Star Wars characters we will miss: Admiral Thrawn

With the recent announcement that Disney will be basically scrapping the existing Expanded Universe to start their own version of things, we are forced to look back at characters we have grown to love outside of the movies the past 30 years and now mourn their loss.

One of the more painful losses will be Grand Admiral Thrawn, made famous in the Thrawn Trilogy of the early 90s. It’s likely that we see a version of him recreated in this new era, but it just won’t be the same Thrawn we’ve come to know over the years.

Mitth’raw’nuruodo–or by his more common name and title, Grand Admiral Thrawn–was the reason the whole EU got off the ground.  Even today, when you speak of the books, the Thrawn Trilogy is what so many fans will point to as their entry point into this larger world. Timothy Zahn used Thrawn in a number of books after the Trilogy, either fleshing out some of his history or teasing his resurrection, but the bulk of the interest in Thrawn comes from those first three books that came out beginning in 1991 with Heir To The Empire.

We got a look at a new kind of Imperial strategist, one that allowed mistakes and used a culture’s art to come up with a psychological profile.  Even until a knife winds up in his chest, it looks like he might have what it takes to defeat the New Republic and reclaim the galaxy for the Empire. He was thorough, always one step ahead of the plans of our heroes, and seemed to be more of a strategist than Darth Vader ever was (and, at the time of the books, more than Emperor Palpatine as well, though the prequels probably put Palpy back on top).

If there was one character Star Wars fans would point to as wanting on the big screen, it well might be the blue-skinned Chiss.