The Star Wars Icon Disney Keeps Hiding Was Inspired By Darth Vader’s Twisted Plan

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 42 seconds ago

Among older Star Wars fans, there are few (if any) Expanded Universe characters more popular than Mara Jade. Introduced in Timothy Zahn’s amazing Thrawn Trilogy of books, Jade was a character as we had never seen before. A former apprentice of Emperor Palpatine who lost everything when he died, Mara had to rebuild her life, completely from scratch. Thanks to a final Force command from her old mentor, she knew exactly who to blame: Luke Skywalker, the Jedi hero of the Rebellion and the man she was sworn to kill.

Mara Jade is such a cool and original character that fans are always curious about how Zahn managed to come up with her. Did she come to him in a Force vision, or was she maybe inspired by one of his other characters? As it turns out, he was inspired by the coolest plot twist in all of Star Wars. No, not the “I’m your father” bit, but the revelation that Darth Vader wanted Luke Skywalker’s help to defeat the Emperor. According to Zahn, Jade was the answer to a very simple question: what if Palpatine knew that Vader wanted to betray him?

Star Wars Gets Jaded

In the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader reveals something genuinely horrifying: that he is secretly Luke Skywalker’s father. He then makes a very unexpected sales pitch to the young, would-be Jedi. Vader offers Luke the chance to team up and overthrow the Emperor. Then, as he so memorably says, they “can rule the galaxy together as father and son!” Obviously, Luke refuses the offer, and Palpatine seemingly never learns about Vader’s betrayal. At least, by the time he finally appears in the flesh in Return of the Jedi, he doesn’t openly have a grudge against Vader for the whole planning his murder thing.

Timothy Zahn decided that, one way or another, the most powerful man in the galaxy was going to find out what happened at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. What would happen when Palpatine learned that Darth Vader was plotting to team up with one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy? Zahn’s answer was that Palpatine would have his own Force-wielding secret agent whom he could dispatch to kill Luke Skywalker before the boy became a larger problem.

Inspired By Star Wars’ Coolest Plot Twist

In an interview with IGN, Timothy Zahn said, “Mara was originally my thought of how Palpatine would have reacted to Vader offering Luke an alliance at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, that he might want to get rid of Luke and send an agent to deal with him when he showed up to rescue Han at Jabba’s.” While her character was not yet fully fleshed out, this intriguing notion “was the nub of an idea that eventually became Mara.”

Zahn retroactively added Mara to Jabba’s Palace during the events of Return of the Jedi, where she was posing as a dancing girl in an attempt to find and kill Luke Skywalker. However, the Hutt refused to let her on his sail barge, and when she tried to use the Force on him, he realized that she wasn’t who she claimed to be. Mara later regrets her failure because this was her last real shot to kill Luke before the death of the Emperor. Years later, they cross paths but are forced to fight against a common enemy (Thrawn), and Mara eventually overcomes her personal demons by fighting and killing a clone of Luke Skywalker (no, really). 

From Imperial Assassin To Jedi Wifey

Sadly, Mara Jade was removed from canon when Disney bought the rights to Star Wars. Zahn and other writers have confirmed that, despite intense fan demand, execs have forbidden bringing Mara back into canon. One possible reason for this is that her character has become superfluous. Now, Inquisitors do everything Mara did: they wield immense power, operate autonomously, and hunt down rogue Jedi on behalf of the Emperor. Another possible reason to freeze Mara out is that she married Luke Skywalker in the EU, a plot that is now nearly impossible to fit into modern Star Wars canon.

Long after Mara Jade was introduced to the Expanded Universe, a Star Wars video game expanded major lore about Darth Vader’s intentions towards Palpatine. The Force Unleashed  (which is, sadly, no longer canon) revealed that Luke Skywalker wasn’t even the first Jedi that the Sith Lord had tried to recruit. Previously, he recruited Starkiller (real name: Galen Marek) to help assassinate the Emperor and anyone else who gets in the way. In this way, Starkiller was like Vader’s own Mara Jade: a Force-sensitive ace up the sleeve that he could use to dispose of foes halfway across the galaxy.   

Suffice it to say that Mara Jade is one of the most popular and influential additions to Star Wars since the Original Trilogy. Timothy Zahn created this fan-favorite character to reveal what Palpatine would do if he knew Vader was scheming against him. This permanently ties her origin to The Empire Strikes Back, the absolute best Star Wars film ever made. Now that her one-time foe Grand Admiral Thrawn has been brought back into the fold, we EU fans can only cross our fingers (or should that be lightsabers?) that she sneaks her way back into canon.