Lit Young Jedi Knights: The Proposed 1996 TV Series That Almost Was

Thing is, IF they bring her back, she'd be Merrin and Cal Kestis daughter and not Hapan I bet. Can you imagine her redesigned as gray pale skinned? Can anybody mock up art of her likewise to check it out?

Now I wish for Cal to be a hapan prince wjo became a Jedi as kid and will return home to depose his evil mommy.

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I hope so RK_Skriker, for your sake.

Seriously though, that would be awesome.

That...strikes me as a bit of an assumption. The Singing Mountain clan was mentioned after all, and Hapes is still on the map, so she could still be what she was, baring it less likely that Luke had anything to do with their parents getting together.

...Though now that you mention it, I do wonder if the grey skin thing would just be nightsisters or if all the witch clans looked like that. Notably, legends often gave nightsisters grey-ish skin while having other witches look more baseline human, but that was still before the whole hybrid species retcon thing...

 

Even in Legends we had gray skin on lightside witches in the Quinlan Vos comics, but there they were more diverse in skincolor and Last of the Jedi novel had Jax Pavan encounter retcons of all kinds from Legends and TCW existing on the planet. Only some breed with Zabrak, others don't and stay baseline human. Yet others as per french/spanish exclusive book "The Dark Side" by Trisha Biggar claims Witches of Dathomir can breed without men but some choose to have fun with men for breeding instead, turning them rather into an androgyneous humanoid species that breeds differently than humans or Zabrak both.

But ultimately, retcons for every version are in effect and no big deal. The point is I think, IF they do bring something like her back to the screen, they would marketingwise stick to established screen looks over the EUs sadly. Even non-evil Witches per se are shown as grayskinned, i.e. Merrin or Deathstick from the comics and cancelled cellphone game.

As some of you may know I tried to imagine different looks for Tenel Ka in canon via several skinchanging apps to reinterpret her as asian, darkskinned or else should Disney want more diversity. Or even LGBTQ+ version that features her without need for Jacen as boyfriend. But so far seeing a TCW style Tenel Ka I could not manage and would like to try if somehow possible. That said my fav still is classic YJK one as a redhead obviously!

So, just for entertaining the idea: Would a child of Merrin and Cal Kestis have his red hair and her gray skin? Or her white hair and his skincolor? Or more a mix of both than these either or's?

 

*Looks up these characters* Ah, aha. Sorry. I don't/can't play video games nowadays. Too expensive, too frustrating for me. My hand/eye coordination is pretty bad. The only two SW games I ever played to any amount of depth were the original Star Wars arcade cabinet depicting the battle of Yavin using vector graphics, and Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

Anyway... I wouldn't mind her looking gray-skinned or being near-human. As long as any hypothetical Tenel Ka appearing had read hair/kicked all kinds of ass, I'd be down for it.

 

Did they? I thought the Vos comics only showed the Nightsisters (really started the whole trend of Nightsisters overshadowing the other clans that you would forget they even existed)

But in any case, yeah, I suppose it doesn't matter much. New take on the character, new look, so long as the core personality remains that is important.

As for Cal and Merrin's potential children...hypothetically speaking....I have no idea. Honestly the whole thing with Dathomirans is weird since they are human/zabrak hybrids, but have skin colors different from either baseline humans or baseline zabraks (who ironically tend to have human skintones), much less why the skin colors are sex segregated. So throwing in something else, even if it is just more human or zabrak, is even more unpredictable. For all I know they could be bright blue with pink hair.

I know how it is, been a while since I really played any videogames myself, don't really have the time or the money.

With Fallen Order, I think it is worth watching a cutscene compilation on youtube.

Red hair and grey skin would be a striking look, and yeah the personality is the most important thing.

 

I would call a hypothetical daughter of Cal and Merrin canon Kirana Ti more than Tenel Ka. It doesn't have to be of Hapes Hapes, but I would say that it's important to the latter's essential character that she is both a Dathomiri witch and interstellar royalty.

 

Well for that matter I propose Cal Kestis is a Hapan Prince that fled the Cluster and became a Jedi or his parent sent him off to the Jedi to not get butchered in the Jedi hating cluster. Haircolor fits Ta'a chume and given her number of consorts no wonder if she had more secret sons sharing a fate with Isolders elder brother.

That'd make his and Merrin's child indeed royalty in need of returning to the cluster and take her throne. Though most likely not one raised as royalty. But that is a close enough fit for a Tenel Ka character.

That aside, if such is not possible, you are indeed right. But I see options here.

PS: Can Nightsister skin return to normal human colors if purely lightsided afterwards? I mean, imagine Merrin going pinky...

 

It would’ve been really neat to have a YJK animated series. A shame it never saw the light of day. I’m curious though, if the show hypothetically did happen, if it was popular enough would the series continue beyond the stories of the books and end up telling original stories set after Crisis at Crystal Reef? And what would that mean for the novel TV show continuity? Perhaps it would’ve been a TCW / CWMMP situation except this time with YJK TV series and NJO and beyond.

