10 Most Brutal Star Wars Movie Deaths

by Danny Meegan

1. Owen & Beru (A New Hope)

Cause Of Death: Burnt Alive

Owen and Beru, the Aunt and Uncle of Luke Skywalker, are the very definition of collateral damage.

Killed by Imperial Stormtroopers who were conducting a search for the stolen Death Star plans (hidden inside R2-D2), Owen and Beru get burnt to a crisp, when, presumably, they either refused to give the Stormtroopers any information or couldn't be left alive with the information they had.

Their charred, roasted corpses are a grisly sight to behold, a shock to the system for both the audience and Luke himself; we were now aware of the potency of the Empire and he was now aware that he had to learn the ways of the Force, so he'd be able to fight back.

Owen and Beru's deaths felt largely unnecessary, and that added to their impact. It was a ruthless, evil moment on behalf of the Stormtroopers in question, but on the plus side, it pushed Luke down the path of the Force, leading him to restore hope to the galaxy in the subsequent sequels.

Are there any particularly gruesome Star Wars deaths that we missed? Shout them out in the comments below!

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!