Did You Agree With The Decision to Bump Off Mara Jade?

I was curious as to this because I've never read or heard any reactions to her death, while with Chewbacca and Anakin Solo I got earfuls.

Did you agree with the decision to kill her character? If not who would you have killed and why? If yes, why did you agree? Or do you think no one of significane should have been killed in Sacrifice at all?

 

I can't say I really agreed with the decision to kill her and would have rather seen her to live, but at the time Sacrifice came out it was kind of relief that DR couldn't get it's dirty paws to any of the Big Three and kill them instead, as had been feared.

 

Well, first off I think people had gotten over the idea of a character shield since the NJO. What's more, Mara's death had real, concrete story significance built deeply into the text - not so with the others.

 

I thought it was alright but the problem was justification of why Jacen had to specifically kill her, when really it was becaust she was probably the one character they could kill off and get the maximum emotional response to. IU it they just couldn't stick with a justification.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I felt like they killed her off just for the sake of having someone to be killed off. Then again, I never took the post-NJO time period seriously at all.

 

I didn't care one way or the other if they killed her or not.

 

i think they killed her off to give some weight to Caedus as a villian
and she was the highest profile/ranking jedi they were allowed to get away with killing

i wish they hadnt made such a big deal over Jacen's choice for his "sacrifice" however, since she really doesnt fit into that at all
that makes it seem like a lame choice to me, when in reality, it would have worked fine as Jacen just becoming a Sith and this showed his power, being able to kill a high ranking jedi master

to think Mara had some importance to Jacen though, making it a meaningful sacrifice, just doesnt really work for me

 

No. Did not agree with Mara being bumped off.

And I didn't like the fact that half of the novel that Mara was bumped off in was focused more on secondary characters like Mirta or the Fett storyline. If she was going to get bumped, we should have at least 3/4's of the novel from her POV or around her character.

Not switching back to characters that hardly mattered, IMO.

 

IMO, these deaths (Mara, Jacen, Anakin) are nothing more than cheap, silly gimmicks used to inject some drama and angst into lackluster series.

 

Jacen NEEDED to kill an established major character to establish himself as a villain. Nelani? Created to die in Betrayal. Fett's daughter? Mostly developed in magazine articles and retcons. Leia's bodyguards? Been around a while, but basically cyphers personality wise. I was pretty much pro-Jacen (or at least somewhat sympathetic to him) up until the moment in Sacrifice it was clear he and Mara were going to have a show down.

Also: bad things happening to characters you like =/= bad writing. It's that attitude that makes it really hard for me to get into the fandom.

 

I thought that Mara's death worked well from the perspective of her being the only one who recognized Jacen's growing Sithiness, and being the only one trying to stop him. The whole thing about the "sacrifice" though just didn't work. This in itself illustrates the problem that ruined LotF; namely, that the authors just couldn't get their act together with the plot. I mean, the only parts that were actually cohesive were the three subplots with each author's pet characters, and things like the tassels and the "sacrifice" were portrayed totally different from novel to novel.

 

I would have rather they killed off Luke, but yes, I was very much in favor of killing off Mara.

 

I guess Jacen had to kill somebody. So Mara made sense. He couldn't kill his sister or the any of The Big 3 so...

 

To answer the question: No.

It's not so much that she died, but how and why she died. Her death was supposed to have been Jacen's punch-the-Sith-card "sacrifice." Okay, fine. Make it worth it and have him become the biggest, baddest Sith there ever was.

Nope.

And then, not only did her death turn out not to be his "sacrifice," but four books later it didn't matter anyway because he was dead, too.

In the end, her death meant nothing.


edit: IMHO

 

which is why Kyle wasnt killed in his showdown with Jacen
the outcry would have been ridiculous

yet in the end, he made Jacen look like inept almost, and would have been a perfectly acceptable death to help establish Jacen as a powerful villian

and i see no reason why Jacen at that point wouldnt have been able to defeat Kyle

fandom is really ridiculous when it gets to the point where it dictates story

 

True, I never understood how Mara's death was a personal sacrifice for Jacen at all. I wasn't a fan of Sarifice. I remember it being not nearly as emotional as it could have been.

