10 Background Star Wars Characters More Important Than You Think
7. Lobot
A lot of side characters from The Empire Strikes Back went on to become cult figures amongst the Star Wars fandom. There was of course Boba Fett - whose imposing Mandalorian armour struck a chord with plenty of viewers and led to further stories in the expanded universe - and other bounty hunters too, like Bossk, Dengar and IG-88.
Arguably among the cooler background characters from Episode V though wasn't a bounty hunter at all, but instead the silent right hand man who answered to Lando Calrissian on Cloud City: Lobot.
Played by John Hollis in the original film, Lobot's silent demeanour and cyborg headband prosthetic immediately distinguished him as an intriguing looking character. Lo's history with Lando was later explored in various Legends material, which eventually revealed that his cyborg enhancements were part of a sentence handed down to him by Cloud City's judiciary, in response to a crime he had committed when he first arrived on Bespin.
The new canon plays things very differently though. We now know he got his headband courtesy of the Empire, who recruited Lo to run battlefield calculations. He eventually escaped the Empire and befriended Lando Calrissian, who convinced Lo to take on a risky operation to steal a luxury vessel. Little did they know the starship in question belonged to the Emperor, and things go from bad to worse pretty much immediately afterwards.
In order to escape with their lives intact, Lo allows the cybernetic headband to overwhelm his mind, thus transforming him into the machine-like figure audiences first saw in Empire - something Lando feels incredible guilt over.