J'Quille

J'Quille was a Whiphid male from the planet Toola. During the Galactic Civil War, he worked as a bounty hunter for the Hutt crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure on the planet Tatooine. Unbeknownst to Jabba, the Whiphid truly served as a spy for Lady Valarian, a rival of the Hutt and with whom J'Quille had an affair. J'Quille planned to kill Jabba for her by poisoning the Hutt's food. Early in the war, the Whipid witnessed the Sith Lord Darth Vader visiting Jabba's Palace in order to request the services of the Hutt's best bounty hunters. Almost immediately after Vader arrived, J'Quille and the other occupants of the throne room were expelled so that the Sith and Hutt could speak in private.

J'Quille was also present in the palace around four years later, when a group of Rebels attempted to rescue the smuggler Han Solo from Jabba's clutches. The Whiphid witnessed the arrival and capture of each member of the Rebel group, starting with the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, who were given to Jabba as a gift. Princess Leia Organa entered the palace disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh and claimed the bounty on Solo's Wookiee companion Chewbacca, threatening Jabba and his court with a thermal detonator in order to receive a bigger payout. Jabba welcomed her to the court but saw through her disguise, and J'Quille was amongst the courtiers who hid with Jabba to watch her free Solo from carbonite. The watchers then revealed themselves and Solo and Organa were captured.

The final Rebel to arrive was the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, who, after falling through a trap door in the throne room, killed Jabba's pet rancor Pateesa. When Jabba demanded that the Rebels be executed, J'Quille traveled on the Hutt's sail barge Khetanna to witness the executions at the Great Pit of Carkoon. At the pit, however, the Rebels managed to defeat Jabba's forces and kill the Hutt, destroying his sail barge as they escaped. J'Quille survived the explosion, but found that Valarian had placed a bounty on him, as he personally had not been responsible for Jabba's death. Unable to leave Tatooine, J'Quille joined the B'omarr Order.

A spy in the palace
The Whiphid J'Quille was born on the frozen planet of Toola, but by the Galactic Civil War between the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the Galactic Empire he dwelt on the desert planet Tatooine. There he served the crime lord Lady Valarian, a fellow Whiphid with whom he had an affair. Acting as a spy for Valarian, he took up work as a bounty hunter for the Hutt crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure, who was positioned as Valarian's biggest rival on Tatooine. While living in Jabba's Palace, the Whiphid planned to poison the Hutt's food in order to kill him. Shortly after the Battle of Yavin, he was present when the Sith Lord Darth Vader paid Jabba a visit in order to request the services of Jabba's two best bounty hunters. During the exchange, J'Quille and the other members of the crime lord's court were dismissed from the throne room in order to give the pair privacy.

The Rebels arrive
Four years after the Battle of Yavin, J'Quille was again present in Jabba's Palace when the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 delivered a message to Jabba from the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, who wished for the return of his captured friend Han Solo. While the holographic message was displayed, J'Quille sat in one of the throne room's booths with the Yarkora Saelt-Marae. The message ended with Skywalker gifting the two droids to Jabba, and the pair were taken away and put to work. J'Quille was later sat in another of the throne room's booths during a musical performance put on for Jabba by the Max Rebo Band, which ended when Jabba dropped one of the dancers, a Twi'lek named Oola, into a pit before his throne containing the carnivorous rancor Pateesa. J'Quille did not get up to view the dancer's demise, but raised his arms and cheered along with the other members of the court. Moments later, he was caught by surprise when Princess Leia Organa, disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh, entered the throne room with the Wookiee Chewbacca. The pair's arrival was part of a plan by a group of Rebels who hoped to free Solo, which included the two droids Skywalker had sent, and Lando Calrissian, a friend of Solo's who was working undercover as one of Jabba's guards.

Standing directly in front of J'Quille, Organa claimed she had come to collect the bounty on Chewbacca's head, but demanded that Jabba pay more than originally promised. After Organa threatened the room with a thermal detonator, the crime lord agreed to pay a higher bounty, and the Wookiee was taken away. Organa remained in the palace, believing that her disguise had worked; however, the Hutt had seen through the costume and, after pretending to leave the throne room later that night, remained in hiding along with much of his court. Believing the throne room to be clear, Organa snuck in and freed Solo from the carbonite he had been frozen in, after which Jabba revealed himself. J'Quille stood upon a set of stairs into the throne room and watched as both Solo and Organa were captured.

