Owen Lars

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

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"Owen is strong like his father: pragmatic and certain of his ways, grateful for simple joys and for his life on the moisture farm."

―Shmi Skywalker Lars^[src]

Owen Lars was the son of moisture farmer Cliegg Lars and the stepbrother of Anakin Skywalker. He married Beru Whitesun, and after his father's death, inherited his moisture farm. In 19 BBY, Beru convinced Owen to adopt Anakin's son, Luke Skywalker, as Anakin had turned to the dark side and become the infamous Darth Vader.

Owen and Beru raised their nephew as well as they could, and Owen instilled into Luke the values of his own childhood. Fearful of Luke's potential, and distrustful of the outside galaxy, Owen attempted to keep Luke isolated and ignorant of his true parentage.

Biography

Youth

Owen was born on the Core World Ator, the homeworld of his birth mother, Aika Lars. Aika died when Owen was very young, so he and his father returned to his father's homeworld of Tatooine. Owen lived with his father Cliegg on their moisture farm. He helped his father buy Shmi Skywalker from Watto. Shortly after freeing her and her son Anakin's protocol droid, C-3PO, Shmi and Cliegg married, making her Owen's stepmother. Shmi often told her new family how much she missed her son Anakin, who had been freed by a Jedi to join the Jedi Order years before.

Over the next few years, Owen met a beautiful girl named Beru Whitesun, and the two fell in love. Beru moved in with Owen and his family and they lived contentedly together. However, tragedy would soon strike when Shmi was kidnapped by Tusken Raiders about a month before the start of the Clone Wars. Organizing a group of thirty other local settlers, Owen and Cliegg set out to find Shmi; however, their attempt was inherently doomed as the Tuskens set a trap. Only four of the settlers made it through, and Cliegg lost one of his legs. Owen built a hover chair for his father to maneuver following this injury.

Clone Wars (22 BBY–19 BBY)

"I guess I'm your stepbrother. I had a feeling you might show up someday."

―Owen Lars to Anakin Skywalker^[src]

Owen Lars, in his early twenties, just before the outbreak of the Clone Wars

One month after Shmi's kidnapping, her Jedi son (now Owen's stepbrother), Anakin Skywalker, came to the Lars' moisture farm looking for his mother. Accompanying him was Padmé Amidala. Owen introduced himself and Beru to the guests and Cliegg explained of the Tusken Raider's taking of Shmi. He told Anakin he would do anything to help out the young Jedi, but his injury was too far from healed, and could not have been much of a help. That night Anakin set out to look for Shmi on his own. The next morning, he brought back Shmi's lifeless body, quietly blaming the Larses for being too weak to protect her. A small funeral was organized and soon afterward, Anakin and Padmé left and were allowed to take C-3PO with them.^[9]

Owen and Beru married in 21 BBY and took over the moisture farm the next year when Cliegg succumbed to his injuries and passed away.^[3]^[10] Shortly after the end of the Clone Wars and after Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader, Owen and Beru were contacted by Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's former mentor. Kenobi informed them that Anakin fathered two children (a pair of twins), and his son Luke needed a family. Beru convinced Owen to adopt him, and Kenobi delivered the baby to them shortly afterward. Owen stubbornly kept his distance and his back turned to Kenobi as he handed baby Luke to Beru.^[11]

Raising Luke

"Nobody could love their boy more."

―Owen Lars^[src]

Fearful of having Luke follow Anakin's path, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru protected their nephew from his past by telling him that his father, rather than being a Jedi Knight, "was a navigator on a spice freighter". Owen also tried to keep him away from the "crazy old hermit," "Ben" Kenobi.

A few years later, Kenobi had found Luke and his friend Windy Marstrap alone in the Jundland Wastes. The two youths had tried to ease their boredom by riding Windy's pet dewback around in the Wastes. They had been thrown in one of the canyons and had gotten bruised up. By dusk, Luke and Windy still hadn't found their way out of the canyon until they were discovered by Ben Kenobi. After Kenobi guided them back to the Lars farm, Owen told Luke and his friend to go inside so they would be out of earshot, then confronted and berated Kenobi.

The reason for Owen's anger was that Kenobi had attempted to give Anakin's lightsaber to Luke, since he felt that Luke was old enough and should be allowed to have it. Owen refused to allow it because he believed the Jedi path was a destructive one. He told Kenobi he didn't want Luke to make the same mistakes his father did, stating how he felt Anakin should have never left his mother in slavery and gotten involved with the "damned foolish idealistic Jedi crusaders" in the first place. He vehemently told Kenobi to leave and to stay away.

Luke, however, being Anakin's son, had wild dreams for a different and adventurous future. Despite Owen's vague promises that he would sometime be free to live his own life, he always prevented Luke from leaving the isolation and anonymity of life on the planet Tatooine, claiming his importance to the farm. This stance sometimes brought turmoil between their relations as Luke's hopes were never satisfied.

Kenobi continued to watch Luke from a distance, sometimes seeing Luke pilot his T-16 skyhopper very skillfully.

Death

"Have you seen Luke this morning?"
"He said he had some things to do before he started today, so he left early."
"Uh? Did he take those two new droids with him?"
"I think so."
"Well, he'd better have those units in the South Range repaired by mid-day or there'll be hell to pay."

