Jacen Solo

• 1. Introduction

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  Jacen Solo begins his fictional life as one of a pair of unnamed twins Leia Organa Solo is carrying in the 1991 novel Heir to the Empire. He arrives five minutes after his sister Jaina, born on Coruscant in the 1993 novel The Last Command. His parents are Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo; his uncle is Luke Skywalker. These are not trivial connections in a galaxy riven by war and prophecy. They would come to define everything about the man he became, and everything about the monster he nearly remained.

  For decades of novel-publishing history, Jacen Solo was one of the central figures of what is now called the Star Wars Legends continuity. He grew from a child in safe havens protected by a handmaiden named Winter into a Jedi apprentice, then into a prisoner of war, then into a Sith Lord who called himself Darth Caedus. He killed people he loved. He was killed by his twin sister. And even after his death, the galaxy felt his presence in its politics, its grief, and its ghosts.

  His story raises questions that the novels spend years circling: Can a person who does terrible things in the name of love be redeemed? And does a redemption that comes only at the moment of death count for anything at all?

• 2. The Force-Sensitive Child

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  At age three, Jacen and Jaina returned to Coruscant after living in various safe havens, and their adventures there were immediate. Once, they became lost in the underworld of Imperial City with C-3PO before being rescued and returned to their mother, the Chief of State of the New Republic.

  Then came a more serious threat. In The Crystal Star, all three Solo children were abducted alongside many other Force-sensitive children by a figure named Hethrir. His goal was to brainwash them into becoming Dark Jedi and restore the Galactic Empire. The children defeated their captor. It was an early indication that Jacen, even as a young child, would repeatedly stand at the edge of the dark side and step back.

  When Jacen traveled to Yavin 4 to begin Jedi training in the Young Jedi Knights series, he discovered something that set him apart. He felt a deep connection to the Living Force, the aspect of the Force concerned with the present moment rather than prophecy or power. He could communicate with jungle creatures near the Jedi Academy. He kept a small menagerie of animals in his room in the Great Massassi Temple. These details matter, because they sketch a Jacen who approached the Force with curiosity and care rather than appetite.

• 3. Lightsabers and Lessons

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  Jacen used a corusca gem as his lightsaber's focusing crystal, a stone he had gained earlier in his training. The choice of crystal turned out to carry a terrible consequence.

  In the novel Lightsabers, Tenel Ka rushed to finish building her lightsaber in order to keep pace with her friends. She used an imperfect crystal. During a sparring match with Jacen, her blade shorted out. His lightsaber passed through the space her weapon had occupied a moment before, and severed her arm. She bore him no ill will for the accident. Jacen was wracked with guilt nonetheless.

  This moment sits at the center of who Jacen is before the war against the Yuuzhan Vong changes him. He is capable of causing serious harm to people he loves, even without intent. The guilt he carries forward from Tenel Ka's injury echoes later, in larger and far more deliberate acts, where the harm is chosen rather than accidental.

  The Young Jedi Knights series also introduced Jacen to Zekk, a childhood friend who fell to the Shadow Academy before eventually returning; to Raynar Thul, whose father Bornan died from one of the plagues unleashed by the Diversity Alliance; and to Nolaa Tarkona, the Twi'lek leader of the Diversity Alliance, who was the sister of Oola, killed by Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.

• 4. Prisoner of the Yuuzhan Vong

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  Star by Star sent Jacen on a mission to Myrkr with a Jedi strike force led by his brother Anakin. The objective was to infiltrate a Yuuzhan Vong cloning facility producing creatures called Voxyn, designed specifically to hunt Jedi. The mission ended in Anakin's death. Jacen was captured under the command of Vergere and Nom Anor, and disappeared from the Force entirely.

  In the novel Traitor, Jacen awoke inside the Embrace of Pain, a rack-like torture device used by the Yuuzhan Vong. The torture nearly broke him. What saved him was learning to use the pain itself as sustenance rather than trying to resist it. His teacher through this ordeal was Vergere, an avian creature who had once been a Jedi of the Old Republic and had even met Anakin Skywalker, Jacen's grandfather.

  Jacen used herbs to heal slaves aboard a Yuuzhan Vong ship and earn his captors' trust. He communicated with the living instruments of Yuuzhan Vong technology through an implanted slave seed beneath his flesh. He escaped by commanding Yuuzhan Vong amphistaffs to surround him like living armor.

  On a transformed Coruscant, now being remade into the Yuuzhan Vong's new capital and named Yuuzhan'tar after the planet that spawned them, Jacen channeled hatred into Force lightning, then fled from what that ability meant. He eventually surrendered and became the Yuuzhan Vong's Avatar of God, titled the 'khattazz al'Yun'. Nom Anor planned to sacrifice Jaina through Jacen to fulfill an ancient prophecy. Instead, Jacen turned on his captors. Jedi Ganner Rhysode held the Yuuzhan Vong back while Jacen reached the World Brain, persuading the entity to work against its own masters. Ganner died. Jacen escaped.

