10 Star Wars Characters More Important Than You Realised
There's much more to these unassuming Star Wars characters than you think.
Star Wars is perhaps the richest and most expansive franchise of all time - an impossibly dense universe that fans can lose themselves in for... basically forever!
It's a world that's become populated with literally thousands of characters over the last 45 years, and though we're all familiar with the principal players, it's easy to dismiss those smaller roles as being inconsequential.
Except, Star Wars being Star Wars, that's rarely totally true, given the series' tendency to grant a rich backstory to even the most hilariously minor, "insignificant" individual.
As such, it's easy to see a passing character as having little impact on the overarching narrative, only for a comic, novelisation, or TV series to fill in the gaps and prove that, in fact, they played a huge role.
Such is both the beauty and frustration of the Star Wars franchise: nothing ever happens by accident, and it's seemingly impossible to just... exist in this world without having some sort of tie to the bigger picture.
With that in mind, you likely haven't appreciated the true importance of these Star Wars characters in the grand scheme of things...
10. Bolvan
You probably don't remember his name, and you certainly don't know his face, but Imperial gunnery captain Bolvan (John Forgeham) played a major, unintentional role in the Empire's downfall.
At the very start of A New Hope, he famously told his subordinate officer, "Hold your fire, there's no life-forms. It must have short-circuited," when said officer prepared to open fire on the escape pod jettisoned from the captured Tantive IV.
But of course, the escape pod in fact contained C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), who were, in turn, able to flee to Tatooine with the Death Star plans, where they would eventually cross paths with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).
Had Bolvan ordered the pod to be fired upon, Luke's heroic rise (and the Death Star's destruction) would've likely been prevented - as would the fall of the Empire.
Hilariously, in the wider universe, it's revealed that Bolvan was encouraged not to fire upon the pod due to the Empire's obtuse promotion system, which was tied to an officer's hit-to-kill ratio.
Had Bolvan fired upon and exploded an empty pod - which wouldn't have counted as a kill - he would've been knocked down the pecking order for a promotion. Amazing.