Why Star Wars Never Went Full Horror

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]The reality is, whether under Lucasfilm or Disney, Star Wars seems incapable of delving too much into horror, which is a shame because they are undeniably some terrifying entities in Star Wars. There are suggestions of horrors beyond imagining, and the Eldrich nature of the darkness of space invites terror. But every time there's a bigger fish in this universe, whether swimming under the lakes of Naboo or lurking in the sand dunes of Tatooine, these monsters are used for spectacle, not unspeakable unfathomable dread. Under Disney especially is interesting because Disney Star Wars has embraced some darker elements to it. Andor has brought some truly profound statements about the nature of government and fascism surviving in a dictatorship in ways that the original trilogy just didn't do.

[00:00:47]Disney also very thanklessly brought Alien and Predator back into mainstream conversation. While you may debate on Romulus and Earth's quality, they're undeniably more gruesome and more nightmarish than the franchise's prior entries. Whereas with Predator, well, Prey, Killer of Killers, and Badlands have brought Predator to new heights, making some of the most successful films in the franchise thus far. Maybe not massive hits, but higher grossing than almost everything else that's come previously, except for Prey, which should have been released in theaters.

[00:01:17]I'm not bitter about that. It's not surprising Disney wants to play it safe with these entries. Andor is not the norm for the company. Most of them are slop, but what are you going to do? But Disney has toyed with horror, especially in Ahsoka, where they brought back the zombie stormtroopers. But the problem is the execution lacked any weight because the monsters are not monsters. They're disposable adversaries to get knocked down. What makes something scary though?

[00:01:43]What makes something frightening? That's a subjective answer, but they are commonalities with fear. Most fear comes from the unknown. Not really understanding something all that well.

[00:01:53]We fear the dark not because the absence of light is particularly scary, but because we don't really know what's hidden and veiled in that shadow, in that shade, what lurks beyond our view?

[00:02:03]Can it hurt us? Can it harm us? Can it drag us into the unknown reaches? In Star Wars, the dark side has become increasingly explored. So, there's not much hiding in the dark side. Over the course of the Star Wars saga, we have become familiar with, say, Emperor Palpatine, who goes from a senator to a leader of the Republic to the Emperor to, well, a spooky undead zombie man Rise of Skywalker. But why is Palpatine and Skywalker so lame? He's a zombie with decrepit features. He's a thrice dead clone brought back by magic dark side forces. Why is he so boring? Aside from the fact the film is a weak entry in this franchise, but you know, aside from that, why is it that when Palpatine gets more frightening, he's ironically less scary? Why is he more gruesome but less dreadinducing? The more we see Palpatine evolve into this decrepit monster, the more we get to know him, and as a result, he's actually far less frightening. Things are more frightening when they're withdrawn from us. I would argue Palpatine is at scariest in Andor because he's not there. He's absent.

[00:03:04]Andorp shows Palpatine as a vague suggestion, a reference. And that's scary because he's this overseeing threat who's more a whisper than a tangible force. He is the man accountable for all the horrors we see.

[00:03:18]He endorses it. He suggests it. He recommends it, but we don't see him. And that builds dread. Even though we know who Palpatine is. The prequels, for all their faults, make Palpatine very unsettling because he's this friendly guy. But, you know, he's a monster. He gets far less scary though as he becomes more overtly a monster. He's more frightening suggesting horrible outcomes as a concerned citizen. But once he becomes a grally voiced monster, he's actually way less frightening. Isn't it funny that works out, isn't it? So what does this tell us? The more we know, the less we're afraid. So what don't we know about in Star Wars? Well, there are some very creepy elements to Star Wars, like the unknown regions, the star weirds, the zombies, the fear of, say, finding the crystal star on your bookshelf without knowing how it got there cuz I don't own this book. This book isn't mine. I don't know who who, how, what, I don't understand this. Star Wars has only gone full horror once with Death Troopers, and it immediately backtracked afterwards. In 2009, Joe Shriber wrote Death Troopers, a novel that takes multiple familiar horror story lines and smashes them into the Star Wars galaxy.

