10 Star Wars Legends Characters That Need To Become Canon

You'd think that with over a decade having passed since Disney first purchased Lucasfilm, we'd talk less about the old Star Wars Expanded Universe. And yet, what Disney quickly redubbed the Legends timeline, relegated out of the official canon, has remained a point of fascination for fans across the Star Wars spectrum.

For longtime fans who grew up on Obi-Wan Kenobi or Boba Fett novels, playing "Knights of the Old Republic" or "Star Wars: Battlefront II," Legends is a bastion of nostalgia. For newer fans, it's a veritable sea of extended stories, many of which are still lauded in the fandom despite their distance from the new canon. Lucasfilm has only encouraged continued engagement with the Legends canon by bringing over pieces to the new, official timeline. Grand Admiral Thrawn, Mount Tantiss, and Palpatine resurrecting himself via dark Force cloning are all details carried straight from the EU into the modern canon.

Still, far more characters remain relegated to Legends status than have been brought back around. And today, we're giving them their due. In the interest of pragmatism, we won't be discussing characters who've been effectively locked out of the new canon by story decisions. Han and Leia have had their full story told in the new timeline, for instance, which doesn't leave much room for Jacen, Jaina, or Anakin Solo. Fan favorite Mara Jade also seems like her time to be recanonized has passed, and we're avoiding characters like Revan or Darth Bane who still have most of their stories locked in Legends but have nonetheless been brought over in similar forms, one way or another.

With all that out of the way, let's look at some fantastic Star Wars Legends characters who could still conceivably be brought back in the current canon.

If you were a Star Wars fan in the '90s, Nomi Sunrider may likely be near the top of your list, too. In the long gap between 1983's "Return of the Jedi" and 1999's "The Phantom Menace" — a gap significantly longer than that between "Revenge of the Sith" and "The Force Awakens" — fans of the franchise had to rely on novels, comics, and video games to fill the absence of new films. The Expanded Universe as a unified concept was really born of that era, and the "Tales of the Jedi" comics gave fans an early look at what the ancient Jedi Order spoken of in the original trilogy actually looked like.

Nomi Sunrider is one of the main Jedi characters of those comics — a deeply powerful Force-sensitive human who eventually rose to the highest Jedi rank of Grand Master after playing a key role in the Great Sith War. A prodigy, Nomi was adept in the powerful technique known as Jedi Battle Meditation, which could swing entire wars by empowering one's allies and driving fear into their enemies.

Wrapped up in all that is a personal story of loss, grieving, and rebirth — all of which takes place around 4,000 years before the main Star Wars movies begin. Disney has been hesitant to flesh out that ancient era of the Old Republic and the early days of the Jedi, but projects like the still-theoretically-upcoming "Dawn of the Jedi" movie could be perfect venues for a new version of Nomi Sunrider to debut in Star Wars canon.

Shimrra Jamaane is no one's favorite Star Wars character. And if you've read the EU novels and comics that detail the Yuuzhan Vong war — an invasive alien species to the Star Wars galaxy led by Jamaane as Supreme Overlord — you may object to any of those characters being included here. It's a divisive arc, to say the least, and it bears more blame than perhaps any other part of Star Wars for giving the Expanded Universe a reputation for bizarre, impenetrable storylines.

Then there are those who'd point out that Jamaane isn't even the real big bad of the Yuuzhan Vong War, but we'll leave that surprise for anyone who still wants to go back and revisit the old Legends stories.

So why, then, does the Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong make it onto this list? Because the whole idea still has a lot of potential. While many fans take issue with certain aspects of the storyline as it played out in the EU, it was a fun next step after years of Star Wars stories resurrecting Palpatine and regurgitating the Empire again and again. The idea of an alien invasion — not of a single planet but of an entire galaxy, by a species that operates on entirely different rules — is a super strong one. And while yes, the new canon has its own sort-of version of the Yuuzhan Vong called the Grysk, it's not really the same.

If Disney wants to start an expansive new story set after the Star Wars sequel trilogy, bringing back a revamped version of Shimrra Jamaane and the Yuuzhan Vong would, if nothing else, be a bold way to do it.