• 5. The Path to Darth Caedus

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  Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith, appeared to Jacen in the novel Betrayal in the guise of Brisha Syo. She told him that Vergere had been a Sith apprentice and that Jacen had already been receiving Sith training without knowing it. She told him he would become the next Sith Lord. When Jacen used the Force to see possible futures, every vision in which Lumiya was arrested ended the same way: the galaxy consumed in endless war, and Jacen killing his uncle Luke. Horrified, Jacen spared Lumiya and then killed Jedi Knight Nelani, asking her forgiveness before striking the fatal blow. He erased Ben's memories of what had happened.

  In Bloodlines, Jacen became head of the Galactic Alliance Guard, the government's secret police. With Ben at his side, he began rounding up Corellians for internment and deportation. During an interrogation he killed Ailyn Vel, Boba Fett's daughter, accidentally, by using the Force to try to extract information from her.

  The decisive transformation came in Sacrifice. Lumiya told Jacen he had to kill what he loved most to complete the Trial of Sacrifice and become a true Sith. Jacen decided the sacrifice would be Tenel Ka and their daughter Allana. Before he could act, Mara Jade tracked him to the Hapes Consortium after Ben overheard Jacen communicating with Lumiya. Jacen killed Mara in a long and heated battle. The sacrifice Lumiya required turned out not to be Jacen's love but Ben's, because Mara was Ben's mother. Jacen then chose the Sith name Darth Caedus.

  By the novel Invincible, Caedus had been disowned by his parents and sister, was being hunted by Luke for Mara's death, and was being sought by Ben for justice. He had also taken a new apprentice, Tahiri Veila, after his young cousin's apprentice Ben turned against him. Imperial Head of State Gilad Pellaeon was assassinated by Tahiri on Caedus's behalf, which brought the Moffs to his side and a mysterious fleet under Admiral Daala against him.

• 6. The Final Duel and Its Aftermath

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  Jaina Solo sought out training from Boba Fett to prepare for the confrontation with her brother, a detail that underlined how far outside ordinary Jedi practice this conflict had moved. When the final duel came, it happened aboard the flagship Caedus commanded, the Anakin Solo, named after their dead brother.

  Caedus's meditations were disrupted by Luke Skywalker as Jaina attacked with Mandalorian commandos. She ran out of ammunition and seized a Mandalorian saber. She severed Caedus's arm. Both withdrew with serious injuries. When they met again for the climactic fight, something shifted in Caedus. He deactivated his lightsaber and holstered it. He tried to warn Jaina of a bio-warfare attack designed by the Imperial Remnant targeting Tenel Ka and Allana. Jaina refused to listen. She severed his Achilles tendon and stabbed him in the heart.

  As he died, Jacen reached through the Force to warn Tenel Ka and their daughter to flee. Jaina, watching this final act, saw what remained of the brother she had known. In the Fate of the Jedi series that followed, Luke Skywalker was arrested for negligence of duty and sentenced to a ten-year exile, charged with determining how and why Jacen had turned to the dark side.

  Jacen's spirit appeared in the final novel of that series, Apocalypse, alongside Mara's, aiding Luke in his battle against Abeloth. After the fight, Jacen revealed that Darth Krayt, the dark figure Caedus had seen in the vision that began his fall, was the same figure he had seen standing next to his daughter Allana. Krayt's response was that Caedus had only delayed the Sith. Jacen referred to his own fate as damnation, even while being acknowledged as posthumously redeemed.

• 7. Reception and Lasting Influence

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  IGN listed Jacen as number 17 on their ranking of the top 100 Star Wars heroes, with the assessment that he had a more profound effect on the Star Wars setting than any of the other Solo children. Jesse Schedeen, writing for IGN, also placed Darth Caedus at number 5 on a reader-inspired list of top Star Wars villains, naming his murder of Mara Jade as his defining moment of villainy. UGO.com listed Jacen as their top Star Wars expanded universe character, calling him one of the most fearsome and most tragic villains in the franchise.

  In April 2014, most Star Wars novels and comics produced since the 1977 film were declared non-canon to the franchise. The Star Wars Legends continuity, where Jacen existed, became a separate designation from the main canon. Despite this, his influence extended into the canonical sequel trilogy through Kylo Ren, identified in the source as influenced by Jacen: the canonical son of Han and Leia who becomes a villain.

  Series creator Dave Filoni introduced a canonical character named Jacen Syndulla in the epilogue of the Star Wars Rebels series finale, explicitly in honor of Jacen Solo. That character, the son of Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla, was later portrayed by Evan Whitten in the live-action series Ahsoka. The Legacy comic series, set roughly 140 years after Return of the Jedi, made Jacen's descendant Ania Solo its protagonist, in an era shaped by the rise of Darth Krayt, exactly the dark future Jacen believed he was sacrificing everything to prevent.