[00:04:31]The story focuses on a prison ship known as the Purge that stumbles upon a star destroyer, the Vector, one year prior to the Battle of Yavin. The ship is seemingly empty, but it soon becomes clear that something happened here.

[00:04:47]Under orders from Darth Vader, the Vector had traveled to the planet Megloom, where they had collected a bunch of stuff that had been infected with the Blackwing virus. Virus broke containment and turned the crew into mindless zombies. The ship's medic is able to craft an antivirus, which they later use to save, surprisingly, Han Solo and Chewbacca, who end up getting caught up in all this mess as well.

[00:05:14]over. Only a couple of people survive, including obviously Han and Chewy. In short, it's alien Resident Evil mashed into a galaxy far, far away. Death Troopers, when it came out, actually was a bit of a big deal. It was the first time Star Wars ever ventured into the horror genre and as such got the big boy treatment. Rather than release it as a mass paperback, it got a hard cover and a jacket and everything. There was a Twitter account run by TK349, a Stormtrooper aboard the Vector. In fact, to even know the abandoned Star Destroyer was called the Vector, you had to read the Twitter account. In many ways, this further ties it to the Alien franchise since key plot points of Prometheus and Alien Covenant would be completely missed if you didn't follow the viral marketing videos associated with the project as well. Death Troopers was popular enough to get a prequel story. Red Harvest written by the same author. I focused on how the virus came to be. This one was set during the Old Republic establishing this long history with zombie horror and Star Wars. It's been here the whole time. We just didn't see it until now. And these creatures, they're horrifying. Truly nightmare fuel monsters. These zombies eat babies, emerge down narrow hallways in bulk, and always claw for flesh. Their teeth run with the fragments of carrying stuck between their rotted fetted gums. They clearly were inspired by the dead space necromorphs or the entities from event horizon with all the gore and violence.

[00:07:03]A vision of hell through the eyes of the blackness of space. Something Star Wars never really did before and has never really done since. Red Harvest, I feel, is the lesser of the two works because it's just more establishing background as to how Death Troopers happened. It also suffers from one of the core issues of all attempts by Star Wars to be horrifying. It's simply not scary. But then Disney bought Star Wars and brought zombies into a new era. And it was dark magic force powers bringing zombified troopers to life from beyond the galaxy.

[00:07:41]And the zombies were just sort of easily mowed down muks. Not nearly as many or particularly more than your average stormtrooper legion. just slowm moving, hard to kill, undead flesh piles. Sure, they were gruesome, but they weren't overwhelming. I mean, I personally saw this as a downgrade, but you know, your mileage will vary. What was undeniable was it was no longer scary. You see, horror and sci-fi do have a strong connection. They go hand in hand, as a matter of fact, since the beginning of the genre. Alien and The Thing are in many ways extensions of that 50s movement in sci-fi where you got the Bee Movie, the giant radioactive lizards, the giant insects, science gone wrong, and Star Wars is nothing if not a hearkening back to that era. Like sure, that era also brought us Star Trek, of course. For example, Forbidden Planet that inspired the original Star Trek run back in the day, but it also had some pretty scary monsters for the time anyway. Star Wars, very similarly to Star Trek with Forbidden Planet, was also inspired by old school sci-fi. More specifically though, Buck Rogers and Edgar Rice Burrow's Barum saga, you know, John Carter. This early era of planetary romance came alongside the weird fiction genre, which is also science fiction. And Lovecraft held huge sway in this era with elder things beyond reality appearing in his contemporary peers work. And it's here we see the big weakness with Star Wars and horror. Robert Howard incorporated Cthulhu's mythos into his works with his Conan stories. However, Howard brought Lovecraftian themes into his work in a way that removes all the horror from them because Conan finds Lovecraftian horrors and kicks their [ __ ] ass. The same is true for Star Wars. There are several aliens that are incredibly powerful and frightening in theory from the Rancor to the Sarlac. But by presenting them as badass threats the heroes can beat, they stop being scary.