When Skywalker himself then arrived at Jabba's palace to enact the final part of the Rebel plan, J'Quille was once again in a booth in the throne room, sleeping along with a number of other members of the court. The Whiphid awoke to see Skywalker attempt to negotiate with Jabba before threatening him with a DL-18 blaster pistol. In response, the Hutt dropped the Jedi and a Gamorrean guard into the rancor pit. The court cheered for Pateesa as they watched the fight in the pit play out, but Skywalker successfully slayed the beast, causing Jabba to demand the execution of Skywalker, Solo and Chewbacca at the Great Pit of Carkoon.

Skirmish at the Great Pit of Carkoon
J'Quille and many other court members accompanied Jabba on his sail barge Khetanna to view the executions at the pit, where the Rebels would be fed to a member of the sarlacc species. Once at the pit, however, the prisoners managed to free themselves and defeat Jabba's guards, while Organa, who had been chained to Jabba as a slave, strangled the Hutt and killed him. Skywalker then boarded the sail barge and rescued Organa, who used a turret on the barge's top deck to shoot the vehicle, causing it to explode as the Rebels escaped. J'Quille managed to survive the sail barge's explosion, but as he had not been the one to kill Jabba, Valarian placed a large bounty on her former lover's head. Finding himself unable to leave Tatooine due to the bounty, the Whiphid chose to join the B'omarr Order, a group of monks who lived within Jabba's Palace and chose to surgically remove their brains from their bodies, placing them instead in jars supported by mechanical legs.

Personality and traits
J'Quille was a brutal member of the large Whiphid species with coarse, gray fur and powerful tusks. He stood two meters tall with pink skin and retractable, black colored eyes. By the time that J'Quille encountered Skywalker at Jabba's Palace the Whiphid had fought and won many battles, which the Jedi could immediately tell despite never having met him before.

Behind the scenes
J'Quille was designed by Creature Consultant Chris Walas and first appeared in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi in 1983, where he was portrayed uncredited by mime artist Tim Dry. At the time Dry was one half of the mime duo Tik and Tok with fellow mime artist Sean Crawford and neither had ever appeared in a film before. The pair were cast together after being invited by their former teacher Desmond Jones to a casting session with producer Robert Watts, who was looking for around nine mime artists to fill creature roles in the upcoming Star Wars movie. Neither Dry nor Crawford knew who they would be portraying until they first visited Elstree Studios, where most of their characters' scenes were filmed. Dry was assigned J'Quille, who during production of the movie was only known as "Tooth Face", and Crawford was assigned the character Saelt-Marae, known at the time as "Yak Face". Dry's contract stated that he would receive £300 per week for two weeks of guaranteed work on the film, and then £65 for any additional days after that.

The positions of J'Quille and each of the other extras in Jabba's palace was chosen by first assistant director David Tomblin, who placed Dry and Crawford seated together in one of the palace's booths for their first scene. While sat together the pair were unable to actually turn their heads and face each other while in costume. Between the takes of this scene, Dry and Crawford befriended Mark Hamill, who was a similar age to them. The J'Quille costume consisted of three layers, a white lycra body suit, a padded foam suit and then a fur covered shirt and pants on top along with the costume head, which had eye slits in the nostrils for Dry to see out of. The entire outfit was fairly heavy to wear and extremely warm inside, meaning that Dry had to remove the head in between takes so that he could be cooled down with hair dryers to prevent overheating. This was particularly an issue during the filming of the sail barge scenes, which were shot in the Arizona desert.

"Tooth Face" did not receive the name J'Quille until Let Us Prey: The Whiphid's Tale, a short story written by Marina Fitch and Mark Budz and included in the Star Wars Legends book Tales from Jabba's Palace, which was released in 1996. The character's name was canonized in the reference book Star Wars in 100 Scenes, which was written by Jason Fry and released in 2014.

Appearances

 * Darth Vader 1: Vader
 * Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi
 * Return of the Jedi: Beware the Power of the Dark Side!