Star Wars Needs to Stop Killing Off Its Coolest Characters
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/LucasFilmsThe opening scenes of Disney+’s new Star Wars series, The Acolyte, demonstrated exactly why iconic The Matrix actress Carrie-Ann Moss was simply born to be a Jedi. With calm ease as Jedi Master Indara, she parries Dark Side assassin Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) repeated attacks with some of the same moves she deployed as Trinity in the four Matrix films. The casting is almost too perfect, and Moss seems destined to join the leagues of iconic Jedi characters as the series continued.So it was all the more frustrating to see Indara get a dagger to the heart before the credits even rolled. She was another in a long line of cool Star Wars characters who got killed way too soon.Star Wars has never been afraid of killing characters for an emotional gut punch. From the moment Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) discovered poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen burnt to a crisp on the smoking sands of Tatooine to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) watching her entire planet immolated by the Death Star, the franchise established that the battle between good and evil would cause casualties. In fact, some of its most memorable moments come from surprising deaths, like the entire crew of Rogue One sacrificing themselves on the shores of Scarif to get the Death Star plans to the Rebellion, or Darth Vader essentially electrocuting himself to rescue his son from Emperor Palpatine’s Force lightning attack in Return of the Jedi.Read more at The Daily Beast.