[00:09:37]One example is that of the crate dragon.

[00:09:39]The crate dragon is suggested back at a new hope as this skeletal structure on the sand dunes. Eventually in the Mandalorian, we see the crate dragon, this colossal monster, and it was beaten through great effort, yes, but it was beaten. The role of horrifying aliens is to be awesome obstacles. If they are frightening, then that just means it will be all the cooler when they're bested. Take a look at say the end of Mandalorian season 2. We get these terrifying death troopers and while Dingarin can't stop them, Luke Skywalker cuts to them in seconds. Scary threats reduced immediately because someone else beat the [ __ ] out of them. If a threat is frightening, it just means it's all the more cooler when the hero beats them. Even the grotesque Sarlac pit, the space worm. They're creatures that defy physics. They can kill you over the course of thousands of years of digestion. And yet, they're bested in one form or another by our heroes. Yeah, the worm's not killed, but they get away. Yeah, the solic can eat you, but how many times have has Boba Fett escaped it? In legends, especially, a lot of cosmic horror or sci-fi horror involves unstoppable threats. But when your heroes are unstoppable, you can't make the monsters unstoppable. How do you create a sense of fear if there's nothing to be afraid of? And that's one issue with death troopers. While it is cool to see Han and Chewy there fighting zombies, we know they can't die because a year later, a new hope happens and Chewy and Han, spoiler alert for this 50-year-old movie, are not zombies.

[00:11:10]There that's the reason why the novel focuses on new characters who are mildly skilled in specific niches because they can die. Dingjarun is much weaker than Luke Skywalker. So, he can get killed by the death troopers in the Mandalorian, which are just called death troopers, I I guess. But Luke can't because he has to live to appear in the sequel trilogy.

[00:11:29]See the problem? We know these characters won't die. So, who cares? We have to get attached to weaker characters. And if we're following characters we know are weaker, we almost kind of keep thinking, when's the strong guy going to come back? One of the few insurmountable threats in Star Wars are the Suma Vermouth, which appeared around the planet of Kessle. And most notably, they showed up in the movie Solo as these giant tentacled monsters Han Solo had to navigate around to complete his Kessle run. They love crafty horrors, sure, but Solo didn't really fight them so much as escape them. They can defy the laws of black holes and gravity, but are they really a threat? Yeah, they're kind of terrifying in concept visually, but like many other Star Wars monsters, they're used to inspire thrills in an action scene, not true horror. Not anyway. The scariest moments in Star Wars really are the moments when they introduce a monster or a threat the seconds before something actually happens. The Mandalorian, for example, is one of the most terrifying depictions of an AT-ST in the whole saga with these scenes that set in the forest on episode 4, and the machine rises up and is these glinting lights in the darkness. It's a giant shadow, colossal. It's a fantastic sequence that makes these familiar Star Wars threats feel like something demonic, a machine emerging from the ruins of nature. It's like something out of Shadow of the Colossus. And the Mandalorian, Jing Jarin, is the wanderer. I'd also say the Genosis brain worms are the scariest part of Clone Wars. But like that concept was kind of stolen from Star Trek, right? The neural parasites, the SETI eels, you know, from Star Trek 2 Wrath. Same concept really.

[00:13:07]You could also argue it's from the flood from Halo, but it's a familiar concept.