Speaking of stories set after CACR, there’s a great YJK fanfic I read set sometime after the end of the series and it was very good. It features Jacen, Jaina and Tenel Ka. If you’re a fan of these three characters or YJK in general I’d highly recommend checking it out:
https://boards.theforce.net/threads...ina-jacen-tenel-ka-mild-au-part-3-3.50043666/

 

1996 was around the time I became a star wars fan. My dad had shown me the movies and I fell in love with this universe from day one. And Having a Young Jedi Knights show based around Jedi my own age, (I was 7 in '96) and having this show on air as I grew up would've been amazing.

 

I fear, when considering the Batman animated series, kind of that a YJK TV show could have turned the characters into complete Carricatures of themselves and the stories would have lost any and all seriousness.
Might have retroactivley ruined NJO as it would just have been impossible to take the characters seriously anymore.

Could have been great sure, but... for me the Batman animated series did a lot of damage to the francise, especially when it comes to a certain character...

 

Considering what the NJO did to these characters and set up for them? I would welcome it being 'ruined' or not even existing. Anakin, Lusa being alive? Jacen not being set up to fall in the second-worst Dark Side turn in the franchise and then dying by Jaina's hand? Hell, yeah!

 

Its a war, people die. Infact one major reason I dislike comicbooks is that death is utterly meaningless there...

That wasn`t NJO though. NJO had Jacen more on the oppositte path than becoming a Sith Lord.

 

I don't care if it's 'war' or not. Kilking them off pissed me off and were wasted of good characters. It turned me off from the old EU and had me stop buying the product. Screw the NJO!

And Jacen's Fall was set up in the NJO. Traitor wa a horrible book that I wish had never been published.

 

Kind of unrelated to YJK, and maybe to try to move the conversation back towards YJK, but I wanted to chime in to say you are exactly right here. None of the authors of NJO envisioned that path for the character during the writing of the series -- its was more the opposite. In fact, when NJO was published, even towards the end, there were really no official plans to continue the story beyond The Unifying Force (which of course ended up changing).

While it's fun to imagine a YJK TV series, I have to admit that I wouldn't trade NJO for that -- never. The depth and quality, not to mention the gravity, that NJO brought to the universe for me more than outshines any adaptation a YJK series could provide. Something with a darker, more dramatically serious tone, where characters could actually perish, is something KJA wanted for years to explore, but was limited by Lucasfilm in doing during the Bantam years (the physical consequences for Tenel Ka in Lightsabers was about as far as they'd let him go at the time, outside of Crix in Darksaber).

With that said, keeping it focused on YJK, I agree with earlier people in the thread that it's really interesting to imagine how it could have affected the trajectory of the franchise if the series had been put on television. While there was probably never a really great chance of that happening, if it had happened, it certainly would have made the characters more well known and beloved among the fanbase.

 

I do wonder if it had been made would've it have still been canon under Disney's new Canon banner or would it still be considered legends.

 

I think it would depend how popular it was. If it had an impact like other 90s cartoons (spider-man, X-men [both also on fox kids] or Batman), then I think it might still be canon. Though it would still be from the 90s so maybe not. If it isn't defining (superman, Justice League) then it would have no chance.

 

I suspect if nothing else Legends would have been declared a proper alternate universe. Not this vague back and forth we had. Also guess by now there would have been an animated crossover via the world between worlds.

 

Interesting ideas. You really thought out all the angles, yeah that could work....

Thanks for the fanfic rec.

And yeah, I could see a TCW type thing happening with NJO, though admittedly I don't think it was likely. Given that TCW had seven seasons (and plenty more unfinished episodes) just in the three years of the clone wars (and with more material in the same war in other media on the side), I think likely any original adventures would have stuck to roughly the same time period with the young jedi still young. From what I remember, animation wasn't really big on having big, continuous stories back then before Avatar was a huge success. Honestly, hard to see it lasting more than three seasons even if it was a big success....

....Batman the Animated series? One of the most consistently analyzed and praised animated shows ever? The one that took two bit joke characters like Mr Freeze and made them fan favorites loved for their complexity? That Batman the Animated Series? That is what you think damaged the franchise?

And that you worry that a cartoon of that quality would ruin the NJO? Honestly, I though I liked NJO more than most and I thought it had cool ideas executed less than idle.

Opinions vary and all that, but man do I find myself surprised by some that are out there. I am honestly curious to hear more.

Indeed. There is a reason TCW made the canon jump and Droids didn't, and that reason is cultural impact. Or subcultural impact, I suppose.
This show might have been a stinker that is quickly forgotten, or it might have been a huge pillar of the star wars canon.

 

If it's popular, say X-men the animated seres popular, then that is likely. Don't know about cross over, where that could go or how.

Yes. For what it's worth I would lean more towards it defining Star Wars for a lot of 90s kids. What happened after Ender? This show would tell people.

Something else to consider is that this could spawn a wider animated universe. Dark Empire (all of them + EE) got made into Audio Dramas 95 (full cast and sound effects) while Tales of the Jedi (only the first 2 though) got made into an audio Drama in 2005. So if YJK is successful those could also be adapted (and maybe JAT as it could be the 'origins' of the school).

 

With all the current popular fananimations of Legends works... Thrawn Trilogy, Dark Empire, Shadows of the Empire, etc. why not try this one as a fan project as series?

 

TCW made the canon cut because George was directly involved more than anything imo