Captain Phasma could've been so much more than the Star Wars sequels' Boba Fett...
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00:00Star Wars is home to some seriously iconic and beloved characters.
00:04Darth Vader, Yoda, R2-D2, and C-3PO.
00:08And who could forget everyone's favourite Boonta Eve classic podracer, Mars Guo,
00:13who went out, may I add, like a champ, screaming,
00:16RRRRAAAARGH!
00:17Ugh. Rest in peace, King.
00:19For every star-studded podracer who took home a podium finish,
00:22there are many, many more who were cut down before their time.
00:26You see, Star Wars has the unfortunate habit of leaving a lot of potential on the cutting room floor.
00:32As far as their film careers are concerned, they really deserved a better lot.
00:37Yes, folks, the dead speak.
00:38Somehow, Ewan has returned.
00:40This is What Culture Star Wars, and here are 10 Star Wars characters with the most wasted potential.
00:46Number 10, General Grievous.
00:48Oh, excuse me.
00:50Everyone's favourite asthmatic droid officer, General Grievous,
00:53was first introduced in the spectacular Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars series in 2003.
01:00And boy, what an introduction it was.
01:03The General tore his way through a group of encircled Jedi in his debut episode,
01:07including the venerable Jedi Padawan Shaggy,
01:11who literally looks like Shaggy, like zoinks,
01:14before being fought off by the brilliant Captain Fordo and his ARC Troopers.
01:19Grievous continued to torment the Jedi in the second season of the series,
01:23abducting Palpatine and mercilessly cutting his way through Shaak Ti to get to him,
01:28before then appearing in Revenge of the Sith,
01:31where he was decidedly, well, less intimidating.
01:35Look, I love the cowardly Grievous as much as the next guy,
01:38but he could have been a great Darth Maul-level antagonist.
01:42This version of the character has been fleshed out nicely in the 2008 Clone Wars TV series
01:47and in comics and Legends material,
01:49but I still think Lucasfilm can do one better
01:52and tap into what made his animated debut so successful all the way back in 2003,
01:57which is 20 years ago.
02:00Dear God.
02:01Number 9, Galen Erso.
02:03The father of lead character Jyn,
02:06Galen Erso is a scientist working with the Empire on the development of the first Death Star.
02:11It is he who leaks the location of the battle station's plans
02:14and who designed the flaw in the superweapon to begin with,
02:16setting in motion the events of this film and the entire original trilogy.
02:21Despite being the one responsible for this intelligence,
02:23Galen doesn't get much screen time in Rogue One.
02:26A lot more of it is devoted to his daughter, which is fine,
02:30but when compared to the rest of the cast, she's kind of, you know, a bit boring,
02:34and I can't help but feel that a lot was left on the table
02:37when it came to this act of heroic genius from Galen.
02:39Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to have more Mads Mikkelsen on our screens.
02:43I mean, come on, the dude rocks.
02:45Number 8, Biggs Darklighter.
02:48Okay, so Biggs Darklighter is low-key one of the most important characters
02:52in the entire Star Wars mythos.
02:55A fellow native of Tatooine, Darklighter grew up alongside Luke Skywalker
02:59and shared in his dreams of becoming a pilot.
03:02He left the planet before Luke, graduating from the Imperial Academy,
03:05before defecting to join the Rebel Alliance.
03:08We only see our moustached king for a handful of minutes in A New Hope,
03:12where he is reunited with Luke just before the Battle of Yavin,
03:16which is when he dies in the Assault on the Death Star, and, well, that's it.
03:20That's the last we hear of him.
03:22Biggs is set up to be a pretty big deal in the early portion of the film.
03:26He's presented as Luke's best friend,
03:28and then he just dies without any kind of big fanfare, and what's up with that?
03:33Sure, he's been in a few video games and comic books since,
03:36but as far as the first Star Wars goes,
03:38Biggs' introductory scene with Luke, that was originally intended to be on Tatooine,
03:42should have maybe been kept.
03:43Number 7, Bendu.
03:45Much is made of the light and dark sides of the Force,
03:49but what about the soft, squishy middle?
03:51The white stuff in the Oreo of the Force is occupied by the Bendu,
03:55a mysterious being that we meet in Star Wars Rebels.
