Lit Characters Split into Other Characters: Who used to be Who?

I've become fascinated by this idea lately: there are a significant number of characters in Star Wars lit who began life in the development cycle as a pre-established character, only to have been split off into another. I like to think that even if the two characters are canonically separate, they might still connect in other ways, or otherwise be reconciled if their paths never cross.

Resistance's Mika Grey was originally developed out of the idea of a late-surviving Asajj Ventress, for example. This to me still implies that the character of Mika Grey might have a Dark Side origin story; because of her archaeologist background, her young self might eventually turn up in a Doctor Aphra story.

Bastila Shan was to be an adult Vima Sunrider until LFL found out that they can't use the Sunrider name. The old theory was that Vima was Bastila's mother, but at this point I think it's dead in the water.

Ailyn Vel was cleverly invented to explain away continuity problems with Boba Fett. There's also Spar, invented for similar reasons. Then there's Jaster Mereel, who also got spun out of Boba Fett... and does Din Djarin count? Boba is a walking new character generator!

The opposite appears to be less common: the only case I can think of two separate characters merging into one is Cronal and his complex retcons. Nuru Kungurama and Spiker might count, but Nuru could have also been conceived as Spiker's backstory on inception, so I wouldn't count it.

Can anyone else think of good instances of this sort of character development? For some reason, I just find it to be a lot of fun.

 

There's also Jan Strange/Jan Ors and Tay Vanis/Tiree for the second type. I suppose you could count all the EU characters retconned into the movies as examples of that too.

 

Rey Nobody and Rey Skywalker along with Rey Solo and Rey Solana as well as Rey Palpatine.

Kidding aside though, there are plenty of examples for your categories but mostly background or minor characters that got that treatment, with the few notable major exceptions already noted here.

Does Wedge and Fake-Wedge count?

Storylines developed for one character and then given to another we had in the NJO with characters swapping characterisations and fates like Jacen and Anakin. With Danni Quee as clearly Tahiri analogue originally perhaps.

And the entire Jorallen / Danni quest trilogy that was scrapped got recycled somewhat maybe into other characters stories for Anakin Solo, Tahiri and others. In general it was odd, first they design the NJO around Anakin Solo, then give it to Jacen Solo. Have the problem of having him without Tenel Ka and with a Tahiri clone, that then gets almost shoved off to Jorallen. But instead they decide to keep the story on major characters rather than new ones and therefore give some back to Anakin and Tahiri.

Nom Anor also changed storylines between Darkhorse and Delrey, though similiar both took off in different Vectors so to speak.

 

Probably not as good as some of the ones already mentioned above, but L3-37 and Qi'ra come to mind.

L3's got the stronger link to Vuffi Raa, since Solo's Lando even goes so far as to recount the Mindharp of Sharu incident where he and Vuffi end up in that temple that makes them smaller or whatever (Lando's story cuts off right before that point... darn).

Qi'ra isn't exactly Bria Tharen, but she does come from a troubled part of Han's life and the characters do overlap a little (starting as slaves, involved in the drug trade, jumping between crime jobs, etc). It's not close but a few similarities are there.

 

Lumiya seems like the flip side of the coin --- the Mephisto to Jacen's Faust in the early planning stages of Legacy of the Force was just a vague "Wizard" character until they realized Lumiya would fit the bill, thus changing a potentially original character into an already-established one.

Ditto Kyp Durron, whose role in Vector Prime was a new "Rogue Jedi" character Salvatore was cooking up until the NJO team recommended it be Kyp.

The Black Fleet Crisis was originally going to have Chewie going to Kashyyyk to find a bunch of wives, who would then join him on the Falcon to go and rescue Han. When he was told that the Holiday Special couldn't be ignored, he created Chewie's cousins Jowdrrl, Dryanta, and Shoran, but he also had Lumpy join in the mission and created the whole coming-of-age story around him.

 

The main villain in the YJK Black Sun arc was originally going to be Skorr, the bounty hunter of Ord Mantell(one of them anyway). But at the last moment they remembered that Skorr had died in the original newspaper strip run. So they created the character of Czethros instead.

 

And Qorl from the first arc was later established to be the same TIE pilot Luke duels in The Day After the Death Star!.

 

It is with some glee that I present one of the single stupidest stories of the EU: Hrekin Thorm and Threkin Horm.

 

It's funny that two of these examples are directly attributable to Kevin J. Anderson misremembering character details, and then that being run with instead of just calling an error an error.

 

I’m not sure if we’re only doing Lit examples, but I think the big one is Father Skywalker and Darth Vader merging into a single character in TESB.

And my current favorite is Boba Fett spawning off the early ideas for Darth Vader, where the Sith were more mercenary-like. Lucas then decided on going in a more knight-influenced direction, but the mercenary character designs remained and were used later on for Fett. (Before becoming Fett, the design was considered for super-commandos in TESB.)

What I love about that connection is that if you look at other pieces from early drafts, you read that Lucas intended for the Sith to originally be a clan of pirates. Then they became more of a warrior clan. And then they were all collapsed into the single character of Vader. When the prequels came around, the original Sith group was pushed to the far past to serve as the origin for the Sith Order we know from those movies.

