Obi-Wan Kenobi Continues a Disturbing Trope for Women of Color Characters
The following post contains spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Clone Wars animated series, the prequel films, and Battlestar Galactica. At the time of this writing, episodes 1–5 of Obi-Wan Kenobi have aired on Disney+.
Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, “The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
This quote was brought to my attention several years ago when I read a post written by prozacpark. She mentioned Poe’s words when discussing the abrupt death of a woman of color character, Dualla/Dee, in the TV series Battlestar Galactica. Prozacpark expressed how Dee’s death fit into the larger trend of killing women characters in fiction:
Because death — always beautiful for women — redeems them, restores them to their beauty, happiness, and honor or what the fuck ever.
Because in death, they become a blank text that can be written upon — having nothing but the body that patriarchy finds so interesting, that the male gaze finds easy to objectify — just as Dee became a text to be written on… so the writers could impart some message using her.
She continues by arguing that killing off women characters reduces them to symbols of “some man’s revolution,” as well as “of everything humanity has lost, and everything it continues to lose.”
As a longtime Star Wars fan, I’ve noticed this misogynistic trope as well within the films and TV shows. One of the most obvious examples is the death of Padmé Amidala, who, according to the medical droid, simply “lost the will to live.” Padmé’s death serves to provide Anakin/Vader with emotional distress and trauma, or, as feminist fandom calls it, “manpain.” There is a theory that argues Sheev Palpatine killed her (which I personally believe), but the pattern of killing off women characters in Star Wars is the larger focus here. Duchess Satine Kryze is another woman character in Star Wars who was victimized by this trope. One could argue that Satine “needed to die” because she does not appear in the later films, but the purpose of her death was for Obi-Wan’s “emotional development.”
Women of color characters in particular have been terribly treated by Star Wars writers. In The Clone Wars animated series, there is a 4-episode arc about the rebels on Onderon (season 5, episodes 2–5). In addition to featuring strong political parallels with occupied Palestine, the episodes introduce us to well-developed Black characters, specifically Saw Gerrera and his sister Steela Gerrera. With Steela, voiced by Dawn-Lyen Gardner, we see a Black woman resistance leader fighting against the brutal droid occupation of her planet. When she and Lux Bonteri, a young white male politician-turned-rebel fighter, nearly fell off a cliff in the final battle, Ahsoka Tano attempted to save them by using the Force. Ahsoka managed to float Lux to safety, but her efforts to save Steela failed.
Steela’s death was not necessary. In fact, it served no other purpose except to transform her into a symbol and have her remembered as a martyr of the revolution. Meanwhile, the young white man, Lux, survives and is re-appointed as senator of Onderon and rejoins the planet with the Republic. His survival was important for larger political purposes, whereas Steela’s purpose was to die for Onderon’s independence so that white men could lead. Referring to Steela, Lux eulogized, “Her sacrifice gave Onderon its freedom.” Steela’s death fuels the notion that Black women must die or sacrifice themselves to inspire revolutions led mostly by white people. Later, in Star Wars Rebels, we learn of the emotional impact Steela’s death had on her brother, Saw. While we see Saw in Rogue One, there is no mention of Steela, but one can interpret that he was alluding to her when he delivered the heartbreaking line, “There’s not much of me left.” Unfortunately, this is again another example of how a woman’s death provides manpain for a male character.
In the 2018 film Solo, Thandie Newton became the first Black woman to play a human/non-alien leading role in a live-action Star Wars film. However, like Steela, her character Val was killed. Newton has been outspoken about how her character’s death was a “big, big mistake.” In an interview with Inverse, Newton was straightforward about her disappointment, stating: “You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie. Like, are you fucking joking?”
What’s worse is that Val did not die in the original script. In other words, Newton signed onto Solo with the understanding that her character would survive. She shared that Val’s death was decided during filming. “And it was much more just to do with the time we had to do the scenes,” she stated. “It’s much easier just to have me die than it is to have me fall into a vacuum of space so I can come back sometime.”
As Monique Jones pointed out in her article on Shadow and Act, Val’s death was a sacrifice so “Beckett, Han and Chewbacca could escape from a botched heist with their lives.” In other words, her death was “only done in service to the plot and to give the male characters something to act against.” Furthermore, Jones writes that Val’s death reinforced the notion that Black women are disposable, especially in the sci-fi and fantasy genres.
