The Sad Fate of the Star Wars Characters Disney Will Never Let Die

ign.com:

Remember when Chewbacca died?

In the 1999 book The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime by R. A. Salvatore, Han Solo’s faithful Wookiee partner, Rebel Alliance fixture, and big walking carpet Chewie bought the moisture farm. Not surprisingly, he died a hero, saving thousands of lives.

It was a pretty big deal, even for those Star Wars fans (like me) who didn’t read the Expanded Universe books and comics at the time. Vector Prime got a big promotional push, including a commercial featuring Mark Hamill doing voiceover as Luke Skywalker, and the book even made it to the New York Times Best Sellers list for four weeks.

But that was then and this is now, where the EU is known as Star Wars Legends and “doesn’t count” anymore, and a character like Chewie seems unlikely to ever die in the modern Star Wars canon. No, a popular figure such as Chewbacca, who can be endlessly recast on the cheap – and who can continue to juice merchandising sales for untold generations to come – is probably doomed to live forever like some kind of outer space Renfield, beholden to do his master’s pop-culture bloodsucking forever.

It’s not just our favorite Wookiee who is consigned to this dire fate, of course. C-3PO and R2-D2 are, and will continue to be, similarly afflicted, but even characters that have died in the canon like Yoda and Jabba will continue to rise from the grave time and again to satisfy the Sarlacc-like Easter egg maw of the latest show or game (most recently for Yoda on The Acolyte and for Jabba in Star Wars Outlaws). And those are just the most obvious examples. Everyone from Nien Nunb to Baby Yoda to the guy who got his arm cut off in the cantina in A New Hope is up for grabs. (Ponda Baba. His name is Ponda Baba.)

I’m thinking about this today not just because of the news that Disney is embroiled in a lawsuit over the use of the late Peter Cushing’s likeness as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, but also because of the passing of James Earl Jones on Monday. Jones of course was the voice