After ‘The Acolyte,’ Star Wars Needs to Stop Killing Off Its Coolest Characters

The opening scenes of Disney+’s new Star Wars series, The Acolyte, demonstrated exactly why iconic The Matrix actress Carrie-Anne 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.

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But as much as these deaths can lend an emotional gravity to the galaxy far, far away, sometimes these shocking deaths are, well, a little annoying. That’s especially true when they happen to a character who seems like their story is just getting started, like The Acolyte’s Master Indara. Star Wars is littered with promising characters—good, evil, and a little bit in between—whose deaths might be shocking in the moment, but tend to leave a big story hole once they are dead.

One of the greatest examples of Star Wars pulling the trigger on a character too early is Darth Maul’s death at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in The Phantom Menace. Following Darth Vader as a villain is a pretty daunting task, but as soon as Darth Maul ignited his duel-bladed lightsaber in the film’s trailer, it seemed like Lucasfilm had hit the villain jackpot once again. Martial artist Ray Park made Maul into a unique adversary for the Jedi and his duel against Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is considered by fans to be one of the finest lightsaber battles in Star Wars history. So it was truly shocking when he got sliced in half and left for dead at the end of that film. And, unfortunately, it left a big villain-shaped hole in the following prequel film, Attack of the Clones.

George Lucas tried to replace Maul by adding Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master turned Dark Side apprentice who oddly seemed to be decades older than the Sith Master he served. Despite being played by effortlessly cool horror legend Christopher Lee, the unfortunately named Dooku didn’t have quite the same pop culture impact that Maul had. He wasn’t quite a figure who would make Halloween costumes and lunch boxes fly off the shelves.

Lucasfilm seemed to realize their mistake in killing Maul off too early. Years later, it brought him back to life during the animated series The Clone Wars, which ran from 2008-2020. How did they do that? It’s complicated—it involved mechanical spider legs—but he lasted through several seasons and into Star Wars Rebels as well. Sam Witwer’s rich vocal performance as Maul proved why the chaotic and charismatic Dark Sider should have never been killed in the first place.

Maul’s resurrection also set a bad precedent for Lucasfilm, which has revived more than one character from the dead after they proved popular with audiences. Boba Fett emerged from the Sarlacc pit to star in Season 2 of The Mandalorian and his own spin-off The Book of Boba Fett, and former Dark Side assassin Asajj Ventress popped up on the final season of The Bad Batch after her seeming demise in the 2016 Dark Disciple novel. This trick can only be pulled so many times before an audience starts to doubt whether any death will really stick, and it reached its nadir with Chewbacca’s fake-out death in The Rise of Skywalker.

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As annoying as these resurrections can be, Star Wars really should stop killing characters off too early in the first place. Besides Maul, another animated villain that got the short shift in live action was notorious bounty hunter Cad Bane, who bedeviled the Jedi throughout the Clone Wars series. When he appeared in The Book of Boba Fett, it seemed like he would have a similarly large career facing off against the various forces in the Mando-verse. But he was killed after only a few episodes by his former protege, Fett. While it might have made sense for Fett to put that part of his past to bed by killing his bounty-hunting mentor, it seemed like an awful waste to bring Cad Bane over to live action, only to kill him so soon. He should have been able to maraud around for a season or two of The Mandalorian before meeting his death.

While Lucasfilm might rather forget it ever made 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, the film is chock full of characters who died right as they were getting intriguing. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s revolutionary-minded droid L3-37 got stuck as the brains of the Millennium Falcon, while lively criminals Tobias (Woody Harrelson) and Val (Thandiwe Newton) bit it before the credits rolled. While a character’s death can provide shock and plot momentum, those three drained the film of much-needed energy and wit.

And while Kylo Ren’s (Adam Driver) sneak attack on Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) in The Last Jedi was a real “Holy shit!” moment in the theater, it paved the way for the inexplicable return of Emperor Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker—and the less we dwell on that, the better.

But perhaps the most controversial too-soon Star Wars death of recent years has been that of Kylo himself, who died shortly after returning to the Light Side as Ben Solo. While he nobly sacrificed his life force to save Rey (Daisy Ridley), he got one quick kiss and nary a Force Ghost for his trouble. The Rise of Skywalker committed many sins (see above), but killing the last biological Skywalker as part of the culmination of the nine-picture Skywalker saga might have been the most depressing decision of all. Considering how Driver’s career has taken off, it may have made more sense to keep his popular character around for the Rey-led sequel to come.

Back to The Acolyte: While Lee Jung-Jae and Amandla Stenberg are charismatic as hell as the show’s true leads, and the trailers make it clear that Master Indara might be seen again in a flashback capacity, it’s still a bit of a bummer that Carrie-Ann Moss’s character will have such a limited time on the show. While the mystery around her murder drives the plot, one wishes the show sacrificed a slightly less cool Jedi for the task.

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