How Star Wars Angered Its Best Writer
While Star Wars has had many excellent fiction writers over the years, none of them can hold a lightsaber to Timothy Zahn, the man who effectively kickstarted the Expanded Universe with the blockbuster 1991 novel Heir to the Empire.
This was also the novel that introduced Mara Jade, a fan-favorite Star Wars character who would go on to marry Luke Skywalker. Lucasfilm presumably loved their golden boy writer, but it turns out they angered him in a big way by making the decision to kill Mara Jade behind his back.
Mara Jade Is The Best Character Not To Appear In A Movie
In order to explain this weird tale of betrayal, we need to give a quick overview of Timothy Zahn’s Mara Jade character. She is introduced as a former servant of the Emperor who is left without most of her clout or Force powers after the death of Palpatine, for which she blames Luke Skywalker. Despite a final Palpatine command for her to kill Luke, the two end up working together to stop Grand Admiral Thrawn from taking over the galaxy with a new army of clone soldiers.
Killed In The Disastrous Legacy Of The Force Series
Fans loved Mara Jade from the beginning, and she kept gaining more prominence in the growing Star Wars Expanded Universe. Eventually, she married Luke Skywalker and the two even had a child together. However, in the Legacy of the Force novels, she grows suspicious that Han and Leia’s kid Jacen Solo is secretly a Sith, and he kills her in the 2007 Karen Traviss novel Sacrifice.
Timothy Zahn Hated The Decision
At the time, many fans wondered how Timothy Zahn felt about his character getting killed in a book he didn’t even write. Publicly, the author said very little about the matter, which was smart…after all, he would go on to write several more Star Wars novels. But thanks to a blogger recording what happened at a 2007 writing workshop led by Zahn, we know how much the decision to kill Mara Jade off angered him.
No One Warned Zahn
Getting an opportunity to speak to Timothy Zahn one-on-one, the blogger told him about an earlier conversation with Sacrifice writer Karen Traviss which revealed she was uncertain if Zahn was warned about Mara’s death. With a light tone, Traviss told the blogger that she’d take Zahn out for a drink to make up for killing off his creation.
With that context, the blogger asked Timothy Zahn point-blank if Traviss had ever taken him out for that drink. Zahn revealed that not only had his fellow author never bought him that drink, but that nobody at Lucasfilm had warned him about the decision to kill Mara Jade. He only found out about three months before Sacrifice came out, and that was because he directly asked an editor.
Star Wars EU Killed Lots Of Major Characters
Timothy Zahn proceeded to tell the blogger about how this “was a disappointing way to treat both me and my character, and they know I feel that way.” He expressed disappointment that he was not “told…earlier and at least given me a chance to speak on Mara’s behalf.”
Echoing many people in the fandom, he said that he thought Mara “was far too useful a character to kill off” and didn’t like the latter-day EU policy of “killing off main characters” such as Chewbacca, someone whose death continued to bother him.
Obi-Wan’s Warning
Sadly, the decision to kill Mara Jade was a lasting one: while fans could enjoy more Timothy Zahn novels about the character’s shady past (Allegiance and Choices of One), she was never miraculously resurrected in the EU and never made an appearance in the Sequel Trilogy. That’s doubly sad because, quite frankly, adding a fun character like this to those films could only have improved films like the controversial The Last Jedi.
Fortunately, Zahn got the last laugh: the character has only gotten more popular since she was killed off. Obi-Wan warned us about this way back in 1977. Quite simply, Lucasfilm struck her down, and she became more powerful than they could possibly imagine.
