What Happened To These Notable ‘Star Wars’ Characters?

Star Wars

Jan 21

Everyone remembers Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, R2-D2, and more and more. Star Wars is defined by memorable characters and moments with those characters. Of course, they aren’t the only characters to grace the screen, but they tend to overshadow the other characters that help make them so remarkable. This is devoted to the supporting cast, the characters on the side that don’t share the spotlight, but their story goes beyond the movies. While this list could be extensive, these are just a few notable ones.

Jar Jar Binks

Poor Jar Jar. He was just a simple Gungan trying to make his way in the galaxy. Unfortunately, due to his clumsy nature and childlike speech, he endured hatred and discrimination from both within the fictional universe and from without. Many at the time of the release of The Phantom Menace expressed their distaste for Jar Jar and, for some reason, took it out on the actor who portrayed him. Many may not know the character faced a similar fate. After he decided to make a motion to grant Supreme Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers in the face of the Separatist crisis, Jar Jar had the finger pointed at him for the cause of the galaxy’s suffering, allowing fascism to take hold in the Republic and usher in the Empire. Exiled again by his people, he was reduced to becoming a street performer on Naboo, seen as a silly clown by adults and entertainment to children. He befriends a small outcast boy named Mapo, sharing their feelings about being ostracized. That is the last anyone has seen or heard of old Jar Jar.

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Watto

Watto, the blue-skinned, pot-bellied, five-o’clock-shadowed Toydarian junk shop owner who previously owned Anakin Skywalker and his mother as slaves, didn’t get the same extension of his fictional life as Jar Jar did. Probably for a good reason, being a slave owner and whatnot. There’s not much known about Watto beyond his appearance in Attack of the Clones. In the movie, he is depicted as a down-on-his-luck shop owner, no longer enjoying the status he had before. It seems that he’s been relegated to one of the lower-income stall owners that line the dusty Tatooine streets, and he struggles to get customers now that he no longer has Anakin’s technical skills to attract customers. Beyond that, Watto faded into the background of Star Wars history.

Ric Olié

Some of you may ask, who is Ric Olié? It’s understandable. Ric was Queen Amidala’s chief pilot and instrumental in getting her ship past the Trade Federation blockade over Naboo, and again later when he and the rest of the royal pilots flew their N-1 Starfighters against the droid control ship. Then what? Well, not much happens until after Padmé dies. He developed an inner ear problem that kept him from leaving Naboo’s atmosphere, and was eventually replaced as the royal pilot.

That didn’t stop him, though. In the era of the Empire, Ric became a member of the Amidalans, a resistance group to the Empire on Naboo. They had a violent goal: assassinating anyone involved in Padmé’s strange death. Ric and the other Amidalans managed to trick Darth Vader into coming to Naboo in search of those who hid his son’s existence from him. They managed to trap him in a Gungan bubble-wort projector, the technology used to create Gungan dome cities. Vader managed to break free, and Ric and the rest fought him and his soldiers, ultimately losing. Vader stabbed Ric through the back, but Ric survived. Unfortunately, he failed to keep Vader from opening Padmé’s tomb.

Captain Panaka

Captain Quarsh Panaka has a similar career trajectory as some of the others here, one that ends in sadness. After The Phantom Menace, he continued to serve as Amidala’s head of security and bodyguard, but the relationship started to sour as he grew oppositional to her policy moves and the threats she faced. He served in this capacity until her terms as Queen were up, at which point he resigned from his post. In the time between her rule as Queen and her election as Senator, Panaka would visit her and her family, but his visits often turned into debates with Padmé’s father about the Naboo military. Things turned sour when the Empire took over. Instead of opposing the new fascist regime, he remained loyal to Palpatine. As a result, he was named Moff (governor) of Naboo’s sector of the galaxy. By all signs, his rule was not supported, despite retaining a modicum of his honor. This is known because, during a visit by Leia, he lost his life after she left when a bomb went off in his chalet. The bomb was planted by Saw Gerrera’s fighters.

