[MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU] NINE OF THE WEIRDEST THINGS IN STAR WARS LEGENDS

Even though it’s no longer considered canon, Star Wars Legends (previously the Expanded Universe or EU) remains a well-loved part of Star Wars fandom. It encompassed hundreds of novels, short stories, video games, comicbooks, and even television series and spin-offs. Legends introduced a lot of fantastic lore to the series: The Thrawn Trilogy, Knights of the Old Republic, and the X-Wing book series, to name a few.

But I think we can all admit that there was some pretty strange stuff in there as well. From werewolves to sentient mountains, let’s take a look at some of the wild and weird bits of Star Wars from another era.

1. Mount Sorrow
(Ewoks #7: The Perilous Laughing Spell, 1986)

The earliest Star Wars stories were very, very strange. Marvel’s Ewok comics, for example, have a lot of odd asides and characters that never appear anywhere else in the universe. Located on Endor’s forest moon, Mount Sorrow is a sentient, depressed mountain whose tears have the mystical ability to heal sickness, provided those who seek it prove their worth. In this case, it involves throwing Ewok children off a cliff to their deaths. Yikes!  Mount Sorrow may make a single appearance in a 1986 issue of the comic, but it’s no less baffling that sentient geography is clearly a thing.

2. The Sun Crusher
(Jedi Search, 1994)

The Star Wars franchise has always had an obsession with overpowered superweapons long before StarKiller Base. The Sun Crusher appeared in the popular Jedi Academy Trilogy as a secret weapon project secretly developed by Grand Moff Tarkin while building the first Death Star. It was discovered a decade after the Battle of Endor (Return of the Jedi) by Han Solo, Chewbacca, and force-sensitive teenager Kyp Duron. Essentially, it was starfighter-sized spacecraft (think something similar to an X-Wing) but had the power to destroy an entire star system by putting a star into supernova. It’s also shaped vaguely like an ice cream cone. Very intimidating.

It was eventually destroyed by Kyp after he took it out on a dark-side fueled rampage joyride that ended in the destruction of several star systems. Even in the EU, Luke Skywalker didn’t have great luck with his apprentices.

3. Zombie Stormtroopers
(Death Troopers, 2010)

Even Star Wars wasn’t immune to the zombie craze hitting the media in the late 2000’s. Set a few years before A New Hope, Death Troopers opens with an Imperial prison barge breaking down in the middle of uninhabited space. Fortunately, they find a derelict, abandoned Star Destroyer nearby. Convenient, right? Obviously, there’s something very wrong inside as the Empire’s biological experiment – a project called Blackwing – have gone awry.

The scattered survivors must attempt to escape hordes of the undead across both the prison itself and the Star Destroyer. A few surprise cameos midway through make for a fairly enjoyable experience if you enjoy zombie media. It’s still a mash-up no one thought would happen.

4. Skippy the Jedi Droid
(Star Wars Tales #1, 1999)

This one is more of a tongue-and-cheek moment, but it deserves a mention all the same. The legend of Skippy appears in a non-canonical comic series called Star Wars Tales. It’s an eight-page short featuring the adventures of R5-D4, the droid Luke Skywalker and Uncle Owen almost buy from the Jawa traders.

According to the comic, Skippy is actually a force-sensitive droid who sensed a great power within Luke and pushed him to his destiny. Right after being purchased, he has a “force vision” and realizes that R2 must be the one to go with Luke in order to make that happen.

5. Luke Falls in Love with a Spaceship
(Children of the Jedi, 1995)

Luke Skywalker doesn’t have good luck with women, either. While on a secret mission to the Outer Rim, Luke and his female padawan, Cray Mingla, discovers an Imperial Dreadnaught, The Eye of Palpatine, run by an AI system called “The Will.” It’s been dormant for nearly 30 years, long before the Empire fell. It also happens to carry the force ghost of a young Jedi from the Clone Wars era, Callista Ming. Callista died while sabotaging the ship and has been inhabiting it as a spirit every since. While held captive on the Dreadnaught and attempting to thwart the newly-awakened AI, Luke and Callista (a literal ghost in the machine) fall in love.

