Ashla Vassari

Ashla Vassari is a fictional character appearing in Star Wars, the fraternal twin of Luke Skywalker and the daughter of fallen Jedi Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) and Queen of Quaia/Republic Senator Ashani Vassari. She is portrayed on film by actress Linda Blair and appears in six of the nine films in the Star Wars series. Introduced in The Empire Strikes Back. Ashla returned for all subsequent sequels and made a cameo as a baby in Revenge of the Sith alongside her brother Luke.

The Expanded Universe and film sequels depicts her as a powerful Jedi Master and eventually the Grand Master of the New Jedi Order.

Appearances

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Introduced in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back, Ashla is an unassuming woman living on Xagobah with the Jedi Master Yoda. Described as an orphan, her Jedi parents killed by the Empire, she has been trained from birth to be a Jedi. Far more skilled than Luke, nevertheless it is said that her destiny is not to fight Darth Vader.

Luke and Ashla have a platonic relationship and Granger made sure to not infer any romantic aspirations for either character. Ashla spends the majority of the film teaching Luke Lightsaber skills while Yoda teaches him practical applications in the Jedi arts. Ashla is instructed to go with Luke when he makes the impulsive decision to suspend his training to rescue Han and Leia.

Separated from Luke upon arrival to Bespin, Ashla and Tobi work together to locate and rescue Leia and her group, under pursuit by Imperial Stormtroopers. Their superior fighting skills turn the tide in the battle and together they all escape on the Millennium Falcon. Later when Luke is dangling perilously below Cloud City, she receives a telepathic command from Luke to rescue him. She convinces the others to turn around and rescue him.

Back at the Rebel fleet, Ashla and Tobi team up to help in the search for Boba Fett who now carries the carbonite slab in which Han has been imprisoned. She makes no effort to reveal her true lineage to anyone, but it is inferred that Tobi knew all along.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

In Return of the Jedi, Ashla accompanies Luke to Jabba's palace on Tatooine. He sets upon them modified Seeker droids to kill them both, but they easily defeat the machines. While held prisoner, Ashla watches as Luke is pitted against the Rancor monster, she then joins in the battle at the Pit of Carkoon dispatching of numerous guards in Jabba's employ.

Accompanying Luke on his return trip to Xagobah, she is present when Luke learns from Yoda that Darth Vader is indeed his father, and from Obi-Wan Kenobi's spirit that he has a twin, which Luke immediately realizes is Ashla. Obi-Wan warns him that his instincts "Do him credit, but could be made to serve the Emperor". Yoda tells Luke that although he requires no further training, he will not truly be a Jedi until he confronts his father. Luke insists that there is still good left in Vader, and pledges to bring him back from the dark side. Tobi, Ashla and Obi-Wan, however, are in agreement that Vader has completely consumed Luke's father, and must be destroyed in order to defeat the Empire. Ashla tries to persuade him of this, but he rebuffs her.

Arriving on Kashyyyk as part of a Rebel commando squad, Luke, Ashla and Tobi all surrender to Vader in an attempt to bring him back from the dark side of the Force. Just as Luke refused to believe that his father was without redemption, Vader himself refuses all entreaties as the three plead with him to turn away from the Emperor's influence. As Vader brings Luke before Emperor Palpatine, Ashla and Tobi are imprisoned but quickly escape and wreak havoc on the second Death Star. Ashla eventually leaves Tobi to help Luke confront their father and arrives to the throne room to find Luke under attack from the Emperor with Force lightning, and Vader seemingly incapacitated. Ashla rushes to her brother's defense, but is repelled herself. Along with Luke, they then both witness as Vader becomes Anakin Skywalker once again, seizes and throws the Emperor to his death down the reactor shaft.

As Rebel fighters race toward the Death Star's main reactor, Ashla and the others flee with the mortally wounded Anakin. At his request, Luke removes Vader's mask and looks upon his children with Anakin's eyes for the first time. Anakin assures Ashla and Luke that there is good in him after all before he dies.

On Kashyyyk, Luke and Ashla burn their father's armor on a funeral pyre (a Jedi tradition).