Lama Su And The Kaminoans

Since the end of season one of The Bad Batch, the fate of the Kaminoans has been known. The Kaminoans were instrumental during the Clone Wars by producing the clones the Republic used to fight the Separatist droid armies. They were also instrumental in the rise of the Empire. They gave the Republic the military strength to defeat the Separatists and then turned the blasters on its own population to enforce fascism. Like many supporters of fascists, eventually, the fascists turn their sights on them too. Lama Su worked closely with Vice Admiral Rampart to transition away from clones, only to be a victim of fascism’s penchant for revisionist history when Rampart turned troopers on him in his office. There’s no explicit death, but it’s implied.

Nala Se, Chief Medical Scientist on Kamino, on the other hand, did not suffer his fate. When she was trying to escape with other medical staff as she and the others figured out the plans of the Empire, Rampart discovered her plans. However, instead of removing her as he did Lama Su, Rampart transferred her into the Empire’s services because of her expertise in cloning and sent her to Mount Tantiss. As far as fans know, she’s still alive and may factor into the rest of season two.

Taun We, sadly, met a similar fate to Lama Su. Nevertheless, she stood by his side through the steady dismantling of the Kaminoan’s role with the Empire. In an effort to salvage their dwindling relationship with the Empire, Lama Su, Nala Se, and Taun We had a plan to show the Empire they could provide a superior clone, but without Omega, Boba, or Jango Fett, they couldn’t deliver on that. Lama Su sent Taun We to bring Omega back, but Taun We got mixed up in the competing interests of Lama Su and Nala Se. Nala Se had hired Fennec Shand to get Omega back but to keep her from Lama Su because, for their plan to create a superior clone to succeed, Omega would have to die. Taun We was not aware of this, and in her efforts to protect Omega, she was killed by Shand.

The legacy of the Kaminoans lived on in Omega and other surviving clones, but in their effort to erase the past, the Empire destroyed the facilities on Kamino, sinking them into the ocean.

Sabé

To fans, Sabé is known for her role as Queen Amidala’s body double. This will only scratch the surface of who Sabé is, and she deserves her own explainer because her adventures go well beyond pretending to be a Queen. She continued to work for Padmé during her Senator years. Sabé went to Tatooine to free slaves. Sabé also flew starfighter escort for freighter convoys. She did it all. But, in time, her friendship with Padmé soured due to the double life Padmé was living. Though they rekindled their friendship, Padmé passed away before they could spend more time together.

Grieving her friend’s death, she joined the Amidalans and sought out who killed Padmé. This brought her into a working relationship with Darth Vader, who developed a soft spot for her because of her resemblance to his late wife if that could be said of the Sith Lord. She discovered who he was and tried to kill him, but Vader spared her. They continued to work together for their respective aims. Eventually, she joined Crimson Dawn, and despite narrowly dying again, she is still alive.

Mas Amedda

Despite how much he may have wanted to, Palpatine couldn’t do everything himself. He needed bureaucrats and sycophants who would do his bidding. Enter Mas Amedda, the Chagrian politician who was the right-hand man of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Supreme Chancellor Valorum. When Palpatine became Emperor, he was made the Grand Vizier of the Empire and did much of the day-to-day running of the Empire with Palpatine’s authority. Think of him as the Prime Minister of Britain, whose power flows from the King. He was a spineless politician who weaseled his way through the Imperial political machine but lacked any real leadership skills.

When the Emperor died, he essentially became the de facto ruler, but his ineptitude proved to be too much, and he oversaw increasingly poor decision-making with the Imperial Remnant. Gallius Rax, who came to power after Palpatine, usurped power and had Amedda placed under house arrest. But when the Empire was “defeated” over Jakku, Amedda was freed and represented the Empire at the signing of the Galactic Concordance. He avoided being charged with war crimes and was left to govern a lawless Coruscant that no longer enjoyed privilege as the capital of the galaxy’s government.

Star Wars is a massive universe teeming with great characters. The ones listed here only scratch the surface of the great characters we’ve all come to love and continue to explore.

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