10 Background Star Wars Characters More Important Than You Think

4. Biggs Darklighter

Biggs Darklighter
Lucasfilm

You have to feel for Biggs Darklighter. Originally destined for a more prominent role in the first Star Wars, Garrick Hagon's part as the Tatooine-born Rebel pilot was drastically cut and ended up only featuring in the third act during the Battle of Yavin, where he died attempting to help Luke navigate the Death Star trench.

Even so, Biggs garnered a cult following and found himself the subject of multiple EU stories in the years following, each attempting to further explore the moustached figure who was once Luke Skywalker's closest friend.

And, for the most part, the comics have done a great job of lending further weight to Biggs' demise in A New Hope. The first volume of the main Star Wars comic written by Jason Aaron devotes some time to Biggs and Luke's childhood during the Journals of Ben Kenobi arc, showing that Darklighter was the son of a wealthy family determined to become a fighter pilot in the Imperial Navy.

Biggs eventually made it to the Imperial Academy, but defected to the Rebel Alliance after one of his fellow cadets, Derek Klivian, initiated a mutiny.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.