10 Background Star Wars Characters More Important Than You Think

2. Wedge Antilles

Wedge Antilles Star Wars Empire Strikes Back
Disney

Wedge Antilles is certainly a lot more famous than some of the other background Star Wars characters to have carved out a role in the expanded canon, but chances are audiences are unaware of just how important Denis Lawson's character really is.

In the films, Wedge is the second most noticeable pilot in Rogue Squadron (formerly Red Squadron). He's present at the Battle of Yavin, the Battle of Hoth and the Battle of Endor, where he fires one of the torpedos that destroys the second Death Star, and only has a couple of lines to his name across the Original Trilogy.

But, perhaps because of his proximity to Luke Skywalker and then Lando, Wedge quickly found himself a key character in the old Legends mythos. He had a starring role in the original X-Wing books by Michael Stackpole, as well as the beloved Rogue Squadron video games released in the late nineties and early noughties, and has continued to play a pivotal role in the galaxy far, far away in the new canon as well.

Wedge's reduced role in the sequels (he only appeared in The Rise of Skywalker) was down to a scheduling conflict with Lawson, but it's still great to see the character at the forefront of Star Wars OT-set novels and video games. Only Luke could claim to be a more legendary X-Wing pilot.

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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.