#thrawn: finally. a worthy adversary | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thehollowprince · 4 years

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Getting rid of the character Kylo Ren, who do you think would’ve made a good villain/rival for the Sequel Trilogy?

(Okay, I’ve tried to answer this twice now, and Tumblr’s a dick and keeps eating my replies, but here’s hoping the third time’s the charm.)

If we were to get rid of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, and ignore his counterpart in the Expanded Universe, Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus, who could be a great villain for the sequels…?

Off the top of my head I can think of three big bads from the Legends continuity that would fit the bill perfectly. Those being Admiral Thrawn and the Empire of the Hand, the Yuuzhan Vong, and Darth Krayt and his One Sith. All three of those have such a huge presence in the comics and novels and other EU material, but were completely ignored by Katheen Kennedy and Bob Iger in their attempt to craft a new continuity that they have complete control of.

First up we have Mitth'raw'nuruodo, more commonly known as Thrawn.

A Grand Admiral within the Galactic Empire, which was highly unusual because Thrawn was a member of the Chiss species and the Empire was widely known to be xenophobic and very human-centric. The fact that an alien rose to such a high position speaks of this man’s ruthlessness and cunning, that even the Emperor himself recognized and rewarded his skills.

Now, the thing that would make Thrawn such a great villain is that he already has a foothold in canon via the show STAR WARS REBELS, where he was last seen being forcibly taken to the Unknown Regions of space by the purgill. Since Disney had the First Order emerge from that very same area, it would fit better, and maybe help to bridge Legends and Canon, by having an already well-established villain with roots in the Unknown Regions be the villain that comes from those very same areas. Hell, in Legends, he formed the Empire of the Hand at the behest or the Emperor to defend the Empire against any threats from the Unknown Regions.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have someone who was already a part of the Empire emerge to try and rebuild it with an almost exact replica of the Empire’s tech? The use of the star destroyers, TIE fighters and stormtroopers would fit better with him than it did with the First Order, which just comes off as an Empire fanclub.

And with Thrawn, it wouldn’t be too hard to work in a Force-sensitive villain to battle the Jedi, that being Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith.

She was an apprentice of Darth Vader’s who infiltrated the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and even had a romantic relationship until everything was exposed. She’d be a great second-in-command to Thrawn and a great enemy to our new Force-sensitive heroes. Plus, how cool would a light whip be on the big screen?

A further point, we could still use the same new trio, with Finn being a stormtrooper that defects from the Hand, Poe being a pilot with the New Republic and Rey still being a scavenger on Jakku, which sits right af the edge of the Unknown Regions. It wouldn’t take much at all to adjust the story fo fit this in.

Finale point for Thrawn is the fact that, the whole reason he formed The Hand, and his whole mandate as a member of the Chiss, was to protect against threats, one of which was a species called “the Far Outsiders”, which brings us to...

The Yuuzhan Vong

I mean, come on, those guys look the part of villains! Gets even better when you know more about them. These guys are an extragalactic race of aliens that have an absolute hatred of technology, are immune to the power of the Force, and who worship pain to the point of being masochistic.

On that last point, that’s not a euphemism or a joke. These guys routinely sacrifice their own limbs and replace them with new ones, or graft alien organs onto their own bodies in an attempt to improve their species, and prove their worthiness to their gods. Their chief god sacrificed his own flesh to build the universe (according to them) and they feel that they can do nothing less. That being said, pain doesn’t stop them, only eggs them on, and on top of that, the armor they were is immune to both blasters and lightsabers. Combine all of that with their Force immunity and they make a very formidable adversary, not just for the New Republic or Jedi, but the galaxy as a whole.

Their whole reason in the Expanded Universe for coming to the galaxy where Star Wars takes place is to “cleanse it” by destroying all technology and letting nature once again rule. They came very close to it, as well, wiping out entire planets and species before the entire galaxy put aside their differences and united to drive them off.

And once again... they started with the Unknown Regions, attacking the rest of the galaxy from there.

And lastly we have Darth Krayt.

Darth Krayt was once a Jedi Knight named A'Sharad Hett, who was a Tuscan Raider - yeah, those guys from Tatooine - whose father was also a Jedi Knight. He was a great lightsaber duelist, using two lightsabers (his and his father’s) to great effect, and that’s something we haven’t seen on the big screen, a Jedi or Sith really using two lightsabers, at least not in combat and not for more than a second or two. It would also be a nice way to tie in the prequel trilogy because Hett served as a general during the Clone Wars and obviously survived both Order 66 and the Great Jedi Purge.

A nice start down the path to the dark side, wouldn’t you say?

After the fall of the Jedi Order and the Republic (and after Obi-Wan kicked him off of Tatooine), he wandered space until he was caught by, you guessed it, the Yuuzhan Vong. He was in their “care” for quite a while where he was tortured endlessly with some of their biotech, also running into another fallen Jedi who turned him fully to the Dark Side. Once he was free, he eventually formed his new order of the One Sith and went about trying to do what all Sith do, such as conquer the galaxy and destroy all the Jedi and stuff like that.

Any one of those three could have been great villains with already established backstories and fanbases on which to build, but for whatever reason, Lucasfilm and Disney chose the direction they wanted and... well, you’ve seen the results.

#star wars #admiral thrawn #darth krayt and the one sith #yuuzhan vong

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