03:58Claiming to represent the center of this mysterious aura,
04:01this gigantic creature served as a mentor to Kanan Jarrus after the Jedi lost his vision.
04:08His appearances occur solely in the third season of Rebels,
04:11turning up in the season premiere and vanishing in the finale.
04:14In this time, he is shown to be extremely powerful,
04:18extremely knowledgeable, and extremely old.
04:21Someone you probably want to keep around then.
04:23Sadly, Bendu hasn't turned up in an official capacity since 2017.
04:27With such a deep interest out there in the early days of the Force,
04:31you'd have thought this ancient character would have been used to explore that just a smidge more.
04:35Will we ever see this enormous fuzzball again?
04:38Ah, who's to say?
04:39But at least one fascinating bit of trivia came from his time in Rebels.
04:44Because Bendu was voiced by Tom Baker,
04:47meaning that the Fourth Doctor has been in Star Wars.
04:50Nice.
04:52Number 6, Maz Kanata.
04:54Look, we can't ignore the confusing mess that was Maz Kanata.
04:58A character who was part Yoda, part Jabba the Hutt, and part Minion.
05:03I think that works.
05:04Introduced in The Force Awakens,
05:06Maz is the proprietor of an outlaw tavern frequented by Han Solo.
05:11The smuggler asks his diminutive friend for help,
05:13which is where she first encounters Rey.
05:15She attempts to give the young woman a gift, Luke Skywalker's old lightsaber.
05:20Do we ever find out how she got a hold of the weapon that fell from Cloud City all those years ago?
05:24Do we? Heck.
05:26Maz then turns up via hologram in The Last Jedi
05:29and essentially serves as a substitute for Leia in The Rise of Skywalker.
05:33Despite being set up as an ancient, all-knowing character,
05:36she's reduced to little more than a background extra by the trilogy's end.
05:40And come on, let's face it.
05:41If you're coming up against Claude in the background extra, the sequel trilogy kind of role,
05:46well, you're losing that battle.
05:48You lose that battle every time, friend.
05:49Maz has received more development in High Republic stuff and the occasional comic,
05:54but as far as sequels go, she was frustratingly underused.
05:59Number 5, Jango Fett.
06:02If, like me, you grew up with the prequels,
06:04then chances are you're a big Jango Fett guy and for good reason.
06:09Jango looks cool as hell, was one of the key faces of Attack of the Clones,
06:14the source of the Republic's clone army, father to Boba Fett,
06:18and had a killer actor in Temura Morrison bring him to life.
06:22Sadly, like a lot of Episode II, Jango doesn't really fulfill his potential in that film.
06:28He shows up to assassinate Zam Wessel, introduces the clones,
06:31and then gets his head unceremoniously disconnected from his neck
06:35by Mace Windu in the big gladiatorial arena on Geonosis.
06:39Surely the father of Boba Fett deserved better.
06:42Now, to be fair to Jango, and because Scott Telford will beat me to death
06:46with his toy lightsabers if I don't bring this up,
06:48the character did receive two really cool stories that expanded his origins
06:52in the Star Wars Bounty Hunter game,
06:55which showed how Dooku recruited him to be the genetic template of the clone army.
06:59He also got this for all seasons comic prequel, written by Hayden Blackman,
07:04which introduced his origins as a Mandalorian and being trained by Jaster Mereel.
07:09There's still clearly loads more left to explore with that character, though.
07:12That bounty hunting world is one of Star Wars' most interesting corners,
07:16and Jango should be the face of it alongside Cad Bane.
07:20Look, you put Lee Van Cleef in Star Wars, and I'm a happy man.
07:22Number four, Mace Windu.
07:25Sure, he was in all three prequels and has been a highlight in both Clone Wars TV shows,
07:30but how much do we actually know about Jedi Master Mace Windu?
07:34We know he's the second-in-command of the Jedi Council,
07:37junior to Yoda in terms of rank and experience,
07:40but senior to him in terms of height.
07:43We know he wields a purple lightsaber,
07:45which is objectively the coolest on-screen lightsaber,
07:47and there shall be no further discussion on that, thank you very much.
07:50But all of this feels very surface-level.
