Five Star Wars EU Good Guys That Should Be Missed

In my previous three articles, I have discussed the horrible and good villains from The Star Wars EU as well as the horrible good guys. Here, I would like to finish this series of articles by taking a look at those fine examples of heroic characters that Star Wars EU produced. These are the characters that I was sad to see go when the EU was thrown out. Yet again, Kevin J. Anderson fans are not going to like this list. Obviously, I do not like Kevin J. Anderson’s writing. Without further ado, here is the list.

(The awesome warrior race)

You may recall that I started out my villains that should be missed list with a race. This list also starts with a race instead of an individual. The Noghri are an awesome race of warriors and assassins. They can actually end up looking somewhat like Jawas. The Noghri are introduced by Timothy Zahn as a race that owes a debt to Vader. Apparently, their world was poisoned after a battle in space. Vader helps them out and then makes Thrawn his representative to them. The Empire continues to poison their planet to keep them dependent upon The Empire, but this does not end well. When Thrawn sends them after Leia, one of them realizes that Leia is actually Vader’s daughter. He brings her back to the Noghri homeworld, and she ends up proving that The Empire is poisoning their planet. This causes them to turn against The Empire and join forces with The New Republic. Rukh, Thrawn’s Noghri bodyguard, ends up killing Thrawn at the final battle. The Noghri go on to become the bodyguards and protectors of Leia and her family. The Noghri are a conceptually brilliant race, which is very well written.

(Anakin the way Anakin should have been done in the prequels)

Wow, my good guy list contains a Darth. Now, you may be scratching your heads and going, “How did a Darth make it onto the Good Guys list?” Well, it is complicated. You see, Darth Revan began as a Jedi. Then the Mandalorians invade the Republic, and The Jedi Council being a gigantic bunch of idiots decide not to help as innocents are slaughtered. Enter Revan. He disobeys the orders of the council, gathers a group of like minded Jedi together, and goes off to protect the innocent by fighting the Mandalorians. He almost sounds as though he were a knight and not a monk. Revan was noble and pure, the paragon of The Jedi Order. His fall to the Dark Side shocks everyone. Compare this to Anakin, whose fall to the Dark Side should have shocked no one since he is an angry, whiny, angst ridden teenage brat. Darth Revan leads a war against the Republic and the Jedi. His fellow Sith Lord, Darth Malak betrays him. He is wounded, captured by the Jedi, and finally mind wiped. He then is thrown back into the war, and the Jedi are forced to train him once more as a Jedi. Retrained, Revan fights Darth Malak with an intrepid team that includes Bastila Shan with whom he grows very close. For more on this relationship see my article “Emotional Bonds and The Jedi”. In the end though, Bastila Shan is captured by Darth Malak and turned to the Dark Side. As Revan goes to confront Malak for the final time, he finds his way barred by Bastila. But due to their emotional connection, he is able to draw her back to the Light Side. Remind me, why are the Jedi against emotional connections? He then fights and defeats Darth Malak. There are a few more things that happen after the defeat of Darth Malak, but the main point about this character is that he is what Anakin Skywalker should have been. He is the noble paragon that falls from grace but comes back. Also note that when he becomes a Darth, he does not change his name to some ridiculously obvious character trait. For more on that see my article “Sith Lords”.

(The great rebel general)

Garm Bel Iblis was a character created by Timothy Zahn in his Thrawn trilogy. He was a Corellian like Han Solo. Like Mon Mothma, he was a senator in the waning days of the Republic. He apparently brought up an old Corellian Proviso Clause, which prevented Corellia from being involved in The Clone Wars. After the rise of the Empire, he continued to speak out against Palpatine, even though it strained his marriage with his pro-empire wife. He finally joins the Rebellion alongside Mon Mothma, but their personalities clash. Bail Organa is able to keep the peace between them, but after he dies on Alderaan, things blow up. Garm, fearing that Mon Mothma is power hungry, leaves the Rebellion to begin his own private war against the Empire. When Palpatine falls, Garm wrongly believes that Mon Mothma will declare herself empress. Finally, Han Solo and Lando find him while on a mission and convince him to join the New Republic. He becomes a general and leads the fight against Thrawn. In The Hand of Thrawn Duology, Garm Bel Iblis is charged with protecting the Bothans in order to keep the peace. Some Bothans were apparently involved in an atrocity against the Camaas, another alien race. The rest covered it up. This leads to an interesting situation since all of the races want justice, but they all have different ideas of what justice is. Some believe they should massacre all of the Bothans. As the situation deteriorates, Garm Bel Iblis has to keep the peace without tearing apart the New Republic. Talon Karrde eventually finds the names of the Bothan conspirators, and they are punished. The main reason that Garm is such a great character is that he is a leader like Thrawn. He has his faults, but he can lead.

