The Biggest Murderer in the Galaxy

It's not called Star Wars for nothing. There have been a ton of deaths in the movie franchise over the years, but none more so than in the original trilogy. From the Battle of Yavin to the Battle of Endor, our heroes and their foes have left a trail of bodies across the galaxy far, far away.

Here, I am going to take a quick look at the top three killers of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. As there is so much extra canon and material that accompany the movies, I will be looking at characters of the original trilogy alone that actually killed people on screen. I may be getting some of my information from non-movie sources as otherwise I am gonna be just unable to tell how many people died..

3rd Place

Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian

This I ended up splitting between Wedge and Lando.

Lando had some “inconsequential” kills in The Empire Strikes Back when they escaped Cloud City as he killed several Stormtroopers. He also killed several guards at Jabba's floating barge on Tattooine. Also at the Battle of Endor, he managed to pilot the Millenium Falcon into destroying several TIE fighters.

Wedge also managed to kill more than his fair of TIE pilots at the Battle of Endor and honestly probably killed less than Lando.

However all of these pale in comparison to the main event of Return of the Jedi with the destruction of the Death Star Mark II. This was the second Death Star that was under construction at the Battle of Endor. The Emperor used it as a trap to secure Luke Skywalker as his apprentice and the destruction of the Rebellion once and for all. Fortunately for our heroes, the Ewoks decided to ambush the Empire and allow Han Solo to destroy the shield defending the station, thus allowing Lando and Wedge to destory the station.

According to the Wookiepedia, the second Death Star could have a complement of almost 2 million people when fully constructed. However at the time of it's destruction there was a crew and worker complement of 485,560 people. This is also not the true amount of people that died as after Darth Vader killed the Emperor a general evacuation was sounded. As there were limited ships, it is assumed that a minimal amount of people actually escaped and it is assumed 450,000 people died.

As this was an event in the original trilogy that only had 2 others that had more died, it is very clearly the third place event. I split it between Lando and Wedge as they were the pilots that actually destroyed the Death Star II. Wedge destroyed the power regulator on the north tower and Lando targeted the actual reactor itself with concussion missiles.

As we cannot say whether one without the other would have successfully destroyed the Death Star II, I split it between the two of them, giving the heroes equal credit for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

2nd Place

Luke Skywalker

This is a bit of a surprise as Luke is the hero of the original trilogy. So far we only have “good” guys on this list. Why were they fighting the Empire again?

Luke managed to kill several Stormtroopers on the first Death Star in his rescue of Princess Leia. He also killed a good amount of troopers in the Battle of Hoth by taking down an AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport) Walker and it's crew by using a grenade.

While on his rescue of Han Solo, Luke also choked out a couple of Gamorrean guards. This was more then a little messed up as that is very clearly a Dark Side power and these guys were just doing their jobs. Never mind that Gamorreans are almost universally portrayed as bad people. They are still people man.

Luke also took out a number of Jabba's guards on his sail barge as well as many of his guests when he fired the main gun into the deck and fired. These were almost universally bad people again, but still count as kills. (We never get an accurate number, but this really doesn't matter a whole lot, as you will see later on).

Later on he also killed off some scout troopers while trying to assault the shield generator.

However, these were also almost inconsequential when compared with the second biggest mass murder int eh original trilogy, the destruction of the Death Star. As the second Death Star was not yet operational, it had a far smaller complement than it's smaller predecessor. The official guide to the Death Star states that it had a crew and military complement of 1,565,231.

This number is disputed as several fans have pointed out that it would be unbearably crowded given the space available in the Death Star itself. However, given how cramped spacecraft are now and that the Empire clearly cared little for it's workers and troopers, this number seems accurate to me. They would have stuffed those guys in!

While Han Solo covered him, Luke shot two proton torpedoes down the thermal exhaust port and caused a fatal chain reaction in the battle station. As there was no order to evacuate (because Grand Moff Tarkin was a prideful guy), we can assume that around that many people died on the Death Star at Yavin.

Even though our hero has killed over 1 million and a half people at this point, there is still one character with a bigger kill rate than good old Luke.

1st Place

Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin

Ah, the original big bad Star Wars villain. In the original trilogy, Tarkin was the main villain in A New Hope. Some may say Darth Vader was, but Tarkin was the one making everything happen, with Vader being on his leash. He was the highest ranking Moff we have seen on film. He would also have a cameo in Epsiode III, Revenge of the Sith as a CG character. He also had a minor role in Rogue One again as a CG character.

It takes a special breed of character to threaten to blow up a planet to prove a point. Tarkin did this to Princess Leia Organa in the first movie, demanding that she give up the location of the rebel base on Yavin in order to spare her home planet of Alderaan.

Leia conceded, feeling that the lives of the billions on Alderaan were worth more than the lives of the Rebellion. Good thing she lied, because Tarkin blew up Alderaan anyway, firing the super laser at the planet and reducing it to asteroids. This extinguished the lives of over 2 billion people on the planet.

We run into some survivors of Alderaan in a few sources, but they are few and far between. Cara Dune from The Mandalorian is one.

Obi-Wan Kenobi feels the deaths from light years away. The destruction of Alderaan sets the stage for the Empire being the worst force in the history of the galaxy. If you didn't think the Empire was bad before this, then you certainly hate it now.

And this ends the article with Grand Moff Tarkin being the greatest mass murderer in the history of the original trilogy. I do find it odd that only one villain made this list. An argument could be made for the Emperor being the greatest murderer, but we only see him give the orders to destroy some Rebel capital ships in Return of the Jedi. Everything else is done through minions or off screen.

Hope you enjoyed!