I feel a great disturbance in the Star Wars fandom, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were silenced. It’s probably because, after a couple of months of rumors in which fans of the former Expanded Universe (now the non-canon Star Wars Legends) hoped that their favorite sexy lady Jedi Mara Jade might be making her way into Star Wars: Episode IX, it sounds as if it almost certainly isn’t going to happen.
Even worse, for diehards, the news has come straight from the horse’s mouth, and the horse, in this case, is Timothy Zahn – beloved writer of the finest licensed Star Wars novels that money can buy. He’s got a history of his creations crossing over into canon, too, with the most recent being Grand Admiral Thrawn appearing in the Disney XD’s Star Wars Rebels TV series.
During an interview with awesome fan podcast Talking Bay 94 he was asked to comment on the rumors about Jade appearing in Episode IX and said:
“If there was a generic, or organic, spot for her to fit into a story…I promise people, I will pitch it to the Lucasfilm story group, and then, it’s their decision whether to allow it or not.”
Read between the lines a little and you realize that there’s no way he’d have given this answer if Mara Jade were indeed appearing in Episode IX – if she was, he would know about it. After all, that would mean there would be an organic place for her to fit into a story and there’d be no question of whether Lucasfilm would allow it or not.
That’s not to say that Mara Jade won’t ever escape the purgatory of Star Wars Legends. After all, Lucasfilm has shown with their use of Thrawn that they’re receptive to what fans want to see resurrected and re-purposed, and you’d think a strong female Force user would tesselate nicely with the story group’s current thinking on characters.
Regardless, with or without Jade, Star Wars: Episode IX will be here on December 20th, 2019.
