Did George Lucas Really Hate Luke Skywalker's Wife Mara Jade?
By Emily Bell
George Lucas' alleged disdain for Mara Jade has made for one of the longest-standing rumors throughout "Star Wars" history. He himself even poked fun at the idea in a skit where he angrily threw out a "Robot Chicken" writer who mentioned the character. But at the end of the day, whether or not Lucas truly hated Jade, it wasn't something he felt the need to throw too much energy into.
"Star Wars" historian J.W. Rinzler heavily believed in this notion. In a 2019 interview with The Resistance Broadcast, the author stated that while Lucas may have not liked Mara Jade, he never made a big fuss about it to the licensing team, simply because it wasn't a high priority for him. "But George ... he had bigger fish to fry," Rinzler said. "He was trying to change filmmaking by advancing digital technology, he wasn't going to get involved in the minutia of the expanded universe. He quite literally had better things to do."
Considering that "Star Wars" Legends exists in a completely separate realm from Lucas' blockbuster franchise, any characters, retcons, or new rules established in these stories, no matter how egregious he would have found them, ultimately had no impact on the story he wanted to tell. If anything, this outlook benefited the fictional universe. Without the stranglehold of a singular vision bounding everything to the same rules and regulations, "Star Wars" Legends gave artists and storytellers the freedom to explore their own corners of the galaxy far, far away.
