Star Wars characters- Do they age?
- Thread starter JediKnightButler
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It's a fantasy series. Realism is beside the point. As long as it's entertaining it's doing its job and I'd argue that by and large the books have been entertaining.
Luke, Han, and Leia can all live to be a thousand because fans will forever think of them as being as they were during the original trilogy. In that light, they haven't aged a day in the past 40 years...
Actually, many hardcore SW fans (at least on the forums at TheForce.net) are getting pretty tired of Luke, Han, and Leia always being at the forefront of every galactic crisis when they're pushing 60 (70 in Han's case). But the casual fans don't seem to mind, because the books starring the Big Three still sell very well. As long as the sales stay up, Del Rey and LucasBooks will continue to milk as much life out of the Big Three as they possibly can.
^Maybe not Han and Leia so much, but isn't Luke Yoda's indirect successor as Grand Master of the Jedi Order ? You'd expect the Jedi to be involved in any major galactic crisis.
I'm sure the likes of Yoda, Count Dooku or even the Emperor himself would not be too impressed with people writing a powerful Jedi off because of his age.
I'm sure the likes of Yoda, Count Dooku or even the Emperor himself would not be too impressed with people writing a powerful Jedi off because of his age.
Leia is a Jedi now, too. She and Luke still running around is still somewhat believable given the aforementioned cases of Dooku and Palpatine (Yoda's not human, so I'm not going to count him), but Han is just a normal human being, and a decade older than Luke and Leia, too. Fortunately, they have been making more of a deal about the group getting older in recent books, particularly Han.
The government of the New Republic no longer exists, it's the Galactic Alliance now. I'm not sure exactly what Leia's influence is, however, as I haven't read the first book in the new Fate of the Jedi series which moves the storyline forward (it's in hardcover, and I collect the books in paperback). But at the end of the last major series, Legacy of the Force, there were hints that the GA government was about to become very unfriendly towards Jedi, which doesn't bode well for Leia and any power or influence she may still have had.
The Legacy comic series may give an indirect answer. It's set at about 135 ABY, and come what may, at this point Luke, Leia, Han and company no longer seem to be among the living. Artoo is still fully functional however, so he would probably know for sure.
It's weird that people get so hung up on something when it happens in Star Wars, but seem to have no problem at all with it in other sci-fi.
Wasn't Kirk well into his 60s when we last saw him? And that was just futuristic medicine. He obviously didn't exercise and certainly didn't have the Force.
Picard was well into his 70s when we last saw him, and he wasn't exactly a cripple either.
Jack O'Neill looked about 60 when he was promoted to general, and he was still pretty spry.
Wasn't Kirk well into his 60s when we last saw him? And that was just futuristic medicine. He obviously didn't exercise and certainly didn't have the Force.
Picard was well into his 70s when we last saw him, and he wasn't exactly a cripple either.
Jack O'Neill looked about 60 when he was promoted to general, and he was still pretty spry.
I read the intro to the new series and was dismayed to discover that the Jedi seem to be in disfavor.........again. They seem to be the Republic's (or whatever Galactic government is in power) favorite "whipping boy" whenever there is a crisis. I understand in the Legacy comic series that the Galactic Alliance is nearly gone and that the Sith are ascendant........once again. *sigh*
Can't anybody in the Star Wars universe hold together a democratic government for longer than a few years at a time? I mean, the Republic endured for about a millenia before it crashed and turned into Palpatine's Empire. And then our heroes succeeded in toppling the Empire in a span of approximately 20 years, defeating the master Sith of them all, Palpatine, and establishing the New Republic only to see THAT fall 2-3 decades later under the onslaught of the Yuuzhan Vong, which, of course, gave rise to the formation of the Galactic Alliance, which then itself got corrupted by Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus and, I imagine, damaged in the long term as a result. UGH!!!! I know this is fiction but, man, can the good guys EVER catch a break?????
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I may check it out once I get done with the LOTF series. I just have two more books to go.
And they even kept Luke's fate fairly vague. He could have either been a spirit, or a hallucination. Cade was pretty hopped up on spice or deathsticks or whatever, at the time.
The Star Wars novel writers really love tearing the Star Wars galaxy apart don't they?
They did it for a thousand years prior to Episode 1. And they did it for 25,000 years prior to that. But those were boring years because The Sith were extinct. So no one writes about them.
He's appeared when Cade has been sober.
Well, there seem to be plenty of good Star Wars EU stories that don't necessarily revolve around the rise and/or fall of the New Republic, Galactic Alliance, etc. nor do they lack the drama you mention but the writers of Star Trek have never seemed to have a problem with finding plenty of drama in that universe despite the fact that the Federation was maintained throughout the first three series and had been in existence for a significant amount of time before then. The only time that I can recall that the Federation was ever really genuinely threatened was during the Dominion War but, of course, it ultimately prevailed (intact) against the Founders and their foot soldiers and allies*.
I guess my big question is, what enabled the Old Republic to thrive and continue to exist for a millenia and why did the New Republic and Galactic Alliance ultimately fail to succeed? Heck, even Palpatine's martial/authoritarian Empire didn't even last longer than 20-22 years (although remnants remained). The only theory that I've been able to come up with is Palpatine's destruction of the Jedi Order and the years and generations that would likely be required to fully re-constitute the order to the level seen during the height of the Old Republic- although it looks like Luke's New Jedi Order doesn't exactly manage to thrive either during the years between LOTF and the Legacy series.
*Although I guess that I WOULD have to admit that a Star Trek series where the Federation "fell" and/or ceased to exist would be, as Spock might say, "fascinating". ;-)
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