I have been thinking about how the authors are killing a lot of the more popular characters off more and more often in Star Wars. Chewbacca, Grand Admiral Thrawn (though Timothy Zahn didn’t know he was going to become a favorite), Anakin Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking about. I believe that once they kill off the some more, mostly Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa Solo, they will have to stop going forward into the series. They will have to go back and work from there. Though I might be wrong because the Solo children (Jacen and Jaina) and the Skywalker boy (Ben) might have cought the younger generation. They might want to continue reading about what happened to them, but so many who  have grown up with Star Wars will most likely stop reading once at least when those three are gone. I might continue reading to see where they go, but it seems like they are redoing the movies (prequels). One of the Skywalkers is turning to the Dark Side trying to save something. In this case, Jacen turned to save the galaxy from war. Instead, he has just made it worse!

Yesterday I was talking with my friend, Rachel, about Star Wars, which is reall weird, since for the longest time she didn’t even like having it mentioned. But yesterday, she was willing to listen and participate in my talking about Mara and how I didn’t think that a poison dart should have been able to kill her. She was the Emperor’s Hand for goodness sake! She was one of his personal assassin and knew so many tricks to the Sith, though she never was one herself. She didn’t fall for Jacen’s trick that he tried to pull when she had the roof fall on top of him. Why should she be kiled by something as simple as a poison dart? If the Karen Traviss insisted that Mara had to die, than couldn’t she have thought of a way to do so that was fitting to the character?

 Rachel and I have deciced that Mara really wasn’t killed, because in the Legacy of the Force series, Mara wasn’t acting like herself at all. She was all passive and not willing to believe Luke when he tried to tell her that Jacen was turning to the Dark Side. Mara had seen the Emperor, had known Vader, she should have been the first one to believe Luke on this, and yet, for some reason, she wasn’t. She didn’t believe him until six books into the series. How can Mara change so suddenly in the books, from the woman that Timothy Zahn had created, to some different kind of woman, that someone else made her? Sure, she had a son, and yes, I agree that Mara would be protective of him, but the way I have seen Timothy Zahn write about Mara, she wouldn’t become passive and almost scared to do things. She would be active, ready to do whatever necessary to protect him. She had sent him off while he was just born to safety and continued fighting against the Yuuzhan Vong, to keep the galaxy safe. With all this, Rachel and I came up with the clone idea, though of course Tony doesn’t believe me. 🙁 Just because they had her funeral and she became a force ghost! Though we have been talking, and his friend said that we could bring her back with a Dark Jedi turning to the Light Side and sacrificing himself to bring her back, using the Force. That would be really nice. I could always write a fanfic and put it on one of those Star Wars fanfiction sites. I wouldn’t get money from it, but at least I would feel like I had some say in the way the authors are writing. Timothy Zahn wasn’t even told by Del Rey that Mara was going to be killed off. Talk about a shock when he read it.   

I have loved the character of Mara Jade ever since I first read Timothy Zahn’s book Heir to the Empire. In fact, I have all eight of his Star Wars books and they all deal with Mara some way. When she was first introduced, she wanted to kill Luke Skywalker, but later married him! Talk about some major emotional change. Going from wanting to kill someone to marrying them ten years later, is pretty good! Mara is one of the favorite characters in the Expanded Universe, and yet, they killed her off! And by her nephews hand, no less! Jacen Solo turned to the Dark Side and killed his aunt! The way the fight between Mara and Jacen went, Jacen should have died too! He had a ceiling collapse on him and yet he still survived! I understand that this was one of the easier ways to show that Ben, Luke and Mara’s son, was important, but so many people were not happy. The auther didn’t like that Mara died, and she killed her off! Timothy Zahn didn’t like how she was killed, but is willing to continue writing books with Mara in them! I just can’t wait for another book with Mara to come out! And with Timothy Zahn as the writer, makes me even more impatient! I have no idea if he is working on one right now or not!