07:53Yes, he's meant to represent the stalwart dogmatism
07:56that will prove to be the downfall of the Jedi,
07:58but someone of Samuel L. Jackson's stature deserved bigger and better things.
08:03Windu's origin story has been explored greatly in written media,
08:07but he's been pretty hard done by on-screen.
08:09We only know that he's so powerful because we've been expressly told so.
08:13We've been given no reason to care about him beyond his existing name recognition.
08:17But he does have that really cool bit in Clone Wars
08:20where he beats up an entire army of battle droids with his fists.
08:22That kind of maybe makes up for everything else.
08:25Number three, Captain Phasma.
08:27She was a shiny stormtrooper.
08:29A shiny stormtrooper!
08:31How cool is that?
08:32Portrayed by Game of Thrones' Gwendolyn Christie,
08:35Captain Phasma acts as the leader of the white-suited soldiers with poor aim.
08:40She is set up as the main antagonist for Finn in The Force Awakens,
08:44as she is the one who takes the most offense to him,
08:46defecting to the Resistance.
08:48If you can cast your mind back to 2015, before The Force Awakens came out,
08:52you couldn't really escape Captain Phasma.
08:55Her image was everywhere and she played a huge role in the film's marketing.
09:00In the end though, what did she actually do?
09:02She was established in The Force Awakens,
09:04taunted Finn a little bit in The Last Jedi, and then died.
09:08She had no real impact on either film's plot
09:11and ended up serving as maybe the fourth or fifth most important villain.
09:15She doesn't even get the honour of being the sequel's Boba Fett
09:17because if you look at Boba and Empire, at least he did stuff of note.
09:21Number two, Wedge and Tilly's.
09:24For the longest time, Rebel pilot Wedge and Tilly's
09:27was one of the textbook examples of a Star Wars character
09:30not really ever given his flowers.
09:32He was shown quite prominently during the fighter sequences in A New Hope
09:35and was even brought back for the attack on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi.
09:40He had plenty of lines and it was implied that he was a pretty vital part of the Rebel machine,
09:45but he was given no backstory whatsoever, at least in the movies.
09:49Most fans didn't even know his name.
09:50The character has turned up a few more times though,
09:53most notably in the X-Wing novels by Michael Stackpole
09:57and in a handful of Star Wars Rebels episodes,
09:59but it still feels like this beloved flyboy hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves.
10:04When you think that actor Dennis Lawson was actually asked to reprise his role in The Force Awakens
10:08in the position that Poe Dameron ended up filling,
10:10imagine how much more Wedge he could have gotten.
10:12Seriously, I'm living a very Wedge-deficient lifestyle right now.
10:15Gimme more Wedge.
10:17And number one, Finn.
10:19Finn, played by the brilliant John Boyega,
10:22was set to be the breakout character of the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
10:25He was given way more prominence than Rey in The Force Awakens' marketing,
10:29as everyone was led to believe that he was the force wielder and not her.
10:34And then things went differently.
10:36And then badly.
10:37In that order.
10:38The Rise of Skywalker took this main character
10:41and reduced him to little more than a background part.
10:43The fact that Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates script leaked at the same time
10:47and had a way bigger role for Finn leading a rebellion against the First Order on Coruscant
10:53made this reduced role even worse.
10:55But conceptually speaking,
10:57it sounded way more interesting than what we ended up getting from J.J. Abrams and Chris Theriot.
11:03In any case, Finn was given nothing in Episode IX.
11:07Even the big secret he had for Rey was never revealed.
11:10He was pretty much forgotten about halfway through the film.
11:13The expanded canon has a lot of making up to do.
11:16The only things really focusing on Finn at the minute are the Lego movies.
11:20That's where we are right now.
11:22Do better, Star Wars.
11:24And those were 10 Star Wars characters with the most wasted potential.
11:28Do you have any other beloved Mars-Guo-level faves you feel were underserved in the films?
11:33Let me know in the comments down below.
11:34And while you're there, if you could Force throw us a like and a subscribe,
11:37you'll have us all doing happy banther noises here at WarCulture Towers.
11:41Once again, I've been Ewan, and until next time, boyos, may the Force be with you.
11:46See ya!