The key to any great story is compelling characters. If the characters don’t interest the audience, neither will their stories. This is one of the reasons why the Star Wars saga is still head and shoulders above most of the long-running blockbuster franchises that it inspired. There are very few characters in the Star Wars universe (at least, before Disney took over) that haven’t reached the status of an icon.
The first moment that we see a character on-screen is one of the most important in terms of gripping the audience because first impressions are the most lasting. So, here are the 10 best character introductions in the Star Wars saga.
Jango Fett
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s subplot in Attack of the Clones sees the Jedi Master investigating some missing archives. The dart that kills Padmé’s would-be assassin leads Obi-Wan to Kamino, where he stumbles upon the creation of the Clone Army and meets Jango Fett, the genetic template for all the clones.
As Obi-Wan goes to leave, he’s ambushed by the armored bounty hunter that was hired to kill Padmé and subcontracted the job to Zam Wesell. Until this point, he’s only caught glimpses of the bounty hunter. It turns out to be Fett in his double life as a bounty hunter, showing off his arsenal of gadgets.
Darth Maul
The Phantom Menace faced a similar problem to The Dark Knight Rises, in that it had to follow up one of the most iconic and unforgettable movie villains of all time with another villain that was just as iconic and just as unforgettable, but also completely different. George Lucas had to create a villain who was as intimating as Darth Vader but also felt entirely new.
Based on our first glimpse of Maul, a horned beast with an unquenchable bloodlust and an otherworldly red-and-black pattern on his face, it’s fair to say that Lucas succeeded as well as anyone could’ve expected.
Ben Kenobi
George Lucas has made no secret of the fact that the Star Wars movies were heavily influenced by samurai movies directed by masters like Akira Kurosawa. The Jedi Order was inspired by the codes and credos followed by these samurai warriors. Ben Kenobi is introduced in the original 1977 movie as a calm, collected space wizard who only uses violence when it’s necessary.
The shot of a hooded Kenobi warding off the Tusken Raiders that are attacking Luke Skywalker has become iconic, as has the subsequent shot in which he removes that hood and says, “The Sandpeople are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.”
Emperor Palpatine
Technically, we first saw Emperor Palpatine in The Empire Strikes Back, but he only appeared in the form of a hologram, and in the original cut, he wasn’t played by Ian McDiarmid (he was played, bizarrely, by a woman with superimposed chimpanzee eyes).
The character wasn’t introduced in his true form until the opening scene of Return of the Jedi, in which he arrives on the mid-construction second Death Star and consults with Darth Vader while hundreds of Stormtroopers stand in line around them. In this scene, Palpatine’s black hood covers most of his face, leaving us to notice smaller details, like his hunched shoulders.
Yoda
Some commentators have suggested that the reason for Star Wars fans’ backlash to the changes made to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi is that they saw the original trilogy first. When we met Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, he was a secluded hermit, but we didn’t see him as an ass-kicking Jedi in his “younger” days (about 30 years earlier in his 900-year life) until the prequels came out.
We saw Luke as the Jedi’s noble, optimistic hero in the original trilogy before we saw him as a secluded hermit in the sequel trilogy. Either way, Yoda’s slapstick-filled introduction on Dagobah in Empire still plays really well.
Princess Leia
In the opening scene of 1977’s original Star Wars movie, Princess Leia Organa is captured by Stormtroopers and brought to Darth Vader. But she doesn’t go down without a fight. Her ship, Tantive IV, fights off the Empire’s forces for as long as possible, despite being hopelessly outmatched, while she leaves a message for Obi-Wan Kenobi on R2-D2’s memory drive and sends him down to Tatooine to deliver it.
When the Stormtroopers come after her, she fires her blaster at them to hold them off, but unfortunately, she’s outnumbered and they incapacitate her. Even as a prisoner, she refuses to give up the information that Vader wants.
Boba Fett
George Lucas apparently had no idea how popular Boba Fett had become among the Star Wars fan base when he gave him a goofy, unceremonious death scene caused by an accident in Return of the Jedi.
When Darth Vader brought together a bunch of bounty hunters from around the galaxy and tasked them with finding the Millennium Falcon, Fett immediately stood out. Vader looked at Fett and said, “No disintegrations,” hinting that Fett’s signature move is to disintegrate people.
Fett went on to be the one who found the Falcon – based on a technique he learned from Obi-Wan while chasing him with his father as a kid – and froze Han in carbonite to take to Jabba’s palace.
R2-D2 and C-3PO
The only characters to appear in every movie in the Skywalker saga, R2-D2 and C-3PO have been the beating heart of Star Wars since the very beginning. It’s really the story of two droids who are passed from owner to owner and find themselves in intergalactic adventures with them.
When we first met the two droids in the original 1977 movie, they were aboard the Tantive IV as it was under attack by an Imperial Star Destroyer. Threepio’s panicked state contrasted hilariously with Artoo’s seemingly calm demeanor, immediately establishing the rapport between this pair that would continue to entertain audiences for nine whole movies.
Han Solo
When Ben Kenobi takes Luke Skywalker to the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” that is Mos Eisley Spaceport, the naive farm boy doesn’t know what to expect. The two promptly meet Han Solo, who agrees to help them.
Han is on the complete opposite end of the political and socioeconomic spectrum to Luke. Whereas Luke is a bright-eyed optimist who wants to join the Rebel Alliance and save people’s lives, Han is a smooth-talking pessimist who only cares about himself and just wants to get paid. It was touching to see Luke impact Han’s worldview over the course of the trilogy, and that’s thanks to this scene establishing Han as Luke’s polar opposite.
Darth Vader
In the Star Wars timeline, the first appearance of Darth Vader arrives at the end of Revenge of the Sith, as Anakin Skywalker awakens to find himself confined to a mechanical suit and cries out, “NOOOOO!!!” But that’s not the moment that first introduced this character to the moviegoing public. His true debut came in the 1977 original film.
The opening shot of that movie is perfect, gripping the audience instantly with the little Tantive IV flying over the camera in the middle of a space battle, followed by its opponent: a gigantic, ominous, monolithic Imperial Star Destroyer. After the Stormtroopers take care of the first wave of Rebel troops in no time and the smoke clears, Darth Vader strides into frame, immediately commanding the audience’s attention. John Williams’ score contributes a lot to this moment.