Luke Skywalker is a household name at this point, everyone loves him and he’s a major character in the universe of Star Wars. I loved Luke throughout the movies, was he perfect? Not a chance. I wish he was like his Legends version but we can’t have everything.
One character that is only truly known because of animation is Kanan Jarrus. A survivor of Order 66 and a rebel, and ultimately a Jedi Knight. We got to witness his growth within the four seasons of Star Wars Rebels and eventually see him pass on into the Force itself.
Ultimately both of these characters respectfully pass on to the Force and become one with it. As any true Jedi. While some might love Luke’s ending, I personally was hit more by the death of Kanan and I’ll explain why that is but first I’ll explain why I wasn’t impacted as much by Lukes.
Luke was done very well in the original trilogy, but when it came around to the sequel trilogy the ones that introduced Rey, Luke was sort of written badly. His motivation for Ben/Kylo was ultimately trash and a character like Luke would not be sat in The Last Jedi away from the devastation that the First Order was causing.
Yes, Luke did appear to challenge Kylo, but ultimately it was an image created by the Force and ultimately was the main reason why Luke died. It was just such a forced death in my opinion. It was not needed and it felt rushed given that we barely saw him in action within those movies. Now comes Kanan’s death.
Kanan was written fantastically well from episode 1. He was a padawan himself thrown into teaching a young Force user in Ezra Bridger and we got to see both of them come to trust and love each other as a family and grow as Jedi together.
We saw Kanan grow as a Jedi to the point he was able to defeat the Grand Inquisitor and even escape Darth Vader a couple of times.
Kanan was dealt a massive blow when he was blinded by Maul with a lightsaber. We got to see his journey into using the Force as a way of being able to see.
Without having the ability to see, Kanan still became an important member of the Rebels and the Resistance within the galaxy. While we got to see his growth without vision, we saw his growth and mentality to where he was fine without the mask and was able to show people he was blind.
This is where his death became a lot more impactful for me. He sacrificed himself to stop a fuel depot from exploding and killing his entire Rebel team but mainly Hera. He put himself in harm’s way by using the Force to hold back the explosion long enough to get Hera and the others onto the ship and in his final moments because the explosion was too much to handle, the Force allowed Kanan to have his ability to be able to see one last time so he could have one final look at Hera before he joins with the Force.
We didn’t truly get anything remotely close to that in terms of impactfulness, emotion, unexpectedness, and more.
For me personally, Kanan’s death is a top 5 death and I doubt that will leave the top 5 for a long time.