[00:13:12]Yeah, it's frightening, but we've seen it before. So, what haven't we seen before? Of all the singular entities or monstrosities in Star Wars that can be perceived as horrifying, the Starw weirds rank among the most distinctly unsettling. In current Disney cannon, the Stars have only appeared in the Dr. AFA comics. Centered on the character of Dr. Afa, a character I think is more interesting than anyone else in tr sequels. But I digress. In Legends, though, Stars are alluded to during the Old Republic games. They're never explicitly shown, but they may lurk out in the shadows. And that creates a horrible implication. And Disney, in their wisdom, decided to bring this implication out to the forefront to bring something horrifying from the outskirts of the galaxy into your panel pages. What did Disney do when they fully introduced these shadows beyond rumor? These surreal dark side entities are basically skeletal spirits that exist in hyperspace, lingering, floating. They can scream, causing immense pain so great the listener's eardrums will burst and blood will pour down the scale of their faces. Gravity is their tool, their weapon. You can shoot them, ram them, smash them down, and it won't do jack [ __ ] They cannot be put down with conventional weaponry and are so extremely rare that most people don't even believe they exist anymore. That's pretty terrifying. Well, except for when they show up, then they're easily taken down. In the Disney era of Star Wars, one Starw weird was sealed away by Isa Sakura and Shaki in a Jedi prison during the Clone Wars.

[00:14:46]Naturally, Dr. Afa and Luke Skywalker of all characters accidentally free this imprisoned Starweird, but then it's just contained shortly thereafter. Just a momentary issue, you know, nothing too bad. Now, in Legends cannon, there were these enigmatic creatures that you might find the wreckage of a starship in space, and that was a star weird ripping it apart with its gravitational fingers.

[00:15:06]But here it's contained. It's it's just locked up in prison. If you're a strong enough Jedi Mask, you can contain the unknowable horrors of the unknown region. I guess a thing that can be captured that's knowable, that's containable. I mean, look, for me, it was the fear of the unknown, something unstoppable, something otherworldly. But here, it's just another monster. It's basically no different than any other creature they faced so far. In fact, it's more directly dangerous because our characters are encountering it. You would think they would make it something more frightening and more insurmountable, but it's containable and that makes it feel less dangerous. And as such, it feels vastly less scary than it was when it never showed up at all.

[00:15:45]For something to be scary, it has to feel insurmountable. Arguably, it has to be insurmountable or at the very least very hard to stop. Give me I'll give you an example. Halloween, right? Michael Myers is this unstoppable killing machine. Compare the endings of Halloween 1, original Halloween 2, and Halloween 5. Halloween original, Michael Myers is shot out a window at the end of the film by Dr. Lumis, his psychiatrist.

[00:16:09]But when they look back over the window sill, he's gone. Cut to breathing over all the buildings and all of that. That means nothing they did in the whole movie could stop Michael Myers. They just got away from him for a little while, but he's around any corner. He's right outside. In Halloween 2, though, he's blown up by Dr. Lumis, and he this does take him down. He's he's stopped under extreme firepower. The explosion seemingly kills Lumis, too. But we know at least this extreme amount of force can put Meyers down. But then we learn later on didn't really kill him. Didn't kill Lumis either. But you know what? It takes a lot to stop Michael Myers. A lot of just concussive force and flame and continual punishment. And it's something you can't really do ordinarily. It's tough. So therefore, he's still frightening. He's a Hulk. The events of the movie only delays him for a little bit. But in Halloween 5, after so many films with Meyers, Dr. Lumis drops a net of Michael Myers and he shoots him a little and then he hits him with a shotgun and then they just kind of both fall on top of each other and then they just bring Michael to jail. He's just sitting in prison. There he is in his prison cell looking like a pathetic little guy. Someone else has to break Michael Myers out of jail. We know it's the cult of the Thorn later on, but it's just some guy in a in a black hat as far as we know now. It's like what? He fell out of a window. He got blown up. He got shot down a like a pit and had diamond dropped him in before and this is what takes him down. Seriously, a little a couple a little bit of a net and some gun wax. The Star Wars in Star Wars, they started like Michael Myers in Halloween 5. Contained easily, seemingly insurmountable, but practically contained. See, with the death troopers at least, you know, see, it's different, right? And by death troopers, I mean the the zombies, not the from the Mandalorian. Zombies individually aren't particularly powerful. You can bash them, smash them, blow them up. You can dispose of them in many different ways that are very colorful and fun to read about or watch. But the problem is there's so many, many of them. A virus the Empire can't contain. Yeah, all that mastery and control and one little microbe slips through their fingers and it breaks the entire hierarchy. It upsets the status quo and hero and villain alike are victim to a little squirming thing in the sky. And it makes it seem insurmountable. Not because each individual zombie is insurmountable, but because what are you going to do? Where are you going to hide? Before long, they'll find you. But if your entity, your singular entity, is this thing that normal weapons can not dent, but you can contain it. It diminishes the threat factor. It robs of the fear. It's not scary anymore. The reality is though that Star Wars and the power of fear, well, all the characters limit that.

