Luke In Love: The Awkward Search For A Suitable STAR WARS Girlfriend
Most of 1990s STAR WARS literature, now rebranded Legends by Disney, focused on two distinctive tropes: the fight against lost Imperial superweapons (with fantastic names such as Suncrusher or Eye Of Palpatine) and the search for a suitable girlfriend for Luke Sykwalker.
Of STAR WARS’s big three characters, Han and Leia became parents as early as 1993 in Timothy Zahn’s novel The Last Command. One year later, they got married in Dave Wolverton’s magically weird The Courtship Of Princess Leia. But Luke, the greatest hero of the STAR WARS franchise, remained single.
For a time during the 90s, it seemed like every STAR WARS author was trying to create the perfect girlfriend for Luke. Some of these characters were politicians, others were strong in the Force, and one . . . was a spirit trapped in a gunnery computer.
Let’s remember the most important of Luke’s potential girlfriends and recall why the eventual winner of STAR WARS Tinder was definitely the right choice.
1. Shira Brie (a.k.a. Lumiya) — the future Sith lady
first appearance: Marvel’s STAR WARS 56 — Coffin In The Clouds (1981)
One of the earliest potential girlfriends for Luke was Rebel agent and pilot Shira Brie. The two characters got close over the course of several missions, culminating in a passionate kiss. Eventually, during a space battle against Imperial Forces, Luke — seemingly by accident — shot down Brie’s starfighter.
As a result of her apparent death, Luke was overwhelmed with guilt, and his reputation among his fellow rebels took a heavy hit. This was, in fact, exactly the outcome that Shira Brie — in reality an Imperial agent — had hoped to achieve by maneuvering her starfighter into Luke’s line of fire.
Brie survived the attack, though only barely, and was gifted a second life with extensive cybernetics, essentially becoming a female version of Darth Vader. Even though her romantic feelings for Luke had been real, she now hated him for disfiguring her.
Since Brie was strong in the Force, she became one of the Emperor’s Hands, secret agents of Palpatine’s. Later, years after the Emperor’s death, Brie resurfaced as Lumiya, self-proclaimed Dark Lady of the Sith, in Aaron Allston’s 2006 novel Legacy Of The Force: Betrayal, becoming the teacher of Jacen Solo, Luke’s nephew. She was eventually killed by Luke in an emotionally charged duel, certain that Jacen would continue her work.
Truth be told, the character of Shira Brie was one of the better things coming out of Marvel’s illustrious STAR WARS comics. The concept of pairing Luke up with an Imperial agent has lots of potential and was later put to effective use with a different character. Just read on.
2. Akanah Norand Goss Pell — the pseudo-Jedi
first appearance: STAR WARS — Before The Storm (1996)
Here’s a rather peculiar attempt at pairing Luke up with a Force-sensitive woman that — fortunately — didn’t get very far. Akanah was introduced as a character in 1996 for Michael P. Kube-McDowell’s often criticised The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. Tellingly, she was all but ignored after that until a brief reappearance over ten years later.
Akanah belonged to the Fallanassi, a group of Force-sensitive humans that followed the White Current, which kind of is the same as the Force and kind of isn’t and . . . yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, she approached Luke and asked him to help her find her people, whom she had been separated from, telling him that his mother had belonged to the Fallanassi as well. Remember, this was before the prequels, when Padmé Amidala didn’t exist yet.
To cut a long story short, Luke and Akanah travelled across the galaxy, got close to each other, and then, upon finding the Fallanassi, Akanah revealed that she lied about his mother to make sure he would help her.
And that was it. Luke and Akanah — who, believe it or not, was even more naive and peace-loving than even Mr. Perfect-Good-Guy Luke Skywalker himself— parted ways. Akanah disappeared from STAR WARS until the cringy character’s fate was finally revealed in Troy Denning’s 2010 novel Fate Of The Jedi: Vortex, in which her body was taken over by the dark side entity Abeloth. Let’s be honest, her death didn’t exactly shake fans to the core. Probably, it made them smile.
