The Worst Star Wars Mistake Has Been Corrected With One Character

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 26 seconds ago

If you asked the average Star Wars fan what was wrong with the Sequel Trilogy, they would probably respond with a screed longer than every opening crawl in the franchise combined. If you were to ask them what the worst However, they would probably refer to Luke Skywalker being reduced to a grumpy old man who has given up his life and protecting the galaxy from evil. It’s hard to explain how or why Luke could have fallen so far from the heights of heroism, but Disney could provide an easy explanation and retroactively fix their mistake with one bold move: officially adding Mara Jade to the canon.

Mara Jade Is The Key To All This

Mara Jade was, of course, the Emperor’s Hand, someone who was trained to do the bidding of Palpatine from a very early age. He lost his cushy Imperial job and became a smuggler after the Emperor died, which he blamed Luke Skywalker for. Eventually, she learns the truth, becoming Luke’s ally and later wife, with the two of them having a child before she is tragically killed by Jacen Solo, the son of a former Jedi die Solo Han and Leia Organa.

Now, all these details about Mara Jade come from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and Disney has ruled that all such stories (now reprinted under the Legends banner) are no longer canon. However, Jade was introduced in the Thrawn Trilogy by prolific author Timothy Zahn, and Grand Admiral Thrawn himself reintroduced to the canon thanks to Star Wars Rebels a Ahsoka. Mara Jade could be reintroduced in the same way, but how would this solve the problem with Luke Skywalker’s portrayal in The Last Jedi?

How Mara Jade Repairs Luke

In the old EU stories, Mara Jade was the love of Luke Skywalker’s life, and he was understandably traumatized by her death… so traumatized that he went on a revenge adventure and ended up killing the wrong person. Like with the Luke Skywalker of The Last Jedithese actions (mostly all the hunting and killing someone brutally in some revenge) seemed out of step with the Luke we know and love, but they were driven by grief and loss. And if Disney were willing to bring Mara Jade into the current canon and mostly mirror her EU story, then her eventual death would help explain why Luke becomes a sad sad sack later on.

This would require a bit of finesse. Mara Jade would need to be introduced to the post-Return of the Jedi period of The Mandalorian and other shows to reasonably explain how she would have time to meet Luke, fall in love, and die before events The Last Jedi. And Disney would need to either recast a younger actor for Luke for a live show or create an animated series that way Mark Hamill Luke’s voice is simple. Finally, they (like the EU writers before them) would need to accept that the Jedi of this new era can fall in love and marry without falling to the Dark Side.

It is clear that Disney has enough conditions to meet to do justice to Mara Jade’s story, but at this point, the studio giant has almost nothing to lose. A Mara Jade-centric show would appeal to old-school fans who have been turned off by shows like The Acolyte even as he softens the hated portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the Sequel Trilogy. And considering that Disney is canceling projects left and right and dropping the ball with the projects that finally see the light of day, bringing back Mara Jade might be the only thing that can bring back something else: our shared passion for Star Wars