In the end, the AI is destroyed, but Cray, the padawan, sacrifices herself in the process, leaving behind her recently-vacated body. Do you see where this is going? Yes, Luke’s new girlfriend does possess the dead body of his padawan. It was an … unorthodox way to begin a new relationship, even for Star Wars.

6. Dropping a Moon on Chewbacca
(The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, 1999)

What better way to introduce a brand new threat to the galaxy than with an alien species that has the power to upset a planet’s gravitational pull? The Yuuzhan Vong, a sentient species beyond the Outer Rim, employed just such a tactic to pull one of the moons of the planet Sernipal down to its surface. Naturally, Han Solo, his son Anakin, and Chewbacca ended up on the planet spearheading the evacuation effort before the two collided.

While the others managed to save some of the citizens in the Falcon before it was too late, Chewbacca was knocked out of the ship saving Han’s son, Anakin Solo, and was unable to be rescued. In the end, Chewbacca met his end roaring up at the sky as the moon crushed him and the rest of the planet’s inhabitants. It was an abrupt end for a beloved character that many fans never quite forgave.

7. Jaxxon, The Space Rabbit
(Star Wars #8: Eight of Aduba-3, 1977)

In the 70’s, Star Wars was still a new, unexplored franchise, and Marvel Comics quickly capitalized on the concept. As there were restrictions for use of known characters (specifically Luke and Leia), comic creators made new characters for their projects. Somehow, a series about space wizards and spaceships spawned Jaxxon. This human-sized, bright-green space rabbit is a kickboxing bounty hunter who occasionally teamed up with Han Solo and Chewbacca. He started as an homage to Bugs Bunny and then evolved into a common figure in those early comics. Eventually, he formed a group of misfit heroes called The Star-Hoppers to adventure around the galaxy. And his ship? The Lucky Foot. The rabbit puns are a gift that keeps giving.

While he’s still a fan-favorite character (because Star Wars fans love this kind of weird), Jaxxon hasn’t really made an official appearance in the new canon besides this cameo in Forces of Destiny.

8. Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi
(Masters of Teras Kasi, 1997)

There have been a lot of Star Wars video games. Some of them are really, really good. Masters of Teras Kasi isn’t one of those. While the idea of a fighting game isn’t the worst thing that could happen to the franchise, it didn’t exactly have a lot going for it. After the destruction of the first Death Star, Emperor Palpatine contracts a mysterious woman named Arden Lyn to eliminate crucial leaders in the Rebel Alliance through her equally mysterious and ancient fighting style. Of course, the Rebels get wind of the idea and start their own training. That’s it. That’s the in-universe premise for a game designed around Star Wars characters fighting Mortal Kombat style.

The game was clunky, derivative, and really boring. Once you got over the novelty of watching Darth Vader kick a Gamorrean Guard (those pig guys from Jabba’s palace) in the face a few times, even the bizarre fact this game exists isn’t enough to make it memorable.

9. The Crystal Star
(The Crystal Star, 1994)

I don’t even know where to start with this one, because the entire book deserves a place on this list. This is the Star Wars novel that features centaurs and werewolves (sorry, “wyrwulves”) after all. Han and Leia’s three children have been kidnapped by Hethrir. This fellow is the leader of Empire Reborn, an organization that’s goal is pretty obvious from the onset. He, along with every other character in this novel, makes exceedingly bad choices like kidnapping Jedi children and baby centaurs. Also, he’s working with Waru, a trans-dimensional being that is mostly a blob covered in golden scales. No, I’m not making this up.

The book’s climax occurs when the purity of a child’s love (yes, I know) saves Han, Luke, and Leia from being devoured by Waru. Instead, Waru eats Hethrir and frees himself from being trapped in this dimension, which seems somewhat anti-climactic in the grand scheme of things. You know, I’m not really sure what is the strangest part of the whole thing — the cults, jelly-blob villains, werewolves, or that at some point, Leia puts green streaks in her hair and calls it a disguise.

Even with this list, we’re barely scratching the surface of what the Star Wars Legends series has to offer. It might be weird and sometimes outright baffling, but, at the end of the day, this is a huge part of what we’ve all come to love about the franchise.