10 Most Brutal Star Wars Movie Deaths

9. Han Solo (The Force Awakens)

Cause Of Death: Skewered with a lightsaber, fell from a great height.

The death of Han Solo was a tough moment for both fans, and the Rebellion to stomach. Not only did we lose one of Star Wars' best characters, but the Rebellion lost one of its most prominent figures, in an instant.

What makes this particularly brutal, though, is the emotional distress that Han must've gone through in the handful of seconds before he died.

With a lightsaber stuck through his midriff and his own son wielding it, the realization that Ben Solo was lost to the dark side - and Han was powerless to do anything about it - is evident in his tortured expression as he falls into the abyss.

Hopefully he died before he hit the ground, because if not, that's a pain not even worth imagining. The effect Han's murder will have on Kylo Ren's dark side journey and his actions in future films remains to be seen, but whatever happens, we can trace it back to one of the most complex, mature moments in the Star Wars saga.

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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!