[00:18:44]They're too strong. So, what else do you do? When George Lucas did his special editions, what did he add? A bunch of things. some character moments here and there, but he especially focused on expanding the setting, adding little alien guys in the background. He opened cloud to these windows so you could see the expansive best bin. He added cutaways to the prequels during the finale. There were so many moments he just enriched with effects that he didn't have before. He even brought Jabba the Hut back in a deleted scene that really adds nothing to the plot, but it reminds you, oh yeah, there's Jabba. Oh, there's Boba Fett. It adds the feeling of scum and villain on Tatooine in terms of the setting. not so much the plot but setting because it adds a sense of continuity and expanse and life to the Star Wars galaxy. And this is why I think the key to making a Star Wars horror story is not in establishing more monsters because inevitably the heroes will just beat them, but it is in establishing the fear of the setting. The story of death troopers takes place on a derelict star destroyer just drifting aimlessly through space empty. The stars, by comparison, emerge in hyperspace or the empty abyss of darkness beyond your habitable planets. They are presences devoid of life, drifting through the cold expanse, aimless, lifeless, dead.

[00:19:59]They're familiar because they exist in a familiar setting with unfamiliar contexts. to see the Star Destroyer, once full of life and process and order and work, be vacant, eerily quiet. Not even the engines are roaring. That's haunting. It creates a liinal space. The idea of liinal spaces have become popular thanks to the back rooms and all that. But a lot of horror films have exploited liinal space for years already. They're defined as a physical or psychological transition point that feels eerie, empty. A hallway now abandoned. The entrance to a home left without any soul, left open, left a jar.

[00:20:38]A starship hallway leading nowhere, without anyone in them. Empty spacecraft are the ultimate liinal space because they feel like they're purely about transitioning from one planet to the other. Traveling across an empty vacuum of space to somewhere hopefully where there is something from nothing to somewhere. Why would a spacecraft disappear unless it arrived somewhere that depopulated the crew without destroying the ship? Where did it stop?

[00:21:05]Where is it going to? Where did it come from? The ship doesn't need anyone to steer it. So the craft is just drifting aimless. Why? The sci-fi film Event Horizon draws upon this fear, I think, very effectively. A ship with the ability to fold space and thus travel across the stars returns to its maiden voyage, completely populated after years of absence. It turns out the ship has traveled to a place not quite hell, but like hell, emerging from the depths of some horrors beyond imagination, containing indistinguishable entities from demons. The ship is alive, demonic, and it wants to take more people back to the darkness beyond. The ship is liinal for most of the film. It's only in the finale we see the monsters, but for the buildup until then, it's the eerie emptiness and the implication that something is going on or something is lurking that we cannot perceive yet. And then, of course, we do perceive it and it's absolutely horrifying. The novel Death Troopers is almost like Event Horizon. It has the edge of sci-fi and it's this old virus bricks containment.

