Secondary characters appear and disappear. It is the law of life. Their popularity suffers ups and downs, writers or directors become infatuated with them, and they can have small moments of glory. However, unless they manage to dazzle the public, we will rarely see them on a regular basis. That doesn’t take away from the fact that, because of their importance in a specific era, it sometimes makes us wonder why certain characters have been ignored. Because, let’s cut to the chase, what happened to the Ewoks, and why are they rarely used in Star Wars anymore?
Making their first appearance in 1983 in Return of the Jedi, the third film of the original trilogy, the Ewoks are a species of vaguely anthropomorphic space bears with very little technological know-how that deal a severe blow to the Empire, allowing the Rebels to take down the Emperor once and for all. The peculiar thing is that while they are famous today, Ewoks were never among George Lucas’ original plans. The final battle on the moon of Endor was to take place on Kashyyyk and the Empire was to be pitted against that planet’s indigenous species, the Wookies.
The problem is that George Lucas wanted this to be a fight between the Empire, technologically very advanced, and a primitive species, with minimal technological knowledge in a sort of echo of the Viet Cong guerrillas and the struggles of the Native American tribes upon the arrival of the Europeans. Given that Chewbacca was shown to not only know how to use weapons, but had a fair amount of engineering knowledge, that plan didn’t seem right for the Wookies. But he didn’t want to scrap it altogether either. Thus, the Ewoks were born.
Inspired by the Wookies, Lucas sought to create a sort of reverse of his original characters. That meant relying mainly on two strategies: reversing the name by eliminating a couple of vowels along the way (from Wookie to Ewok) and making the Ewoks small where the Wookies were big. Otherwise, the characters would be the same as what I had conceived. Physically strong, intelligent despite their limited technological knowledge, very hairy, with flat faces and earth-toned hair and eyes. In that way, his idea is that if the Wookies worked with the audience, there was no reason why the Ewoks shouldn’t. Something that gave them, even before the movie was released, the green light to appear in their own product line.
This translated into the fact that, in 1984, two adventure films were released in the U.S. that would follow the Ewok’s adventures on the moon of Endor. In Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, a human family, the Towani, suffer an interstellar accident and crash-land on the Ewok satellite. Shortly after their accidental crash, the adults are kidnapped and the children meet an Ewok named Deej, who decides to take them in and help them find their parents, leading them on a little adventure together. In its sequel, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, a group of Sanyassans, a species of humanoid reptiles with tough, rough skin, attack the Ewok village and steal an energy cell that the Towani need to finish repairing their ship. For that reason the Ewok and humans join forces to go after them, defeat them and, once the cell is recovered, the Towani finish repairing the ship, leaving Endor and its furry inhabitants behind.
To say that these two TV movies are not masterpieces will surprise no one. They are familiar works, with no pretense other than to be entertaining, seeking to demonstrate that the Ewok are a strong and peaceful people of generous and affable people. Unfortunately, what they succeeded in doing was to redouble the hatred that fans already felt for these peculiar characters.
Since the release of Return of the Jedi the ewooks have been openly despised. Highly questioned by fans, they have been considered a forced inclusion that is there solely to sell toys. A view that the movies only reinforced – there was nothing of what fans expect from Star Wars, just a product clearly focused on the younger generation. That made the popularity of the Ewoks minimal, which added to the discreet success of the movies, they decided not to continue trying to exploit the image of these plush characters. Even if they have been appearing here and there, including in the end of the vilified ninth installment The Rise of Skywalker.
So when we talk about the disappearance of the Ewoks in an era where all the characters return, no matter how minor, it’s probably because of that. They’re not characters that are remembered fondly. They are seen as objects of exploitation, that are focused for a child audience and nothing more. Arguably, in fact, Star Wars is a franchise that targets a family audience and should not be a reason to attack characters with a child audience in mind, but the reality is this: the Ewoks alienate fans. That’s why it seems unlikely that we’ll see them again in the future starring in their own series or their own movie. Which is a shame because these distant cousins of the Wookies deserve much more respect than they’ve ever been given.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