Kyle Katarn is a bit of a tough case on this list, because while he's never been made canon again, he has been sort of recreated in the aggregate by other, new characters. If you sliced him down the middle, half could easily go to Cassian Andor (a rebel operative and gunslinger who helps to steal the Death Star plans), and the other half to Cal Kestis (a Jedi during the Imperial era working for the greater good).

And yet, Kyle Katarn is neither of those characters, and neither of them are him. There's still plenty of room in the Imperial Era for Disney to add in some new stories with, say, a beloved Legends character who uses lightsabers and blasters with equal swagger. Or, alternatively, Lucasfilm could put a new spin on the character, placing him in the early New Republic era. Kyle Katarn running jobs with Din Djarin in the Outer Rim? You have to admit, there's potential.

"Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords" is a strange game — one of the strangest in a Star Wars video game legacy that includes a lot of odd games. Anyone remember "Yoda Stories"?

On the one hand, "KotOR II" was a rush job that launched unfinished, leaving a series of technical issues and incomplete content for fans and modders to fill in on their own time. On the other hand, it's one of the most thematically interesting stories in the EU, with great dialogue, big ideas, and fantastic, multi-layered characters.

And few would argue that the star of the show is Kreia, the deeply powerful, enigmatic, and frequently frightening Force sensitive who collides with the player's Jedi Exile character at the start of the game. Kreia is fascinating: a character with ties to both the Jedi and Sith but who declares herself a secret third thing, actually. Okay, but seriously, she's great, with a lot of rich things to say about the nature of mentorship, the Force, galactic order, good, evil, sex (in Star Wars no less), and lots else.

Admittedly, it would be hard to see Kreia brought into the current canon and not have her be played by her original voice actor, Sara Kestelman. So much of the character's gravitas in the game comes from Kestelman's performance. While she's less active these days in her early 80s, it would be amazing to see her reprise the part if Lucasfilm were to ever let its animated division do a series set in the Old Republic. At this point, we've been begging for years.

It's appropriate to discuss Darth Nihilus right after discussing Kreia, as the two are inexorably linked in the saga of "Knights of the Old Republic II." First and foremost, this is a character who clearly received the same memo that Darth Vader, Maul, and the Stranger all got — that it is the first and primary responsibility of any Sith to look extremely cool. But beyond simple aesthetics, Darth Nihilus is a fascinating and unique Sith character who'd be a great fit for any new Old Republic stories Lucasfilm might come up with.

Rather than an asset, the dark side of the Force is more of an affliction to Nihilus. War trauma and distinct supernatural circumstances imbued the man who became Nihilus with an insatiable hunger for Force energy — one that could only be temporarily staved off by the consumption of life. His hunger also imbued him with great power, making him a threat to all sentience within the galaxy.

This is the sort of character who would be perfect for a return to canon. The core concept is so strong and terrifying, but new writers could tweak elements to make an adapted Nihilus fit better in the modern canon. Will it ever happen? We can only hope.

We had to pick at least one character from Karen Traviss' fantastic "Republic Commando" novels — some of the best and most underrated of the old EU — and as we already have so many great clone characters in canon, Kal Skirata was the natural choice. A Mandalorian warrior, Skirata was enlisted to help train the clone army on Kamino in the years leading up to the Clone Wars. He became quite close with the clones, adopting a sort of patriarchal role as both commander and surrogate father. He also took part in various operations during the war and did his best to ensure the survival of the clones, whom he viewed as true Mandalorians deserving of that heritage and culture.

Skirata is a complex character, the kind who fit perfectly in Traviss' world of military sci-fi. Unfortunately, at this point, the Clone Wars have kind of been done to death, so it seems unlikely that there'd be an opportunity to bring him back in a major project.

That said, as a character in a vacuum, Skirata is a fascinating subject, and he could be slotted in with some changes to the current, canonical "Mandalorian," perhaps as a veteran and community leader on the reclaimed Mandalore, where he made his home in the EU. The "Republic Commando" novels were famously retconned by George Lucas well before Disney purchased Star Wars, so some of those plot and character details already feel easier to shift around.

