In celebration of Lucasfilm’s 50th anniversary, and with a bit of a slow period in Star Wars on-screen content ahead of a massive 2021, the popular mobile game Galaxy of Heroes is introducing a number of classic Legends characters.
The characters introduced include Mara Jade, Starkiller, Dash Rendar, Kyle Katarn, and Darth Talon. Four of these characters are being released through marquee events, meaning that they can be unlocked by almost all players at three stars. These four characters are then needed in order to unlock Starkiller in a special event. But in order to get Starkiller anytime soon, you’ll need to pay money; the nature of marquee events is that you can unlock them at three stars for free, but in order to promote them all the way to seven stars you’ll need to spend quite a bit of money – or wait for months to be able to farm them and then slowly collect shards.
As such it’s hard to get overly excited about a legendary-type event that requires you to pay money to unlock right away, but what’s really cool is the introduction of some of these fan favorite Legends characters – most notably Mara Jade, one of the most famous and beloved Legends characters ever created.
Mara Jade first appeared in Timothy Zahn’s landmark Thrawn trilogy, introducing her as the Emperor’s Hand. As the Legends stories unfolded, she joined Luke Skywalker’s New Jedi Order and wound up falling in love with and marrying Skywalker. (As a side note, the fact that Mara Jade is the only one of these characters to have a qualifier alongside her name – as it is “Mara Jade, the Emperor’s Hand” – is in line with other instances where there are multiple iterations of a character. That suggests to me that there might be plans down the road to bring a different version of Mara Jade, presumably as a Jedi, to the game at a later point.)
Starkiller, whose real name was Galen Marek, was the main character of The Force Unleashed video game, as the secret apprentice to Darth Vader. Marek wound up betraying Vader and helping the upstart rebellion against the Empire.
Dash Rendar was a focal point of the Shadows of the Empire storyline, created to fill the gap left by Han Solo in the period in-between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He was a smuggler and scoundrel who wound up helping the Rebellion. (Of these five characters introduced in Galaxy of Heroes, Rendar is the only one who is currently canon. Though we know very few details about his canon story, the character himself is at least canon again. That cannot be said for the other four.)
Kyle Katarn was first introduced in the Dark Forces video game as a former Imperial turned Rebel, but he would become most well-known as a prominent Jedi in Luke Skywalker’s New Jedi Order, including in the Yuuzhan Vong War.
Darth Talon was a star of the Star Wars Legacy comic series, loyal to Darth Krayt and his One Sith movement, seeking to establish a New Sith Empire in the decades following the original trilogy. (As a bit of a fun fact, at one point George Lucas considered having Darth Maul be the master to Darth Talon in the sequel trilogy, but those plans were only preliminary and one step along the road to the eventual creation of Kylo Ren.)
I think a game like this is the perfect avenue to introduce Legends characters, since the game isn’t bound by the limits of canon. I’m excited to add them all to my collection!
Star Wars Thoughts 