While my excitement for Obi-Wan Kenobi was already higher than any Star Wars film or TV show since The Phantom Menace, I was also happy that Indira Varma was cast to play a substantial role. South Asian women in particular have had limited presence in the Star Wars universe. As great as it was to see Janina Gavankar’s likeness and voice used for the main character, Iden Versio, in the Star Wars Battlefront II video game, I thought she was deserving of a live-action presence in the films and shows as well. Similarly, Tiya Sircar voiced the fan-favorite character Sabine Wren on Star Wars Rebels, but was not cast to play the live-action version of the character in the upcoming Ahsoka series. Natasha Liu Bordizzo was cast to play Sabine instead. While it’s great that another woman of color will be playing Sabine, it’s unfortunate that Sircar was not brought back to play the same character she had been playing before. We saw Lucasfilm provide this opportunity (and rightfully so) to Katee Sackhoff, who had voiced Bo-Katan in The Clone Wars and now plays the live-action version of the same character. My issue with Lucasfilm’s casting decision is not Bordizzo’s fault by any means. I’m sure she will do great in the role.
Prior to Varma, the only live-action role we saw for South Asian women was Queen Jamillia in Attack of the Clones. Played by Indian actress Ayesha Dharker, she appeared in a very short scene and was never seen again in the prequel trilogy. In Obi-Wan Kenobi, we learn that Varma’s character Tala Durith is a former Imperial officer who leaves the Empire after realizing the atrocities she has been complicit in. She joins a resistance movement called The Path that helps surviving Jedi and Force-sensitive people escape the Empire. While we have seen many characters defect from the Empire in the Star Wars universe, I don’t think characters like Finn and Bodhi Rook were given enough development and screen time to show us the tremendous impact their decisions had on their lives. I was hoping this would not be the case with Tala, but unfortunately, just as we were getting to learn more about her, she sacrifices herself in Episode 5 of the series.
Just as Newton asserted that she was the first Black woman with a leading live-action role in Star Wars, a similar point could be raised by Varma. That is, she was the first South Asian woman to play a prominent live-action role in Star Wars, only to be killed off. Some of the reactions to Tala’s death that I’ve been reading and hearing from fans has been concerning. One movie critic, a white woman, described Tala’s “sacrifice for the greater good” as being “wonderful.” I’ve seen comments on Twitter from fans who called her death “heroic.” This romanticization of Tala’s death aligns with Edgar Allan Poe’s comment about “the death [of] a beautiful woman” being “unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
Like Steela and Val, Tala did not need to die. In fact, she refused to be saved by Obi-Wan. Her death serves to deepen Obi-Wan’s manpain — his overall guilt that he is responsible for all the deaths in the galaxy that were caused by his former apprentice. Tala dies in order to protect the two white lead characters, Obi-Wan and Leia, because their stories are more important than hers. Before anyone argues that she sacrificed herself because she felt guilty about following orders to hunt Jedi and Force-sensitive survivors of Order 66, do we need to be reminded of the redemption arcs that were given to white male characters like Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo?
It’s worth mentioning Rose Tico, played wonderfully by Kelly Marie Tran. Although Rose was not killed off, her character was significantly reduced to a supporting character with limited screen time in The Rise of Skywalker. It is well-known at this point that Kelly Marie Tran received horribly racist and misogynistic comments online — more specifically, anti-Asian misogyny — after the release of The Last Jedi. Instead of giving her a substantial role in the sequel, J.J. Abrams and his co-screenwriter Chris Terrio essentially made her character inconsequential. Terrio has gone on record to state that they did not deliberately sideline Rose, but deliberately or not, the characters who became prioritized were the two white leads, Rey and Kylo/Ben (a point that John Boyega also raised).
Like John Boyega and Tran, Moses Ingram has also been on the receiving end of racist and misogynistic abuse. The racism against Ingram speaks to the larger problem of anti-Blackness and misogynoir, including in fandom spaces. Episode 5 of Obi-Wan Kenobi revealed much more complexity with Reva’s character, but I believe the show would have benefitted from having more than 6 episodes. I personally would have liked to have seen more development and screen time with Reva’s character. I love the concept of her hunting Darth Vader and deceiving him, but the execution felt rushed. Again, there’s only so much that can be done with character development when there’s only 6 episodes. We don’t know what Reva’s fate will be in the season finale, but I’m really hoping that her character doesn’t die. It’s obvious that we don’t see her character in the original trilogy and sequel trilogy, but to me, that’s not enough to say that her character should be killed.
In closing, martyring women of color characters in service of white characters is a disturbing trope that needs to be challenged, not just in the minds of writers and filmmakers, but also in the minds of fans who romanticize their deaths. This, of course, is not just a problem with Star Wars, but in other franchises as well (e.g. Dualla from Battlestar Galactica and Rue from The Hunger Games).
Perpetuating this trope denies women of color, and communities of color in general, stories of their survival through struggles with colonialism, genocide, imperialism, sexist oppression, and other forms of oppression.
As prozacpark writes: “You know what’s better than that proverbial beautiful death? SURVIVING.”