Prequel trilogy

In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Ashani Vassari is pregnant with Anakin Skywalker's children near the end of the Clone Wars. During the film's epilogue, Ashani gives birth to twins Luke and Ashla on the planet Alderaan. Needing to protect them, they are separated against her wishes. Luke is taken to the desert planet Tatooine to be raised by Owen and Beru Lars while Yoda assumes custody of Ashla taking her to Xagobah, to be hidden from Emperor Palpatine with Obi-Wan Kenobi keeping an eye on Luke during his formative years. Ashani, unable to remain with both, chooses to stay with Ashla. Ashani's death is not seen in Episode III, but mentioned with Ashla's dialogue in Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars Episode VII: A New Dawn

Ashla is now head of the reformed Jedi Order serving the New Republic. Named Grand-Master, as the more experienced Jedi her position is higher than her brother. Though in the eyes of the New Republic, Luke was the one who defeated The Emperor and Darth Vader.

On the onset, she is at odds with her brother about how to handle the possible return of the Sith. Not fully prepared to even admit that the Sith have returned, she is caught unaware when the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4 is attacked and the Imperial Shadow Order reveals their true intentions.

On Coruscant, she joins her brother in a lightsaber battle with Darth Xanthus and Darth Imperious who share the same body. Ashla is knocked out of the fight as reinforcements arrive in the form of her niece Sava, and the Solo Twins. Ashla then watches as Luke is cut down and killed. Working with Sava, they are able to defeat Son Hhat/Palpatine, but he manages to escape.

Literature

In The Truce at Bakura, set one day after the ending of Return of the Jedi, Ashla

In The Last Master by Paul Davids and Hollace Davids, Ashla and Luke go on a mission to find the first Jedi Temple and encounter a group of Dark Jedi led by self proclaimed Darth Dakan, a Sith adherent. During their capture Ashla falls in love with a young Jedi named Jak Runningrider and he helps them defeat Dakan.

In The Courtship of Princess Leia, as Ashla and Jak are married, she offers advice to Leia who thinks her relationship with Han has become stagnant. Ashla urges Leai to seek out a relationship with Prince Isolder knowing that it will spurn Han to take their love seriously.

In the first part of the Thrawn trilogy, Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, Ashla helps lead the few Jedi students in the fight against campaign to help free the Noghri from their debt to the Empire. It is during this mission that she learns that she is pregnant. At first, Ashla does not want to have children, fearing they would succumb to the dark side as her father had done. However, she begins to understand what happened to her father to bring him to the dark side. When she and Jak go on a mission to Tatooine to retrieve the Alderaanian moss-painting Killik Twilight and the Rebel code hidden within it, Ashla discovers her grandmother Shmi Skywalker's diary and discovers her father was not always the monster she thought he was. Touched, Ashla finally forgives her the spirit of her father.

Later Grand Admiral Thrawn, who had formed an alliance with Joruus C'Baoth, orders Noghri commandos to kidnap Ashla. C'Baoth intends to warp Ashla and Luke to the Dark Side, and plans to corrupt also her two unborn twins. To avoid capture, she hides on the planet Kashyyyk, but her would-be kidnappers track her down. She later learns that Vader once landed on the Noghri home planet Honoghr and tricked the Noghri into serving the Empire by promising to help their planet recover from the ecological disaster that it suffered during the Clone Wars. Because of this, they are fiercely loyal to Vader. Ashla is able to leverage her biological relationship to Vader to persuade a Noghri assassin to travel with her to Honoghr and help convince the Noghri of the Empire's deception. Ashla shows an assembly of Noghri matriarchs that the droids which the Empire demanded are actively poisoning the land and slowing down the reconstruction. They leave the service of the Empire after one of their assassins (and Thrawn's personal bodyguard), Rukh, kills Thrawn during the Battle of Bilbringi and becomes allies of the New Republic.

In retaliation C'Baoth attacks Ashla and Jak, killing her husband and her unborn children with Force Lightning. After this Ashla devotes the remainder of her life to the Jedi.

During the events of Dark Empire, the New Republic suffers severe setbacks, losing most of its worlds, as well as Luke Skywalker to the dark side. After her brother's capture on Coruscant, subsequent transport to Byss, and temptation by the cloned Palpatine, Ashla reaches the Emperor's new stronghold of Byss, where she confronts the reincarnated Sith Lord. At first Ashla is unsuccessful in turning Luke away from the dark side, but does manage to take a Jedi Holocron away from Palpatine's chambers. Ashla boards Palpatine's Super Star Destroyer, Eclipse I, and appeals to the good in Luke, ultimately redeeming him. Brother and sister then fight Palpatine with the light side of the Force, cutting him off from the dark side and control of the titanic Force-generated storm he had created, intending to obliterate the Rebel Alliance fleet. The storm grows out of control, destroying both Eclipse I and Palpatine; Luke and Ashla escape just in time.