[00:22:11]Sure, it's not demons, but it's still something horrifying. The Order of the Empire unraveling because of the tiniest little microbe and the whole ship is depopulated and now occupied by the living dead. But the problem is the setting of emptiness is abandoned quickly for the sheer spectacle of fighting zombies. We don't want to see the familiar empty. No, we want to see Han Solo and Chewbacca fight Stormtrooper zombies. And because they give fans what they want, they neglect to give fans what they need. Atmosphere, tension, dread, a sense that only truly recontextualizes the familiar in a new, disturbing fashion. We need that. We crave that. We desire it, but we don't get it. But what if there's something else? The unknown region is an expansive space we haven't really explored too much. There's Octu. There's Exagold and all that, but there's a lot that we haven't seen in Star Wars. What if there was something out there with a siren song drawing you in? I want you to imagine a visual. You're traveling in the outer rims, the regions unexplored, parts of the galaxy less traveled. And as you go out into the depths of space and darkness, you hear a melody outside the hull. And there it is. Impossible.

[00:23:24]It can't exist. But you see it, a woman out there in the shadows, a silhouette against the stars whose song draws you nearer. And as the voice takes root in your brain, anchoring itself to your very soul, you can see the smile. It stretches too far from ear to ear, teeth hooked, long, too big, impossibly big for one mouth to hold. And before you know it, she has you. Not physically, but in the spirit, in the force. And before long, you find yourself devoured not so much through the mouth containing its rows of unending fangs, but in the tentacled hand that holds you. This is Abalith, one of the most horrific entities in the Star Wars universe, and quite frankly, the one thing we lost the most from the expanded cannon back in the day. In Star Wars, they are the ones. The ones are entities of incredible power who exist beyond our understanding of Star Wars culture.

[00:24:23]They're extremely ancient. They might be gods. In Legend cannon, they moved to the ethereal realm of Mortis after confronting the mother on their home planet. The mother had become this frightening dark entity after drinking from the font of power and bathing in the pool of knowledge. Very legendary sounding, very Adam and Eve kind of [ __ ] I know. The mother, now Abelith, would be sealed away, requiring the force of the ones to seal her down.

[00:24:50]And every so often, she'd break free.

[00:24:52]and the ones would unite to bind her again. This is an entity so powerful only literal gods could stop her. But during the Clone Wars, the ones died thanks in part to Anakin Skywalker refused to take that place as you do.

[00:25:06]And so Anakin Skywalker's grandson descended into the darkness became Darth Cadis. He accidentally unleashed the mother. He unleashed Abaleith. And there were no more gods to stop her. Abalith is not merely a dark side user. She is the darkness itself. Go ahead and try to kill her. You might succeed, but that doesn't stop her. She'll just take over another body and slowly twist it into a form like her own. Physical essence.

[00:25:32]What is that? Think that's going to kill her? No, she's beyond flesh. She's beyond all. And she'll twist whatever she ins snares into a version of herself. A monster. Dark sunken eyes impossibly deep in the skull. A grin ripping through the cheeks, forever expanding with needleike teeth extending from ear to ear, from mandible to mandible, impossibly deep throatated.

[00:25:58]Abalith can rewrite the very nature of reality itself, and nothing can stop her. Nothing that can reforge the locks that held her back. Even Luke is like 120th the level of power needed to stop Abalith entirely. In many ways, she's at once a villain, but she's also much, much worse. The dark side throughout Star Wars is this corrupting force as we saw with Palpatine, right? But with Abalith, there's an intentionality through how it corrupts and destroys a person that makes the dark side feel more destructive as a presence. The fact that in the various books featuring Abelith, Jedi and Sith have to work together to stop Abalith, that kind of makes it feel separate from the dark side, though, doesn't it? Not a personification of the dark, which I feel is a missed opportunity. I think it's better when abalith is the dark side is the corrupting force that influences all because the darkness as we see in various Star Wars media even the sequels is not a place of joy it's a place of empty hollow promises an era of unfulfilled natures every Sith say for Palpatine ends up more miserable after descending into darkness we see a scene in Last Jedi I know everyone loves that movie where Ry enters into a dark pool and finds reflections echoes of what she wants to see but no true answers the darkness this doesn't answer. It just leads you down a path of suffering.

