at the same time it caused him enormous pain. (And did anybody else notice the headstone-like rock at his feet? Oooh! Is it Han’s or Mara’s, I wonder?)

Now, all of this is pure conjecture, readers. We have no idea how Rey is related to the Solo-Skywalker clan. We only know that she is related to them, somehow, some way. Her use of Luke’s old lightsaber is the proof of the pudding. Whether she is a stolen or hidden daughter/niece, she is related to Luke Skywalker and Anakin before him. That much we can be absolutely certain of. The rest will be revealed as Luke’s and Leia’s heritage was in the first trilogy: bit by aggravating bit.

Let’s try not to grind our teeth while we wait, shall we?

On the subject of pluses for The Force Awakens, as I stated before, Finn was a winning character. Though the scenes which suggest he is falling in love with Rey – and she with him – occasionally seemed forced and flat (to me), their friendship was definitely genuine. And Finn got some of the best lines in the movie, such as when he mentions that Chewie has nearly killed him six times. Chewie’s response is to grab him and roar in his face, making Finn say, “Which is fine!” John Boyega has a real sense of fun, and he obviously made the most of the part given to him in The Force Awakens.

Speaking of great lines, Han was the other character who got grand zingers and dialogue in this film. This is no surprise – in the original trilogy, he was always shooting his mouth off in an endearing, funny way. It was a real pleasure to see him and the Falcon again. It only got better when he reunited with his wife. He and Leia had some great moments together, such as when Han says, “I’m only trying to help…”

“When has that ever helped?” Leia retorts tartly, adding, “And don’t say the Death Star!”

Oh, it is so good to have them back, if only for a little while!!! I missed the original heroes sooo much over the years – I never realized just how much I actually wanted to see them onscreen again!

Leia herself seemed more tired than anything in The Force Awakens. But the nice thing is how readily she and Han got back together. Even after all the pain they have been through, those two still love each other. The way they forgave each other for splitting up was good, considering how badly things ended up for them.

Maz Kanata was also a real winner. She is not only a Force-sensitive voice of wisdom; she has a sense of humor! After a thousand years of living, watching evil come and go, that is no mean feat!! I liked her a lot more than I thought I would.

And of course, we have X-Wings and the Millennium Falcon back!! YEAH-HOO!!! I have ached to see those ships again!!!

Oh, and we cannot forget Chewie! That “walking carpet” is a great big teddy bear (with a temper) and almost all Star Wars fans love him to bits! It is so nice that he is not dead in this timeline!!!

There are just a few more things I have to mention before I sign off here. One, though Rey never changes her desert garb until the end of the movie (at which point she simply exchanges it for a grey getup of the exact same style), she really was not given a chance to get changed until then. Even Han barely had time to get a jacket before heading out to Starkiller Base.

However, Finn came through in the pinch. He gave Rey the jacket Poe let him keep. It was a nice touch – maybe chivalry is not dead after all. It is hardly Finn’s fault that Rey took the jacket off at some point and gave it back to him. (Can a few more guys in the movies be that thoughtful of the girls? It would be great to see more scenes where the guy treats the girl like she is worth a million dollars!) Admittedly, seeing her breath steaming up or a few shivers would have at least let us know she was dealing with the cold.

As for Ren’s ability to read the minds of others against their will, that is a tactic straight out of the now non-canon Expanded Star Wars Universe. However, the whole problem with making the Expanded Universe non-canon is that it took around thirty years to build it up in the first place. Scrapping all that work and building from the ground up again will take way too much time.

Plus, the Expanded Universe stories are extremely popular. Mara Jade’s solid fan base (which includes me), is confirmation of this. The stories may now be non-canon, but Disney knows that making a whole new universe from scratch will cost them a lot of time and money… and they know that Star Wars fans are heavily invested in what has come before. Why waste precious time and money making “a new universe” (to quote Erik Selvig), when they can simply pilfer from the treasure hoard of the Expanded Universe, tweaking it to fit the new timeline they are making?

Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series already did this – though they were operating off of canon novels at the time. They brought Force-sensitive bounty hunter Aurra Sing into the series from the novels. The TV show also featured the Force-sensitive witches of Dathomir, specifically the Dark Side sect of Adepts known as the Nightsisters. These were mentioned extensively in the original Expanded Universe. Dathomirian witch Teneniel Djo married Prince Isolder of the Hapes Consortium and had a daughter with him, Tenel Ka. Tenel Ka became a Jedi Knight and Jacen Solo’s girlfriend, eventually giving birth to their daughter, Allana.

Rebels (which serves a similar purpose to The Clone Wars), is following the same pattern, albeit they are pulling things from stories that are now non-canon. There are creatures and weapons that come directly from the Expanded Universe in the show. Characters may follow as well – Agent Kallus, the ISB agent hunting the Ghost crew in the series, was almost a Chiss warrior before the writers decided he should be a Human. And there were rumors running around for a while that the writers might bring Grand Admiral Thrawn in during Rebels’ third season. (That would be interesting, to say the least!)

The writers had already set a precedent for this by adding Inquisitors to the Rebels series. The Inquisitors were also part of the pre-original Star Wars trilogy Expanded Universe novels. Dark Side Adepts working for the Emperor, their purpose was to hunt down stragglers from the Jedi Purge and Force-sensitive youths or infants. They would destroy the stragglers and the children who refused to turn in the books, while taking the infants to mold as future Inquisitors – something the Dark Side users in Rebels are doing as well.

Is this cheating? Yes, in a way. Is this contemptible, underhanded treatment of the fans? Some will find it so. But it makes money, as well as keeps a full-blown riot from hitting the fan and ruining Disney and Lucasfilm’s bottom lines. And the writers for Rebels and the new trilogy love Star Wars as much as the fans. They will want to salvage as much from the “Legends” novels as they can, because they like it as much as the fans do.

It is also, basically, the only thing they, Lucasfilm, and Disney can do. They cannot make films from the novels. Even the Legacy novels and comics, which were opening up new territory for the Expanded Universe (some of it rather bizarre for Star Wars), are things they could not film. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill are not able to run around and do that kind of legwork anymore. It is too hard for them.

Hamill has been voice acting since at least the 1990s. This is the first time he has been in front of a camera in years. (As far as this writer is aware, anyway.) Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford have kept in front of the camera, but Ford is the only one now who is still capable of running around and shooting people up. How much longer that will last, we do not know. Disney does not know, either; and they cannot take chances with an acquisition as big and lucrative as Star Wars is. This meant that they had to make the books non-canon. But they still own the rights to these novels – and that means they can filch from them any time they want.

This handicap also means that they had no choice but to remake Star Wars IV: A New Hope when they wrote the script for The Force Awakens. There was no other way to get kids who never saw the prequels and who may never have seen the original trilogy interested in the franchise.

Could they have made The Force Awakens a less politically correct remake of A New Hope? Absolutely. This is nothing against Finn or Rey, but the fact is this political correctness was not needed to revitalize the story. The writers could have made as good a film – or a better one – without all the political posturing. The first three films did it, the prequels avoided it (more or less?), and The Force Awakens could have done it.

However, Disney has done what it has done. J.J. Abrams has reinvigorated the series as best he could, the way he did with the Star Trek film franchise. (Don’t worry, I am not rescinding my ice bucket challenge to him! I am simply according him the credit that is his due – little as it may be in the eyes of some.)

Does that make The Force Awakens and the new saga perfect?

Nope.

Is it still enjoyable?

Yes… more or less.

However, until episodes VIII and IX somehow manage to blow The Force Awakens out of the water, I will stick with the original trilogy, Star Wars Rebels, and the non-canon novels. I enjoy them more than The Force Awakens – so far. I am not averse to going to the theaters to see the new Star Wars films, but I do not yet like them as much as these older stories. And the fact is that this attitude may not change.

Well, readers, this is my long-winded opinion of the opening salvo for the new Star Wars saga. Take it or leave it, as you like. Until next time –

The Force will be with you, always!

The Mithril Guardian