If you haven’t read the Star Wars Expanded Universe, you’re missing out on some gems, like Mara Jade and Admiral Thrawn and the complete lack of Chewbacca dying when a moon falls on him. (I’m still in denial.) You’re also missing out on some raging nutballs insanity, the sort of which will never be in one of the new Star Wars movies. And not because Lucasfilm isn’t touching the old EU with a ten-foot pole. No. God doesn’t love us enough to let us see…
Jaxxon, the humanoid green rabbit smuggler
No, Jaxxon is not the Han Solo of the high-stakes, high-risk world of intergalactic rabbit smuggling. The man’s a 6’2” rabbit, because this is the Star Wars fandom, and you can be damn sure we know how tall our ex-mercenary, smuggler rabbits are. He dates back to a comic that came out in the late ‘70s, and I’m not saying drugs were involved, but I’m also not not saying drugs were involved, y’dig? He’s a member of the Lepi species (like “lepus,” Latin for rabbit, ohohoho), and his home world is Coachelle Prime, which we never actually see—strangely, writers past the ‘70s were not keen to pick up the giant green rabbit mantle. So if you want to imagine Coachelle Prime as a planet-wide music festival where a rainbow of humanoid bunnies rock out to Mumford and Sons and wear Native American headdresses, there’s nothing to prove you wrong.
Ackmena and Mermeia
The nightshift bartender at the Mos Eisley Cantina, Ackmena is a no-nonsense yet friendly older woman who, after a stint as a singer and actor, joined the anti-slavery organization “Freedom Flight.” Mermeia is a bit of AI, a singing, dancing holograph who tailors her appearance to the innermost desires of whomever calls upon her. Fairly normal. So what warrants them an appearance alongside a giant green rabbit? Well. They’re Bea Arthur and Diahann Carroll, respectively. The Star Wars Holiday Special gifted us with many things, like the ability to make Harrison Ford instantly uncomfortable (link autoplays), and the presence of Diahann Carroll and Maude in a galaxy far far away is pretty high up on that list.
Piggy
On this list of weird Star Wars EU characters, Voort “Piggy” saBinring is an outlier, because the series he hails from—Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron—is actually really good. An offshoot of Michael Stackpole’s also excellent Rogue Squadron series, it’s about a gang of misfit New Republic pilots who go around saving the day and blowing things up. One of those is Piggy, a Gamorrean who was put through genetic experimentation that made him an extremely smart, articulate, mathematically inclined… giant pig-man. Who later flies an X-Wing. And goes undercover as what’s basically a bellydancer at one point. Lucasfilm wouldn’t dare.
The galaxy’s second-weirdest Jedi
See this fluffy ball of fluff?
That’s Ikrit. He’s a Jedi Master. Who also, at one point, was the pet of Han and Leia’s son Anakin. He helped unlock the Golden Globe, a mystical orb in which the souls of a bunch of children and drunk actors were trapped by… no. You don’t care. Look at that a-hole. His hair color changes with his mood. It makes me sick. Junior Jedi Knights series, there will be a reckoning.
The galaxy’s weirdest Jedi
Hutt Jedi. Hutt. Jedi. According to Wookieepedia Beldorion is “the only known Hutt to enter into the Order,” and no sh*t, because Hutt Jedi. Like Ikrit, Beldorion avoided the Great Jedi Purge, which in the EU was shockingly easy to do. (Seriously, Force sensitive people show up everywhere). Shockingly, a not-even-a-Jedi-yet Leia managed to kick his ample butt in a lightsaber battle, because mothertrucking. Hutt. Jedi. That was a thing that happened.
Triclops, The Emperor’s Three-Eyed Son
If the fact that the Emperor’s three-eyed son is named Triclops doesn’t make you groan, know that there’s a guy who pretended to be the Emperor’s three-eyed son, and his name is… wait for it… Trioculus. The possible result of genetic experimentation instead of good old-fashioned sexytimes, Triclops was kept imprisoned for years, because the Emperor was cringingly embarrassed that he named his three-eyed son Triclops. “What was I thinking? Was I on a Homer kick that day?,” he could be heard to mutter as he roamed the halls of the Death Star late at night. “Could I not have gone with Greg or Jerry or, I dunno, Bob?” Triclops eventually escaped captivity and had a two-eyed son, named not Duoclops but Ken. Again: The Emperor has a grandson named Ken. Somehow, Duoclops would’ve been better.
Luuke Skywalker
No, that’s not a typo. At one point Luke Skywalker had an evil clone named Luuke Skywalker, because if you haven’t guessed yet the EU has a real problem with naming things. Luuke appeared in The Last Command, the third book in Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy, which kicked off the Star Wars EU we now know when it was published in the ‘90s because it’s just that good. I’m not knocking Zahn or the Thrawn Trilogy or even the concept of a confrontation between Luke and a crazy Jedi Master that culminates in “Surprise! I made an evil clone of you!,” because that’s probably the sort of thing I would do if I were an insane Jedi Master, not gonna lie. But… but Luuke. Did he just want to have adventures on the Millennium Faalcon with Haan and Leiaa and Cheewie? Would they all have grown baller goatee(ee)s?
Waru
Vonda N. McIntyre’s The Crystal Star is the reason the galaxy far far away canonically has Centaurs and (gather yourself) Wyrwulves, so you can either thank the elder gods for it or throw a copy across the room while making the sign of the cross, which is what most Star Wars fans tend to do. This is also the book that gave us Waru, a giant slimy alien… blob …. thing… from an alternate universe. That universe has, not the Force, but the “anti-Force,” whatever that is. In order to get back home Waru has to basically eat a whole buncha Force… like that wielded by Luke, who has joined his cult, because this book makes no sense. See: Wyrwulves.
But none of this comes anywhere close to…
Mount Sorrow, the clinically depressed mountain
Take a moment.
The ‘80s gave us scrunchies, Eddie Murphy’s singing career, and the short-lived cartoon Star Wars: Ewoks. If was a spinoff comic of that last thing (oh, if only there were a “Party All the Time” comic) that gave us Mount Doom, a sentient mountain that uses magical tears to heal Teebo, friend of Wicket, of the “perilous laughing spell” (“It’s NO laughing matter!”) that he got when he touched a “loonee bird.” At one point Mount Sorrow also tries to kill Wicket and Ewok Princess Kneesaa, because if you’re already a talking, crying, clinically depressed mountain, why not add “insane child-murderer” to the list?
Maybe that’s who Andy Serkis plays?