[00:27:16]However, there is one character who I think may personify everything dark and disturbing at the dark side itself. One from one of the best game franchises in Star Wars, Star Wars Nights of the Old Republic 2 specifically, that might personify everything truly terrifying about the potential the dark side can pose for anyone living in that galaxy far, far away a long time ago. Imagine for a second you are the survivor of a weapon that can eradicate almost all life on a planet. The Galactic Republic used a weapon known as the mass shadow generator, a super weapon that ended the Mandalorian war during the Old Republic.

[00:27:55]Malachor 5 was surrounded in a shadow that consumed everything. Imagine it for a second. The starships in the sky suspended and falling, fuel evaporating, water burning. And this event forever changed the human who would be known as Darth Niilus. A survivor of the darkness of Malachor 5. He was with a few others who managed to survive the destruction.

[00:28:18]But when he awoke after the darkness seeped away, he craved sustenance. He craved the Force powers within every soul and reached out and took it. As you know, the force binds everything and holds everything in the Star Wars galaxy. So, Nile essentially took the essence that kept everyone together from the hearts of everyone he encountered, hunting every survivor until he took every shred of life from them. And even then, it was not enough. He needed more.

[00:28:46]He was eventually found by Darth Treya and her apprentice Darth Cion, creating the triumvirate of the Sith Lords. As a lord of hunger, Niilus grew in power, not by training, but by sucking the souls of his enemies. He cared little for the lessons of the Sith or their teachings or their beliefs. He just needed more to fuel his unending hunger.

[00:29:08]The more he did, the less he felt, the more he needed. And Scion used Niilus to overthrow Treya, of course. But that defeat did not satisfy Niilus either. It only drove him to greater heights, to want more. He didn't care who he had to consume. He just needed. Eventually, the darkness even consumed his own flesh, and he forced himself to bind his spirit to the mask and cloak he wore. He was a wraith, bodyless, formless, drifting.

[00:29:36]His own hunger made him consume his flesh, and he needed more. The lack of a stomach, the lack of blood vessels, lack of eyes, lack of a jaw, lack of bone, lack of hair. He consumed every little bit of himself, and he needed more. He was not done yet. He could not handle this unending starvation. While Darth Nius was defeated, what is dead can never truly die. Nius's mask would trade hands in the unknown regions over the years, even feeding into the events of the Star Wars Legacy comic. A story that takes place over 130 years following the battle of Yavin. The mask was believed to have power and life even then. And even then it hungered. If Abelith illustrated the destructive intentionality of the darkness, Niilus represents something further, something worse, the ultimate destination of those who delve into the dark side, wanting more, needing more, finding nothing but needing more, becoming a literal black hole from which nothing could survive.

[00:30:44]Yes, it's a vampire story. In Isolation though, Abalith and Niilus are these frightening entities beyond imagination.

[00:30:50]But in Star Wars, they become something frightening because they're the ultimate threats that need to be fought against.

[00:30:56]The quests to conquer them make them obstacles, sure, but they're beyond frightening because they can't really be stopped. Death doesn't stop Nile. His mask remains. Death doesn't stop Abalith. She remains. And there are very few people left to fight them. and is often people influenced and affected by them directly. And this is where we get into the ideas of what a horror story can be in Star Wars. The problem here is these stories have a goal, victory. Star Wars is a revolutionary text. The point is to say you can upturn any oppressive order and bring about joy and change.

[00:31:29]This is why android, despite telling such a dark story, it still feels like Star Wars. It's still situated in that world where people have to resist and fight and how empires only exist due to the exhausting exacting minutia of government. These intense regimes crumble because when there's a crack in the system, everything falls apart. So targeted resistance can win. Even a small group of ragtag heroes. But horror is not about upturning the status quo.