But what the connection to Boba Fett says to me is that the Mandalorians as a group are an echo of the original Sith clan that Lucas envisioned. And that helps explain the significance of the title “Dark Lord of the Sith,” meaning someone powerful enough to overpower and dominate this legendary group of pirates / mercenaries / warriors.

 

Originally Alpha-17 was intended to appear in TCW, but because of objection from Lucas Rex was created to take Alpha's place in the show.

In earlier versions of "Wolves and a Door" Minister Hydan was intended to be Vaneé.

 

The Skorr thing is so weird. How do you realize the character exists, but... forget that he died? Did KJA start reading the Classic Star Wars series, but not finish it? And I have to ask, why couldn't they have just used the character anyway? Luke and Han assume Skorr to be dead, but the strip as drawn and written certainly doesn't leave the character in a state that definitively prevents a "turns out I was just wounded"-type return. Seems to me that just adding a line or two of dialogue or inner monologue explaining how he'd survived his earlier fight with Solo would be a better solution than replacing him with an entirely new character under presumably tight deadlines?

 

Ewoks in general were supposed to be Wookiees until George realized he could cut production costs in half and also sell teddy bears

 

This is why I like to assume that the character’s full name is Skorr Czethros and just combine them. Many characters we’re all listing could be reconciled that way, if they’re amenable or weren’t split for less negotiable reasons.

These examples everyone’s citing are great, by the way!

 

Every fan has that "whoa!" moment when they realize "Ewok" is simply "Wookiee" with the syllables reversed.

 

I’ll throw on another example, though it’s a little dubious: Chuck Wendig wanted HK-47 in Aftermath, but was denied by the Story Group. I assume his desire for a killer robot was then worked into Mister Bones, who has flashes of HK-47’s personality at the end of Book III.

 

Oh boy, I hope he doesn't Snap !

But that kinda runts counter to the Triple Zero is HK-47 thing that has been going for a while now. With BT being his G0-T0! The hints to their mysterious longlived past still are unresolved!

Wait.. could Triple Z be Mr. Bones somehow? uhoh!


PS: It just hit me only now, but given Vuffi Ra inspired L3, and Vuffi's Silentium species grows to spaceship sizes... did that inspire L3 becoming a spaceship and integrated in the Falcon? Is the Falcon a Silentium now?

 

I was actually going to say the opposite: that out of the two of these that KJA is partly responsible for, the Skorr/Czethros thing actually made sense to me, whereas T/Horm is just a truly ridiculous case of EU pedantry turning a spoonerism into separate characters (with bonus accidental self-parody in Troy Denning bringing the spare one back years later just to kill him).

 

Yeah, that's also a weird one. To a certain degree I can actually understand Paul Sudlow turning "Hrekin Thorm" into a completely different character - maybe he simply didn't read CoPL, didn't realize who the character was supposed to be, and the whole thing just kind of slid past editorial.... but what I'm really struggling with is how that typo happened in the first place. Did KJA transpose a letter whenever he wrote out the name, and then somehow miss it every time he proofread his manuscript? Did a Bantam editor decide that "Hrekin Thorm" sounded better and make the change themselves, not realizing "Threkin Horm" was a pre-existing character, and no one caught it? That's the real head scratcher to me.

 

Isn't it widely-believed by fans that Zahn originally intended this guy to just be Dengar?

 

This fan certainly did - the guy's name was Dengar, and he was a bounty hunter. Seemed pretty obvious at the time. The retcon in the TLC Sourcebook - a necessary one given Dengar's chronologically later appearance in Dark Empire - is an interesting example of the early EU already starting to try to work out some of its continuity snarls.

 

Mara assesses the guy's ID as "likely forged" upon checking it, and this conversation is the first time I've ever thought there was more to it than that, TBH - though now I'm not sure what Zahn's actual intent was.

 

On that subject, there's also Rothgar Deng, a Canon character who's not only most likely supposed to be Dengar but his name is also an anagram of "Dengar Roth." So... there's that.

On a somewhat similar topic, I'm not sure where this would fall under since they're not characters being split into two but rather Canon characters implied to be counterparts to Legends characters. Anyway, in the Rogue One visual guide, one of Cassian Andor's aliases is Aach, who appeared in Interlude at Darkknell, and the guide even says how Andor worked as a senatorial aide at Darkknell. Similarly, Jyn Erso has the alias Kestrel Dawn, who appeared in the Rookies webcomic. I'm not sure how much if anything should be read into these references, or if they're just easter eggs being dropped by Pablo Hidalgo, but I found them interesting nonetheless.

 

There already were the HK clones in KOTOR II, so there could actually be a whole bunch of HK-derived assassin-droid personalities/programs. Maybe by the time of the OT, HK-47 has "children" across the galaxy

 

The Noghri were going to be the “the Sith” and Joruus was going to be a clone of Obi-Wan before Zahn was told he couldn’t do that.