Town Secretly Honors Star Wars’ Greatest Unsung Hero

How do we know that it’s this old Star Wars character being honored by this sleepy town? For one thing, the intersection of “Dash” and “Rendar” gives us his name. On top of that, a nearby street is named “Outrider,” which is the name of Rendar’s ship, and we didn’t need C3PO to calculate how low the odds are that this was merely a coincidence.

If you’re a younger Star Wars fan or just one who never really engaged with the EU, then you’re probably wondering just who the heck this town is honoring.

The short answer is that he’s something of a Han Solo knockoff with a few important differences: Dash flies a somewhat different kind of Corellian light freighter, for example, and he has a droid companion instead of a Wookie. He’s a charming enough character in his own right, but as a slightly sleazier smuggler, he’s basically what you’d get if Han Solo and Lando Calrissian were to have a DBZ-style fusion.

We can only speculate about what the city planners enjoyed most about this Star Wars character, but it’s a safe bet that someone in the town is a big fan of Shadows of the Empire.

Back in the 90s, this was arguably the franchise’s most ambitious endeavor before the release of the prequels. For those who don’t remember, Shadows of the Empire was a novel that was transformed into a full multimedia event: it had its own separate toys, trading cards, soundtrack, and even a video game.

With respect to that Star Wars novel by Steve Perry, the video game was the best part of all of this, allowing you to play as Dash Rendar, the man who has entire streets named after him in a quiet California town.

The game was mostly a third-person shooter of middling quality, but it has some vehicle sequences that blew our minds when it came out on the Nintendo 64 in 1996.

The best of these was the first level, which deviated from both The Empire Strikes Back and the Shadows of the Empire book to present Dash Rendar as the real hero of the Battle of Hoth.

Camarillo, California is, incidentally, the birthplace of some of our favorite stars, including Kaley Cuoco (most famous for The Big Bang Theory) and Patrick Warburton (who shot to fame as Putty on Seinfeld, but he’ll always be Brock from The Venture Bros. to us).

That makes this a town steeped in some major Hollywood history, and it’s fun to see that Star Wars is part of that history thanks to this town’s cute street names. Dash Rendar may have faded from canon into legend thanks to Disney, but this unsung hero still lives on in a quaint little town far, far away.