 

i agree
Jacen should have been almost unstoppable after his so called sacrifice to becoming a full Sith

I wish he would have killed 2 masters at once, that would have really solidified him as a credible threat and villian

Mara and some other master, which would have given them a nice opportunity to introduce a master in Betrayal to give him/her a backstory

they do a terrible job of including more than just the solos/skywalkers, that when a jedi like nelani dies, who really cares since it was her first book
if they would have had another master with mara since betrayal, then it would have been a somewhat meaningful death while also giving credibility to Caedus

 

No. I strongly disagree with the decision to kill her. Mara Jade Skywalker, from personality to personal history, is through-and-through a much more interesting and capable character than Leia Organa Solo. That she meant so little to Jacen was the biggest reason: he really wasn't upset when he killed her. Removing character shields is great, but the deaths of the characters -- especially major ones like Mara -- must have an extremely potent reason. It can't be "LOLZ I WILL INCREASE TEH DRAMA BY OFFING LUKE'S WIFEY!" I saw no substance behind her death or the murder of Gilad Pellaeon.

Two of the most interesting characters in the saga offed by the same author with a suspicious lack of reason. Their deaths are my biggest complaint with the series.

 

The only thing I can see that was personal about him killing Mara was that, until that point, she had supported and defended him.


Honestly, it wasn't the 'sacrifice' that bothered me so much as the fact that it was later retconned when Jacen decided that losing Allana was his real sacrifice.

 

that and the lame excuse that Jacen was acting in self defense
where we now hear people claiming Jacen wasnt wrong to kill Mara, since he was acting in self defense

 

I saw that as Jacen trying to rationalize losing Allana as something that 'needed' to happen. Allana was one of the big reasons he started down the path to the dark side, so 'losing' her would make it all for nothing, unless he convinced himself it was meant to be.

By the way, was Obi-Wan's death pointless since Vader died two movies later anyway?

 

Ive never been a fan of hers so I dont miss her, but I do think that her death was necassary for a number of reasons, specifically to solidify Jacen's fall and to complete the separation between his family, but more specifically Luke and Ben. It also greatly help to further advance Ben's character, too.

 

I don't consider that a retcon, though. Jacen was not a reliable narrator. The only thing we could trust while reading his point of view is that he would try to justify and rationalize everything he did in the way that best suited Jacen. Jacen's though processes weren't even remotely connected to the actual truths and facts towards the end. We can't take Jacen deciding that losing Allana was his real sacrifice as the absolute truth of the matter. He was mentally diseased, and got significantly worse after killing Mara. Mara was actually the ultimate sacrifice because it made him too terrible to be easily forgiven or redeemed. When he killed Mara, he sacrificed almost all chance he ever had of ever being Jacen again. He killed himself figuratively when he killed Mara literally.

 

Maybe you can explain this to me, because when I look at Mara's death, all I see is...

The point of Jacen killing Mara was to make him an unsympathetic jerk for the rest of the Legacy series, the authors completely ignoring the fact that he was at least that for the full decade or so it took to get him there.

 

Honestly? My viewpoint is that it was going to happen eventually. This is the EU: We're never going to get a perfect book/series and they're going to kill characters we love (unless they were in the movies, or Chewbacca, who never did that much in the books anyway.)

Besides, happily ever afters are boring. As much as Del Rey tried, L/M was never that kind of couple to begin with... It was bound to end tragically, though this specific tragedy was just kind of 'meh.'

Who would I have killed instead? I have no idea. I kind of like the idea of Jacen as a frustrated almost-Sith vanishing at random into the ether, maybe to reappear when Ben was older. If I'd been in charge of LOTF (ha) I'd have probably done a lot more with Lumiya than Jacen, as she had the potential to be a more interesting character/villain without the KJA/YJK failbot baggage. But no one asked me.