The Star Wars universe is incredibly huge and ever-sprawling, growing larger and larger by the year. Over time, there have been countless characters introduced to this universe that haven’t exactly served the galaxy well. Some of these characters were simply written poorly, and ended up providing little narratively, if not actively detracting from the story with their simple presence.
In other cases, characters were written well, but their devastating actions caused the universe of Star Wars to change for the worse. Be it canonical or meta-textual, these characters have all contributed to making the Star Wars universe just a little bit worse, each in their own special ways.
10 Salacious Crumb Was Just Wasted Space
When Star Wars fans are asked to list some of their least favorite characters, Salacious Crumb’s name is frequently spoken among other common terrible characters. He may have appeared in the original trilogy, but he is one of the few aspects of those movies that audiences do not look back on with fond nostalgia.
This strange alien with an obnoxious high voice was one of Jabba the Hutt’s creepy little henchmen and took up unnecessary space in one of the best movies in the entire Skywalker Saga. Without Salacious Crumb, the movies would be infinitely better; his presence gives nothing to the movie and only takes away from the story.
9 Grand Moff Tarkin Was Absolutely Ruthless
Grand Moff Tarkin was one of those characters who was willing to do absolutely anything to achieve his end goals. Anything was fair game to Tarkin, and he was willing to hurt or kill anyone on his path to the top. Not only was he incredibly terrifying before the movie Rogue One came out, but that movie just cemented how terrible Grand Moff Tarkin truly was.
He, like other top-tier bad guys in the Star Wars universe, was a genocidal maniac, responsible for the destruction of a whole planet in order to get what he wanted. Countless people died because of Tarkin, infinitely worsening the canonical galaxy in the Star Wars universe.
8 Lumpawaroo Reminded Audiences Just How Many Unnecessary Characters Existed In Star Wars
The Star Wars Holiday Special may be considered canon, but it is so infamously horrible that fans notoriously just ignore it completely. However, ignored or not, it is still canonical to the story, and that means the events of the film did technically take place.
This means Chewbacca does have a son named Lumpawaroo, or “Lumpy,” and this fever dream — or nightmare — was actually real in the canon of the movies. There are plenty of characters like Lumpy scattered throughout the universe of Star Wars that began with good intentions, but simply never should have made it out of the draft stages of the story.
7 Emperor Palpatine Killed A Massive Amount Of People In His Quest For Power
When it comes to villains in Star Wars, few are worse than Emperor Palpatine himself. He’s the bad guy for each of the trilogies within the Skywalker Saga, truly, and his reappearance in the sequel trilogy was as shocking as it was unwelcome.
In the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy, Emperor Palpatine was the reason that countless people had died across the galaxy. He manipulated people, he ruined lives, he killed anyone and everyone; Palpatine didn’t care what he did or who he hurt. All he cared about was having power and inflicting his ideology on others.
6 Jar Jar Binks Has Become An Infamous Example Of Bad Writing
No character in Star Wars is quite as famous for being infamous as Jar Jar Binks. He is the worst character of them all, seemingly created just to annoy people. This aggravating alien character appeared for the first time in The Phantom Menace over twenty years ago and has been aggravating Star Wars audiences ever since.
Every time the character appears, he is a poorly-written mess of terrible characterization and simply irritating character work. Jar Jar has become synonymous with the decline of Star Wars’ quality, unfortunately, as well as emblematic of the shift in Star Wars as the stories began falling apart.
5 Orson Krennic Became Obsessed With Creating A Killing Machine
Few villains are as single-minded in their obsession as Orson Krennic was. He may not have gotten as much screen time as other Star Wars villains like Emperor Palpatine or Darth Vader, but Orson Krennic was still one of the nastiest guys in the galaxy for a long, long time.
Krennic was the one who became absolutely obsessed with creating the first Death Star, doing anything he could to engineer this super-weapon to the absolute best of his capabilities. He wanted to keep everything perfectly organized so that he could kill as many people as possible — and he’s the reason there was that one tiny flaw that blew the whole thing up.
4 Watto Was A Parody Of A Terrible Person
When the prequel trilogy started rolling out, fans weren’t sure just what to expect, but they certainly were not anticipating the strange alien mess that is the character of Watto.
Not only are Anakin Skywalker and his mother, Shmi, slaves, but Watto owns them, and seems to be a weird racist caricature in and of himself, though George Lucas denied this. Watto was a complete mess that was never fully realized in any direction; like Salacious Crumb, he took up unnecessary space and was never well-written or well-utilized enough to matter.
3 Kylo Ren Picked Up Where He Believed Darth Vader Left Off
Though Darth Vader was, in his last moments, partially redeemed by his son, Luke Skywalker, the galaxy was largely unaware of this fact. He remained a monster in the collective memory, including within his own family members. His grandson, Ben Solo, later became Kylo Ren, and wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.
However, Darth Vader — at the end of his life — never would have wanted Kylo Ren to become this person. Unfortunately, Kylo Ren rejected the teachings of his loved ones and went off the rails, causing untold damage to the galaxy and, ultimately, his very own demise.
2 Sy Snootles And Joh Yowza Helped The Max Rebo Band Ruin Music
While the Max Rebo Band originally had a much smaller role in the sequel trilogy, the extended special edition versions of the films featured a great deal more cinematic material that George Lucas couldn’t include the first time around. Some of these new scenes were wonderful, and fans were glad to see them.
Unfortunately, some other scenes were much, much worse—namely the extended Max Rebo Band scene. The two heinously ugly alien singers Sy Snootles and Joh Yowza join the Max Rebo Band for a long and horrible song that fans have no choice but to endure if they want to watch the extended editions. While these special versions of the films could’ve been great, character mistakes like these just prove yet again that Star Wars never knows when to quit.
1 Anakin Skywalker Destroyed Everything Good In The Galaxy (Almost)
Above all others, Anakin Skywalker changed the Star Wars universe for the worse. He had premonitions that terrible things would happen, but he was manipulated into fulfilling the exact future he feared above all else. Not only did Anakin help Emperor Palpatine take over the galaxy, but he did it by slaughtering countless children.
He even was responsible for killing his own wife, Padmé Amidala, and he nearly killed their two children: the twins Luke and Leia. Ultimately, the fact that Anakin destroyed everything good except these two children would be his own downfall — and his salvation. In becoming Darth Vader, though, Anakin proved he was the worst monster of all, changing the Star Wars universe for the worse, and worse still.
0 Comments