Maythe Force Be With You
Stylised original portrait plate for Cade Skywalker

Full dossierHumanThe Legacy Era

Cade Skywalker

A Skywalker who is a bounty hunter, a spice addict, and absolutely not interested in the family business.

Species
Human
Homeworld
Not established
Affiliation
Independent — bounty hunter; formerly the New Jedi Order
First appearance
Star Wars: Legacy #1 (Dark Horse, 2006)
Continuity
Legends

Cade Skywalker is the protagonist of John Ostrander and Jan Duursema's Star Wars: Legacy (Dark Horse, 2006–2010), a descendant of Luke Skywalker living roughly 130 years after the Battle of Endor.

The premise

The galaxy of Legacy has gone round again: a Sith order under Darth Krayt rules openly, the Jedi are hunted, the Fel dynasty's Empire is in exile, and the last Skywalker has no interest in any of it. Cade survived the massacre of his Jedi academy as a boy, watched his father die, and has spent the intervening years as a bounty hunter and spice addict on a ship called the Mynock.

Why the character works

Because the surname is a burden rather than a promise. Every other Skywalker story is about someone rising to the name. Cade's is about someone who can heal the dying with the Force, knows exactly what that means, and would prefer to be left alone with his addiction. Ostrander writes the refusal seriously — it is not a phase the comic is waiting out.

The crew

He works with the Zeltron mechanic Deliah Blue and the human Jariah Syn, and the three-hander is what keeps the book from collapsing into gloom. Blue and Syn are the reason the reader tolerates Cade at his worst.

Two Sith orders and an emperor

The plot runs him between Krayt's One Sith, the deposed Emperor Roan Fel's Empire-in-exile, the remnant Jedi and the Galactic Alliance, and Cade's leverage is precisely that all four want a Skywalker and none of them can hold him.

The healing

His signature ability — Force healing, at a level that borders on resurrection — is also his curse, because it draws on the dark side and it works. The comic is unusually clear-eyed about a power that saves lives and corrupts the person using it, and it never resolves the tension in the reader's favour.

Continuity

Legends. Legacy ran fifty issues to August 2010, followed by Legacy — War, and the whole far-future branch was stranded when the continuity closed in 2014. This site files it under the editorial Legacy era, which covers the far-future Legends material rather than a Lucasfilm-defined period.

On the record

Appearances

Where this figure actually appears, with the medium and the year. Nothing inferred.

Appearances of Cade Skywalker
WorkYearMediumNote
Star Wars: Legacy #12006ComicDark Horse. John Ostrander and Jan Duursema.
Star Wars: Legacy #12006ComicLegends. First appearance; Dark Horse Comics, 21 June 2006.