Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi‘s first trailer introduced fans to the series’ villain: a cloak-clad, dark-helmeted Force-wielder known as Nowaam. While Darth Vader clearly influenced Nowaam’s visual design, his motives and relationship with the Force align him more with another iconic Sith Lord: Darth Revan.
The Ninth Jedi’s big bad is a love letter to Knights of the Old Republic’s Darth Revan
For the uninitiated, Darth Revan is the big bad of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. A Jedi born amidst a galaxy-wide war, Revan took drastic steps to restore peace, and he ultimately succeeded. Unfortunately, Revan’s crusade took a toll on his soul, and he ultimately succumbed to the Dark Side, setting his sights on galactic domination.
However, unlike most Sith Lords, Revan didn’t want to take over the galaxy for selfish reasons; he wanted to stop war by uniting the cosmos under one power. Yeah, his actions are inexcusable, but the reasons he commits them are, at a fundamental level, in line with the Jedi’s goals of protecting the galaxy, a truth reflected in the ease with which Revan wields both Light and Dark-side abilities.
While we still don’t know a lot about Nowaam, what little we see of him in The Ninth Jedi‘s trailer paints him with a very Revan-colored brush. The Ninth Jedi, like Star Wars‘ Old Republic-era, unfolds in a galaxy haunted by endless war, and the trailer presents Nowaam as someone willing to pay any price for peace. Even if the price amounts to deploying a planet-busting superweapon.
In any other rendition of the Star Wars galaxy, it would be easy to dismiss Nowaam’s words as mere propaganda. However, The Ninth Jedi‘s galaxy far, far away has one thing others don’t: lightsabers that reactively change color to reflect their wielder’s heart. And when Nowaam wields one of these sabers, the blade burns blue, a color universally associated with good in both modern Star Wars canon and the pre-Disney Legends continuity.
If nothing else, it’s clear that Nowaam’s heart is in the right place, even if the ways he goes about achieving his goals are monstrous. Whether heinous methods are acceptable if the goal they further is inherently noble is a question Knights of the Old Republic forces the player to answer almost constantly, and it’s nice to see a modern Star Wars project confront this riddle in a way that respects the viewers’ intelligence.
With the fate of the Knights of the Old Republic remaster in near-constant, agonizing question, it’s great to see that the game is still inspiring Star Wars creative teams to push the series beyond the confines of the Skywalker Saga. Even if we never see Revan again, it’s clear his legacy is still potent enough to inspire villains who defy Star Wars‘ black-and-white morality without betraying it.
