10 Saddest Deaths In Star Wars
Even for a franchise that often focuses on war, there sure are a lot of deaths.
In and amongst the faceless rebels and stormtroopers of Star Wars, there are plenty of characters who have elicited an emotional response from the audience when they eventually kick the bucket. With the vast majority of the heroes not being around by the saga's conclusion, there certainly are a lot of characters to choose from when looking at the saddest demises the space opera has to offer.
Since Disney took control of the franchise in 2012, some fans believed Star Wars would be a bit more careful when it came to showing onscreen deaths, but that very much has not been the case. If anything, Star Wars has seen even more hard-hitting death scenes under Disney than it ever saw under George Lucas. However, that doesn't at all mean that Lucas was incapable of producing hard-hitting endings for our favourite heroes, even if he first buried them in shoddy CGI and laughably bad dialogue.
So, no matter where you look across the series, Star Wars will always seem to specialise in making the audience teary when a favourite character's time has come.
10. Ben Solo
After letting go of the darkness following a strange vision of his late father, Ben Solo drops the mantel of Kylo Ren and hurries to Exegol to help Rey in stopping Palpatine once and for all. The two finally defeat the Sith Lord, once Rey channelled the power of all of the Jedi, with this effort killing her. Even so, Ben completely Force Heals Rey, which drains his own life energy. The two then share an awkwardly misplaced kiss, before Solo suddenly passes onto the Force.
Whilst Ben's death is moving, it certainly has its retracting factors. It's a real shame that Ben Solo, the last Skywalker, does not live to see the saga's end, with the character now having a carbon copy arc and demise of Darth Vader. Solo's redemption and subsequent death is rushed, and is far muddier than his Grandfather's since Disney clearly wanted to take the safest option possible and replicate the main beats of Return of the Jedi's ending, but without putting in the work to make The Rise of Skywalker a logical and satisfying conclusion to Star Wars.
Perhaps Ben's death would have had more resonance had he have assisted more in defeating Palpatine, but the passing of a redeemed Kylo Ren, and the final Skywalker, is still rather emotional on the whole.