In The Unseen Queen, R2-D2 suffers some severe malfunctions and shows Luke a holoclip of his father and a pregnant woman, whom Luke learns is his and Ashla's real mother, Ashani Vassari. In the holoclips, Anakin and Ashani are discussing a dream of Anakin's in which Ashani dies in childbirth. Before Luke can get more info out of R2, the droid has a meltdown, claiming he is protecting information. Frustrated, Luke contacts master slicer Ghent, who manages to recover one other holoclip from R2, this time featuring a scene in which Ashani is talking to Obi-Wan Kenobi about Anakin, which is displayed to both Luke and Ashla.

In The Swarm War, Luke and Ashla finally see their mother's death. (All of these scenes were originally portrayed in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.) Also, Sebatyne tells Ashla to construct a new lightsaber to show she is a true Jedi Knight.

Concept and creation

In 1978, George Lucas decided to introduce a new character for the sequel to Star Wars, a twin to Luke Skywalker who would be an already properly trained Jedi Knight. The initial plan was for Ashla to act as mentor and trainer to her brother, be revealed to him as his sister and then aid in the fight against Darth Vader. Lucas realized that Darth Vader was depicted as a master swordsman and powerful Sith warrior. He felt that Luke would be no match for him in the second film, owing to the decision to kill off Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first film.

In the first draft Obi-Wan was to appear before Luke and direct him to a distant world where Ashla awaited his return. They would train together under her adopted father, Minch Yoda, the last great Jedi Master and together face Darth Vader. Leigh Brackett opted to kill off Ashla to provide emotional gravitas for Luke and in his anger Luke was to kill Darth Vader and succumb to the dark side of the Force, leaving Luke in peril for the next film.

Both Lucas and Granger didn't like this development and with Brackett's death from cancer, Lucas took it upon himself to fix this problem. Both Granger and Lucas felt that Ashla should survive, but they disagreed on Luke's position in the film. Granger felt that Luke, despite being a novice, as the film's lead should face off against Darth Vader alone. Lucas thought that Ashla was too important a character to leave off to the side in the third act (as he did with Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) and repeatedly placed her in the climatic lightsaber fight.

Another point of contention between George Lucas and Granger was the casting of Blair in the role. In spite of her recent legal problems, William Walton Granger wanted to give Linda Blair the role of Ashla Vassari in the sequel. Oddly enough Granger was willing to ignore the possible bad press in regards to Blair's cocaine conviction, Lucas felt that her presence would be a liability to the film. Granger eventually fired Lucas and immediately cast Blair in the role without even making her audition.

"The fact of the matter was, I never had an affair with Linda (Blair), I never slept with her, I never did anything in-appropriate with her. At the time I was 37 and she was 21. I was happily married and talk like this always infuriated me."

— William Granger on the rumors of his affair with Linda Blair (2000)

Granger instructed Blair to begin a fitness regimen and had her train in sword fighting in preparation for the role. There was nominal press in regards to her casting (as Granger predicted) but what was printed focused mostly on the alleged affair between the two. Granger who was married to his third wife at the time, denied there was ever an affair. Fox executives were equally concerned about Blair's casting, but after firing Lucas they had no one but Granger to keep the production on track and acquiesced to most of his decisions.

After Lucas was fired from the production, Granger assumed the duty as screenwriter and opted to follow his ideas for the character. The newly re-named Yoda, now an alien creature, spent the majority of time training Luke making Ashla a more passive observer. Her identity remained a secret to Luke (and the audience) for the entire film, save for a cryptic remark made by Yoda. Wanting to isolate Luke in his duel with Vader, Granger kept Ashla (and to some effect Tobi Dala) in the story by having them rescue the other characters.

Reception

In 2008, Ashla Vassari-Skywalker was selected by Empire magazine as the 57th-greatest movie character of all time. Ashla was also on the ballot for the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains. On their list of the 100 Greatest Fictional Characters, Fandomania.com ranked Ashla at number 20. IGN listed Ashla as their 10th top Star Wars character, and she was chosen twice by IGN's readers as one of their favorite Star Wars characters. Ashla was also listed as one of the Star Wars characters people most wanted to see in Soulcalibur.

External links

• http://www.starwars.com/databank/ashla-vassari%7C
• The World of Star Wars on Yahoo!
• Ashla Vassari at The World of Star Wars