3. Gaeriel Captison — the Padmé template
first appearance: STAR WARS — The Truce At Bakura (1994)
Compared to the Force-sensitive characters mentioned so far, Gaeriel Captison represents a completely different approach to finding a girlfriend for Luke. Created by Kathy Tyers for her 1994 novel The Truce At Bakura, Gaeriel is a pacifistic politician that hails from a beautiful Outer Rim planet and cannot touch the Force at all.
Does that backstory ring a bell? Padmé Amidala, anyone?
In fact, the Anakin and Padmé love story of the prequels follows the same concept as the Luke and Gaeriel plotline from the 90s — well, except for the rather important fact that the latter pair never actually ended up together.
Their story began with Luke, Leia, and Han travelling to Bakura to stop an alien invasion by a bunch of warm-blooded reptiles with scent-tongues sticking out of their nostrils, who transferred the life energy of living slaves into droids. Yep, that’s crazy 90s STAR WARS for you.
As the senator of Bakura (again, Padmé, anyone?) Gaeriel got involved with the Rebel team and quickly developed an attraction to Luke, which the Jedi requited. However, Gaeriel’s strong belief in the Cosmic Balance religion, according to which the light of Luke’s arrival was balanced out by the darkness of the alien invasion, put her in an emotionally difficult situation.
After the life-stealing lizards had been defeated, Luke and Gaeriel agreed to part ways, each prioritising their individual careers as Jedi Master and politician respectively. Gaeriel became Prime Minister of Bakura and married the leader of her planet’s navy, having a child with him.
In Roger MacBride Allen’s 1995 novel Assault At Selonia, Luke returned to Bakura to ask Gaeriel for military aid. She agreed to travel to Han Solo’s homeworld of Corellia with Luke, where she died in the follow-up novel Showdown At Centerpoint aboard a Bakuran warship.
Gaeriel Captison may only have lasted a year in the STAR WARS franchise, but the potential of the concept behind the character was eventually realised with Padmé Amidala. (Let’s not talk about just how her and Anakin’s relationship was executed . . .)
4. Callista Ming — the brain of the starship
first appearance: STAR WARS — Children Of The Jedi (1995)
If you think hyper-pacifistic pseudo-Jedi and life-stealing lizards with tongues sticking out their noses are weird, you’ll just love Callista Ming. She was the product of LucasFilm officially tasking author Barbara Hambly with creating a girlfriend for Luke, and admittedly had some potential . . . but the whole thing was really, really weirdly executed.
But first things first. Callista Ming, born as Callista Masana, was introduced in the 1995 novel Children Of The Jedi with the clear intention of setting her up as the love of Luke’s life. To find the perfect match for everybody’s favourite hero, Hambly came up with what is pretty much the female version of Luke. Callista had been a Jedi Knight in the old Jedi Order, she was a firm believer in peace and the light side of the Force, and — just like Luke — she was a patronising philosopher as well as a fierce warrior.
One may argue that clone couples are rather boring and don’t leave much room for the development of either character, but really what makes the whole Callista episode so ridiculous is the way she was introduced into the STAR WARS galaxy.
Luke met Callista aboard the Eye Of Palpatine, a fully automated Imperial superweapon (remember the 90s tropes mentioned in the beginning?) programmed to destroy the planet Belsavis. Decades prior to Luke’s arrival, Callista had boarded the vessel and transferred her spirit into its computers to stop it.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Callista lived inside the gunnery computers of the superweapon, communicating with Luke through messages on screens and, later, the Force. To make things even weirder, Luke already fell in love with her while she was still trapped in the computers.
Eventually, one of Luke’s students— a conveniently beautiful woman called Cray Mingla — sacrificed herself and offered her body to Callista’s spirit. Imagine if the body would have been a male Wookiee. Or an Ewok. Or basically anything else.
But, no, it was a beautiful woman, of course, and Luke and Callista could finally hold each other in their arms . . . only to find Callista could no longer use the Force. So over the course of two more novels — Kevin J. Anderson’s rather brilliant Darksaber and Hambly’s Planet Of Twilight — the two lovers tried to bring the Force back to Callista. It didn’t work, and she eventually left Luke, feeling like she couldn’t be with him without a Force connection.
In reality, the Callista idea just hadn’t worked out, and another potential girlfriend of Luke’s had been way better received by the fans (read on for that story), so that LucasFilm had decided that Callista needed to be written out of the canon. Just like Akanah before her, she disappeared from STAR WARS to make a brief return as a host body for Abeloth years later, wrapping up her weird story.