(Leader of the Smuggler’s Alliance)

Talon Karrde is another scoundrel type character like Han Solo. But unlike Dash Rendar, he is not a Han Solo clone. He is also not a Lando Calrissian clone. Unlike Han Solo, he is a leader, whose gang engages in enterprises ranging from smuggling to information brokering. Like many of the scoundrels of the Star Wars Galaxy, he tries to stay out of the galactic civil war, but he is drawn into it after he saves Luke Skywalker’s life. Thrawn puts a bounty on his head. He is forced to side with The New Republic, even though one of his people, Mara Jade, opposes this. He gives The New Republic the location of the famous Katanna Fleet. Following this, he organizes what was called The Smuggler’s Alliance because he realizes that The Empire is bad for the smuggling business. He is able to convince others to join because the Empire attacks them during their meeting. In the end, Thrawn is defeated, but much of The New Republic leadership does not trust Karrde. However, he remains a valued ally of Han and Luke. During The Hand of Thrawn Duology, Karrde is given the mission of tracking down his former boss, Car’das, in the hope that he has a list of the guilty Bothans. Even though Car’das does not have that list, he does have information that proved the pretend returned Thrawn was in fact an imposter. Karrde took the information to Pellaeon, who uses it to expose the conspirators. As The Empire makes peace with The New Republic, Karrde offers to allow them to use The Smuggler’s Alliance as an information sharing group to ease tensions between the two governments. Karrde’s character is brilliant because he is own scoundrel self and not a Han Solo or Lando Calrissian clone.

(From Emperor’s Hand to smuggler to Jedi Master)

Mara Jade is a brilliant character. She begins as The Emperor’s Hand, a Force using clandestine assassin and agent of The Emperor’s Will. She is connected to Palpatine through The Force, but he kept her in the dark about the atrocities of The Empire and led her to believe that The Empire was just. She actually infiltrates Jabba’s Palace as a dancer in an attempt to kill Luke. This fails because she cannot convince Jabba to let her on the sail barge. As Palpatine dies, he sends her one final order through The Force. It is to kill Luke. She ends up joining Talon Karrde’s group and rises through the ranks. While working with Karrde, she becomes disillusioned with The Empire. She is against the rescue of Luke Skywalker but obeys orders. She accompanies Luke on the expedition to Mount Tantiss on Wayland to stop Thrawn’s cloning operation. There Luke confronts the mad Jedi clone Joruus C’baoth. They also meet Luke’s clone, which is made from the hand that he lost at Cloud City. Mara is forced to fight the clone and kills it. This silences Palpatine’s final command, which is a good thing. Off and on, she trains as a Jedi at Luke’s Academy on Yavin 4. Then in The Hand of Thrawn Duology, both Mara and Luke go into the unknown regions of space. They find the Chiss, Thrawn’s race, and a fortress known as The Hand of Thrawn. There, they also find clones of Thrawn still in their tanks. Luke ends up proposing to Mara, and she accepts. They end up destroying the clones. They get married. They fight side by side during The Yuuzhan Vong war, and Mara has a kid Ben Skywalker. Finally, Mara Jade is killed by her nephew, Jacen Solo, who has fallen to The Dark Side and become Darth Caedus. Unlike Callista, Mara Jade’s character makes sense. She is an excellent love interest for Luke Skywalker. She is also an excellent and interesting character in her own right.

Finally, I draw to the close of this series of articles. It is sad to say that it was much easier to write the articles about bad characters from the EU than good characters from the EU. This is mainly because much of the EU is worthless. The problem is that there were too many authors of different levels of ability. There were some shining stories and beautifully done characters, but they were rare and far between. So it is that I come to a close.