―Owen and Beru^[src]

By the time of the Galactic Civil War, extensive exposure to Tatooine's twin suns had prematurely aged his body.^[12]

Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, Owen and Luke met with the local Jawa traders, looking for a droid that could speak Bocce. Unknown to Owen, one of the droids was in fact C-3PO—now in gold plating—and his counterpart, astromech droid R2-D2. When Luke found Leia's hidden message inside of R2-D2, he told Owen and Beru that the astromech claimed to belong to an "Obi-Wan" Kenobi. Trying to keep Luke from learning about his father, Owen ordered him to give the droid a memory wipe.^[4]

The next morning, Luke left early to find R2-D2, who had run off the night before to find his former "master." Owen and Beru never saw Luke again, for they were killed by Imperial stormtroopers who were looking for R2-D2 on behalf of Owen's stepbrother, Darth Vader, after the droid escaped with the stolen plans for the first Death Star.^[4] According to the recollection of stormtrooper Davin Felth, the farmers were killed after Owen spat in the face of the squad's commanding officer, Mod Terrik, they were then each shot with a blaster before their bodies were semi-cremated with a flamethrower. Their execution was ordered by Darth Vader, who watched it via hololink, feeling it was "revenge" for their supposed weakness, and "failure" to defend his mother.^[13] It was carried out by the unit under the command of DSS-0956, in order to cover the evidence of their actions.^[14]

Legacy

Laze Loneozner and his wife Camie looked after the Lars farm for the first few months after Owen's death, until Luke returned to Tatooine and gave his inheritance to the alien named Throgg. The farm eventually came under the ownership of the parents of Gavin Darklighter sometime around the Battle of Hoth.

When Luke traveled to Nam Chorios in the year 13 ABY, he called himself Owen Lars, to hide his true identity from the local population.^[15]

Well over a century following Owen Lars' death, the Lars homestead was used as a shelter during a sandstorm by Luke's descendant, the former Jedi Cade Skywalker. Owen appeared in a vision to Cade along with Beru and Luke, which later showed the aftermath of the Empire's attack on the farm. Luke, having since become a Force ghost, would then warn Cade that he wasn't the only one to lose loved ones, and that he was well on his way to becoming a Sith if he didn't change the course of his life.

Skills and abilities

Owen Lars was known to be good with blasters. Biggs Darklighter claimed Owen could hold off a whole tribe of Tusken Raiders with only one blaster.^[16]

Behind the scenes

Portrayal

Owen Lars was first portrayed by American actor Phil Brown in A New Hope.^[4] The young Owen Lars was portrayed by Australian actor Joel Edgerton in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.^[9]^[11] Voice actor Pat Fraley portrayed Owen for Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike.^[17]

Conceptual history

Owen Lars and his wife Beru appear in the rough draft to Episode IV as anthropologists working on Yavin. They are established as Luke's uncle and aunt in the second draft. In the later draft, Owen is a Jedi, and Luke is studying to be an archaeologist. Owen becomes a non-Force user in the third draft.^[18]

Before enrolling to study cinematography at the University of Southern California, George Lucas intended to study anthropology at San Francisco State University. By making Owen an anthropologist in the rough draft, and Luke an archaeologist (considered a field within anthropology) he is referencing his own non-filmic interests. It is also interesting to note that Luke's plans to be an archaeologist in the second draft are sidelined by the need to become a Jedi (as in Episode IV, where he abandons his first plan, to become an Imperial pilot), much as Lucas' own calling as a director took unexpected center stage over his earlier academic interests.^[19]

Relationship to Luke Skywalker

Before it was revealed in Attack of the Clones that Owen and Anakin become stepbrothers, it was intended to be that they were never brothers, and in fact Luke only falsely believed that Owen was his uncle. This was stated in most sources preceding Attack of the Clones, most notably in the Return of the Jedi novel, where Obi-Wan Kenobi refers to Owen as his brother. This managed to enter profiles of both characters in The Essential Guide to Characters and the second edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe. By the time of the publication of the third edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe in 2000, Owen and Obi-Wan were no longer brothers. However, in the book Jedi Apprentice: The Hidden Past, Obi-Wan says he remembers a brother named Owen, though this is not likely intended to be Owen Lars, but perhaps a reference to the inconsistency.

There are indications that characters within the Star Wars universe itself thought that Obi-Wan and Owen Lars were brothers, as seen in Voren Na'al's description of Owen in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope.

In an interesting real-world coincidence, however, Ewan McGregor's stunt double in the prequels is Nash Edgerton, the real-life brother of Joel Edgerton.

Trivia

On one of the Star Wars-themed episodes of Robot Chicken, Owen, Beru and Padmé see Anakin return with the body of Shmi, to which Owen offers up the inappropriate comment that perhaps they should now call him 'Little Orphan Ani', which Anakin understandably resents. Later in the same episode, as they face execution by the stormtroopers during ANH, one of the troopers reads a message from Vader saying the joke still wasn't funny.
In a video parody called Troops, a satire of the reality show Cops, stormtroopers respond to a domestic disturbance at the Lars Farm, a location they indicate they have visited many times before. They attempt to referee an argument between Owen and Beru over telling Luke the truth about his family. Calming the pair down, they agree to take Beru to a shelter just before a misunderstanding causes the troopers to accidentally kill the pair.
A 1979 toy vehicle for the Star Wars line was called the Imperial Troop Transport, and included a mini-comic which depicted the droid search during A New Hope, culminating in the deaths of the Lars at the troopers hands. This may in fact have been the first depiction of any kind directly depicting their deaths.