[00:31:57]Horror is about crushing the soul. Most often it's about survival. The Alien franchise might end with aliens getting killed every movie, but the species remains. The threat remains. The characters just escaped these xenomorphs. You might stop Michael Myers, but he'll always come back.

[00:32:14]Freddy Krueger might be beaten this night, but what is dead can never truly die. And every protagonist of Night Elm Street always eventually finds Krueger again and dragged under the covers by his claws. This is true in Death Troopers as well because it's the only true horror story because once they stop these zombies, the virus is still there.

[00:32:31]Yeah, almost everyone we know is now dead. But nothing stops the Empire from going back and getting more virus.

[00:32:36]Nothing stops the virus from escaping again, being found, breaking containment. And next time it could infect entire planet or worse, much worse, it can spread, destroying everything. The evil is not stopped. At best, it's just avoided. And evil must be stopped every time perfectly because the moment it's not, it wins. This is why personal stories often succeed more in a horror setting. When the horror has greater implications, Wayan Utani experimenting on the xenomorphs, for example, or the thing breaking containment on Antarctica, the story seldom focuses on those greater elements. That's a background thing.

[00:33:14]Rather, the story focuses on the momentto moment survival of the characters shown. As such, a true horror story needs to have that focus angle.

[00:33:22]Death Troopers has Han and Chewy. We know they're going to live, but the other guys we just met, they're all cannon fodder. They might all die.

[00:33:28]That's more effective, I think. And tell me, what would be more effective? A story centered on stopping Abalith, consuming the galaxy, or a story of one person who wandered into the domain of the unknown regions, and emerged, altered, changed. Sure, Abalith can have a greater impact on the Star Wars galaxy with epic fights and all that, but it's more emotionally impactful to focus on one person possessed by her spirit, the desperate attempts to save her, the resignation, the dread when all attempts fail, the monster the possessed person becomes, and the possessed becoming consumed by the entity. It could be like The Exorcist, sure, a story of hopelessness in the face of eternity, or the fly, where the flesh betrays the soul in gruesome, irrevocable ways. In fact, the Exus Pizuzu and Star Wars Abelith share a commonality really.

[00:34:19]Pizuzu possesses Reagan to bring despair upon those around her. Yes, as do all demons who possess, but he also does it to lure Father Marin to the sight of the possession. This man decades later fought Pizuzu and saved a young boy from him and he wants revenge. When Father Caris eventually frees Reagan from Pizuzu at the cost of his own life, the demon enacts petty revenge on Caris by forcing the spirit of a serial killer into his body, leading to the events of Exorcist 3. Abalith is very much just a cosmic horror version of that iconic demon and can similarly create stories that are just about dread. A single soul who is not Luke Skywalker, who is not a Jedi, forced to contend with the horrors, or perhaps a Jedi who just loses control. Who knows? Darth Nius, though, works better as a vampire story than a space opera villain. Imagine focusing on a planet Niilus intends to feed upon. The attempts to stop him from normal people, the inevitable failure.

[00:35:16]watching ships from the sky dispatched to stop him turn lifeless and stagnant in the clouds before crashing down, hurtling upon mountains. Fires raging along the skyline, the forest withering as Niilus walks through them. Tall grass wilting as he strides closer. The last ditch effort, an attempt to distract Nihilus long enough for a few lone characters to escape, only for their ship to stop mid-flight just as it reaches the atmosphere as it's dragged down to the ground. The engines consumed, silent, a singular force pulling them down into a black hole of hunger and terror with only the inflexible mask gazing at the faces of those it consumes. No heroes, masters, just people dead. Disney needs to find a way to make Star Wars more appealing to general audiences, right? Why not induce fear instead of thrills? They do pretty well at the box office, and I guarantee you what I just told you about will probably do better than The Mandalorian and Grou.

[00:36:22]We're good. I I didn't trip. Didn't trip. Okay, move this one out.