Why Star Wars Desperately Needs A New Villain
Although the most recent Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim didn’t provide any fanfare news about the future of the Star Wars saga on the big screen, Lucasfilm’s CEO Kathleen Kennedy has talked to Total Film about their respective plans a few days before the event:
“And we have great talent that we're working with – people who care so deeply about what the next iteration of Star Wars is and about getting people back into movie theatres, so we can really come out with a bang.
We need to create a whole new saga. That takes a lot.”
One thing that it will surely take is a compelling new main antagonist, someone or something that isn’t just a rehash of what has been done before.
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An old saying goes that a hero is only as strong as the villain, he or she has to face off. This goes back to biblical times when David had to fight the giant Goliath and it is especially true for Star Wars and George Lucas, who has created the probably biggest cinema villain of all times: Darth Vader, who additionally had a giant fleet of war machines under his control and had an even bigger villain behind him.
Star Wars has been in a similar dilemma once before: In 1983 when both Vader and Sidious were dead at the end of Return of the Jedi and the Empire was defeated, who should be the next “big bad”?
The answer came a few years later, when Timothy Zahn created a new kind of antagonist for the New Republic: Grand Admiral Thrawn, who had no Force powers, no lightsaber, and no superhuman strength, but a genius tactical mind, which alone was nearly enough to restore the remnants of the Empire to its former glory. This was a welcome change after years when most imperial leaders had been presented as mere incompetent bureaucrats.
But Thrawn was killed at the end of Zahn’s trilogy and the creators of Star Wars had to come up with new counterparts to their heroes.
Many authors chose the “quicker, easier, more seductive” way of just creating one dark-sider after another, with some established and some new powers, leading to a plethora of “Darth of the month” books and comics, where the villain was usually defeated at the end of the respective work.
Then came the New Jedi Order and as daunting as a series of 19 novels, 3 novellas and 3 short stories might seem, it was able to introduce a completely new kind of threat to the Jedi and the New Republic as a whole: the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong.
A bloodthirsty alien race from another galaxy, that could not be sensed through the Force and was able to kill trillions of people, nearly wiped out the New Republic and conquer Coruscant. Like Thrawn, the Vong were no Force users, but came in uncountable numbers and possessed highly efficient bioweapons. Dave Filoni once toyed with the idea of incorporating the Yuuzhan Vong into The Clone Wars, but this never happened.
Now that the Skywalker Saga is behind us, all the main villains are dead and Lucasfilm is tasked with creating a new saga, the creative minds have to come up with a new epic villain because Star Wars has always been best when it was epic. Going forward it won’t be enough to just create a new Sith Lord or a new kind of Empire. This has been tried with the Sequel Trilogy and it didn’t work out, as any dark-sider will always stand in the shadow of Vader and Sidious (“Darth of the week” – remember?).
The current canon has some potential leads on who might become the next super-villain:
First, there is the Nihil, a group that was introduced in the High Republic books and comics. They are far more than just a group of pirates wearing steampunk outfits. Their main advantage is a technology called the Path, which allows them to move through hyperspace much faster than just with lightspeed. The Path engines were given to them by the so-called Eye of the Nihil, who is also the only one able to control this technology, making him their per-se leader. Besides the Path, their numbers, and their ruthlessness, the Nihil also used monstrous creatures like the Drengir, a giant plant-like creature, that was able to corrupt the minds of the Jedi.
Still, the Nihil were gone by the time of the Prequel Trilogy, so if they should appear in a future Star Wars movie, this would have to take place in the era of the Hight Republic.
Timothy Zahn in his current book series involving Thrawn invented another species that could provide a serious threat to the Star Wars galaxy: the Grysk. Based deep in the Unknown Regions this species is not too different from the Yuuzhan Vong. They were said to be nomads travelling through space in countless ships and were able to probe into the minds of other species and enslave them by showing them their biggest fears or greatest desires. Once under control, these servants would do anything for their masters.
So far, the Grysk have not appeared outside of Zahn’s novels, but the current canon includes some stories that take place in the Unknown Regions, like Exegol. The Ahsoka series might also take place there, so the Grysk might show up first on the small and later even on the big screen.
Star Wars has one more ace up on its sleeve: the World Between Worlds, which was introduced in Star Wars Rebels. Lying outside conventional space and time, this realm offers the possibility to introduce or even bring back all kinds of dangers and threats, no matter from where or from when they might come. Maybe even the Yuuzhan Vong.
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Source: Gamestar