Can you imagine LucasFilm had actually gone ahead with this concept and Luke would have ended up with a clone of himself trapped in a computer as his partner? Seriously, that would have been Holiday-Special-level weird.
5. Mara Jade — the perfect match
first appearance: STAR WARS — Heir To The Empire (1991)
And the winner of STAR WARS Tinder, the person Luke swiped right on, is . . . Mara Jade!
As hinted at before, Mara represents the intriguing Shira Brie concept executed exceptionally well, making her the perfect girlfriend for Luke.
Like Shira, Mara was once an Emperor’s Hand, working for the Empire as a powerful, Force-sensitive agent. When Palpatine died, he mentally gave her one final task: killing Luke Skywalker. Yep, the person who would end up marrying Luke initially wanted nothing more than to kill him, setting the scene for a pretty exciting plotline.
Mara was introduced to STAR WARS fans in Timothy Zahn’s 1991 masterpiece Heir To The Empire, the very book that re-ignited the flame of the franchise. Over the course of two follow-up novels, Mara turned from a villain into an ally, executing the Emperor’s final command by killing a clone of Luke.
Following the events of Zahn’s trilogy, she appeared several times as a side character and was implied to be in a relationship with Lando Calrissian. Crucially, that was in a Barbara Hambly novel. Did Hambly try to write Mara out of the way to make room for Callista, the brain of the starship, in Luke’s heart? Probably.
But a former Emperor’s Hand isn’t this easy to get rid of, and Mara proved so popular with fans that LucasFilm decided she would be the one to marry Luke. So when Timothy Zahn was brought back to write the Hand Of Thrawn duology in the late 90s, he was not only supposed to bring the Rebellion-Empire war to an official end, but also to bring Luke and Mara together for good.
He did so by stranding them on an enemy planet, on which a series of highly interesting and well-written conversations cleared up the most important questions left open by the — at times confusing — STAR WARS stories of the 90s. For instance, Mara explained why she never properly trained at Luke’s new Jedi Academy and revealed that her supposed relationship with Lando had only been part of an elaborate scam they had come up with for a time-consuming mission.
Luke and Mara barely survived the events of the duology and got married, later having a son called Ben. It was author Karen Traviss who was eventually allowed to kill Mara off in her 2007 novel Legacy Of The Force: Sacrifice. Interestingly, the character was killed by Lumiya’s apprentice Jacen Solo, bringing the Shira Brie/Mara Jade concept full circle.
Mara was introduced to the STAR WARS franchise in a particularly compelling way, paving the way for a highly interesting, changing dynamic between her and Luke. While sharing many ideals with her husband, she was less naive, more direct and matter-of-fact than him, representing the ‘opposites attract’ concept flawlessly. A vicious battler with a strong personality, she was in many ways the antipole to Akanah, and complemented Luke far better than Callista. Oh, also, she wasn’t a spirit in a f*cking gunnery computer.
Honourable Mention: Nakari Kelen — Disney’s first attempt
first appearance: STAR WARS — Heir To The Jedi (2015)
In Disney’s movie-based reboot of the STAR WARS canon, Luke has so far been portrayed as a loner rather than a young Romeo looking for his Juliette. Nevertheless, Kevin Hearne’s new canon novel Heir To The Jedi does introduce a love interest for Luke in the shape of Rebel agent Nakari Kelen. Like Luke, she had been born on a desert planet, and like Luke’s mother, hers had been deeply hurt by Darth Vader.
Luke and Nakari were sent out to retrieve a Givin cryptographer for the Rebel Alliance and developed feelings for each other on the mission. Luke confided in Nakari, letting her know that he could use the Force, and she — not being Force-sensitive herself — helped him master it as far as she could.
Nakari was killed in the climax of Heir To The Jedi, cutting short any kind of relationship she might have developed with Luke. As far as potential girlfriend material goes, she wasn’t quite as exciting as Mara, but also not as weird as Akanah or Callista.
Let’s wait and see whether Disney will surprise us with another Skywalker love story in the future. If so, it’ll be extremely hard to fill Mara Jade’s gigantic shoes.
