A twisted family tree
It turns out that Luke Skywalker and C-3PO are brothers.
In one of the many strained ties between the original trilogy and the prequels, Episode I establishes that Anakin Skywalker built the ubiquitous protocol droid (because they’re so useful on a desert planet? And because young — really young — Skywalker has the ability to program it with the customs and languages of thousands of societies?), despite Darth Vader not recognizing his own creation in the Cloud City in Episode V.
But Darth has an apparent blind spot to his own kin, as Mr. Force Master didn’t recognize that it was his own daughter he was torturing in Episode IV.
Here are some of the connections that run through the series, a kind of “Star Wars” family tree.
Anakin Skywalker begat …
C-3PO, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa
Leia, at first Luke’s crush (causing a worldwide cinematic shudder when their true relationship became clear in Episode VI), then Han Solo’s squeeze, may have married the latter scruffy-looking nerf herder between Episodes VI and VII. Did they have kids? We don’t know yet, but Poe Dameron, Oscar Isaac’s character from “The Force Awakens,” sure seems to be a heck of a pilot … just saying …
Of course, while Darth
Vader is Luke and Leia’s “Dark Father,” biologically, anyway, any dude can make a kid and, you know, go join the dark side. It takes a real man to stick around and be a real father … which title would go to Senator (and apparently later Prince Consort, in the books) Bail Organa, who didn’t bail on his adopted daughter, Leia, and Luke’s Uncle Owen, farming moisture on Tatooine to support his family.
Uncle Owen was Anakin Skywalker’s stepbrother and treated as such by stormtroopers in Episode IV along with Aunt Beru (their fiery deaths immortalized in a cheeky toy created by a fan with a lot of time on his hands; see http://bit.ly/1GqysN0). Owen, by the way, was played first by Phil Brown, then Joel Edgerton. Yes, that Joel Edgerton, Pharaoh Ramses II in Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Men,” adoptive brother of Moses. Which kind of makes Moses also Luke and Leia’s adoptive uncle, right? Or put another way, Christian Bale is Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher’s uncle. Or something like that.
Jango Fett begat …
The entire clone army — why he was considered the perfect genetic template, we do not know.
And, of course, bounty hunter “son” (actually another clone)
Boba Fett, not a tapioca ball, but the Han Solo-tracking fan favorite in scratched-up armor. Current location: If one went only by the movies, he’d still be in the process of being digested in the eternal madness of the Sarlacc pit. Books have him escaping, though.
Chewbacca — Han’s Wookiee buddy obviously also goes way back with Lando Calrissian, the smoothest former smuggler in the galaxy (“Still hanging out with this loser? How about some Cloud City malt liquor?”). But is he distantly related to … the Ewoks? And are they both related to cats? (https://youtu.be/j8tZqw7cFLs.) And if Chewbacca is a “walking carpet,” as Leia called him, does that make the Ewoks … throw rugs?