Yes, Exar Kun is technically canon. But unlike fellow Sith characters Revan (who's referenced in the canon novel "Shadow of the Sith") and Darth Bane (who appears in supernatural circumstances in Season 6 of "The Clone Wars"), Exar Kun has only been resurrected in the most obscure passages of Star Wars sourcebooks, with no direct references in actual stories (yes there's that Easter egg in "Solo," but come on). Small difference? Sure, but it was enough to get him onto this list. Besides, every Star Wars fan already knows that we need more Bane and Revan in canon as soon as possible.

Exar Kun, on the other hand, though central to the early EU materials in the '90s and early 2000s, doesn't get nearly as much attention these days. Perhaps that's because his source material, the "Tales of the Jedi" comics, aren't revered quite as highly anymore as Revan's "Knights of the Old Republic" or the "Darth Bane" novels. Perhaps it's because the ancient era Exar Kun hails from has been built out less than the Old Republic era that followed it.

Regardless, he's a perfect choice to bring back as a core character and villain for the "Dawn of the Jedi" movie that keeps insisting it's real, or, absent that, any other canon stories revisiting the great wars between the Sith and the Jedi. An early mirror of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark, Exar Kun is a classic Star Wars bad guy. But maybe we leave Yavin 4 alone this time, rather than making it his tomb.

If you're a prequel kid and you got into "Star Wars" in the late '90s or the early 2000s, you likely read some Jude Watson's "Jedi Apprentice" novels, which follow Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi on various adventures as master and apprentice. A recurring antagonist in these books, and a foil to Obi-Wan, is the Dark Jedi Xanatos, a previous padawan of Qui-Gon's turned bad.

Looking back, it's easy to see Xanatos for what he is — an angsty placeholder villain designed to appeal to the emo and emo-adjacent culture of the time. But what's so wrong about that? Watson didn't have the luxury of writing in proper Sith, as "The Phantom Menace" established no Jedi had encountered any to report on for 1,000 years. When you're writing Jedi books for kids, you need a red lightsaber somewhere, and why not bundle it with some black eyeliner while you're at it?

While the odds of a canonical return for Xanatos are admittedly near zero, it's equally true that we don't know as much about Qui-Gon in the new canon as we did in the old. His time as an apprentice training under Count Dooku has been detailed, as has some of his time with Obi-Wan, but there's a gap in the middle there that could still be filled in. If My Chemical Romance can get back together, then why can't we also get more Xanatos?

Of all the characters on this list, the ancient dark Force deity Abeloth has by far the greatest odds of actually showing up in a future Star Wars movie or show. Why? Because for years, Dave Filoni has been expanding the lore of the Mortis Gods, powerful beings created by George Lucas for "The Clone Wars." Their mythos has appeared in "Star Wars Rebels" and "Ahsoka," with more and more time spent in the mystical realm known as the World Between Worlds. And in the old EU, Abeloth is directly connected to Mortis, making a return for the all-powerful villainess a likely theory as Filoni and co. continue to build out that particular corner of the franchise.

After gaining immortal power from the ancient Force magic of Mortis, Abeloth became a being of pure destruction. She was locked away for many years by the Mortis Gods, only to escape in the years after the original trilogy, becoming one of the major antagonists of the EU.

A new, canonical version of Abeloth would have to be a fair bit different, but she could still be a solid choice as a new big bad. If Baylan Skoll is really seeking some ancient power connected to Mortis, as the end of "Ahsoka" season 1 would suggest, then Abeloth may well be at the end of that quest.

When it comes to original characters created by Timothy Zahn for the "Heir to the Empire" trilogy, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade get most of the attention. That's understandable given their outsized profiles in the EU, but Talon Karrde deserves some time in the spotlight too.

An underworld figure who gained major influence as an information broker in the wake of the Empire's collapse, Karrde plays a key role in the original Thrawn trilogy, helping the New Republic defeat the Grand Admiral by deploying some of his many secrets.

More importantly, Talon Karrde is just a fun guy. He loves to throw parties and hang out with famous people, and it's that sort of big personality, relatable in a non-sci-fi kind of way, that Star Wars could use right now. These days, it's all fearsome warriors and Glup Shittos. The franchise could use a guy who just likes to have a good time.