Star Wars has always made room for people to find some level of representation — it’s not exactly compelling sci-fi if everyone’s the exact same.
More specifically, Star Wars has featured disabled characters for more than 40 years, through the likes of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, Captain Typho, and Chirrut Îmwe. As one of the biggest pop culture juggernauts in Hollywood, Star Wars has the power to shape cultural narratives around disability.
But even with the longtime existence of disabled characters in Star Wars, the franchise has seldom ever delved into the complex relationship between war and disability. Though the series is heavy on battle sequences, it has shied away from exploring the human costs of conflict. It is through this framework that one comic book character, Beilert Valance, offers a path for Star Wars to organically incorporate disabled perspectives into its expanding universe of stories.
The cyborg bounty hunter, Beilert Valance, is currently a part of Marvel’s Star Wars: Bounty Hunters comic by Ethan Sacks and Paolo Villanelli. He is known for his distinct Terminator-like appearance, with half of his facial skin blown off to reveal the metal skeleton underneath. (As it turns out, he predates the first Terminator film by several years.) Originally serving in the Imperial army, Valance was turned into a cyborg by Darth Vader after his body was blown to pieces. And while his synthetic skin can help him pass as human, Valance feels deeply insecure about the bodily transformation he never consented to in the first place.
Already, because of his striking appearance, Valance differs dramatically from other disabled characters in Star Wars. This is further augmented in the Bounty Hunters series, which explores the often dysfunctional relationships between different hunters, detailing the ableism that Valance experiences. In Bounty Hunters, he is often called “droid” in a derogatory manner by Boba Fett and another bounty hunter named Bossk. In the third issue of the series, Bossk taunts Valance by saying that the woman he loves will never love him back. To Bossk, with the “new synthetic skin” Valance has, he’s “more droid than man” under it.
Beilert Valance in Star Wars: Bounty Hunters. Courtesy of Marvel.
As such, Valance’s cyborg body isn’t just a nifty part of his character design: it shapes the way he moves through the world of Star Wars. As opposed to Anakin or Luke (who only have cybernetic augmentations), Valance’s cyborg body isn’t treated as a symbolic moment in his character arc: it’s a dynamic part of his everyday life. Given his history as a former slave drafted into the Imperial Army, his body is a reminder of the Empire’s sins, and the physical and emotional scars left behind from war. This is a crucial point of difference from other disabled characters in Star Wars, because Valance represents the physical consequences of war. He runs parallel to the experiences of disabled veterans in our world.
By emphasizing the ableism that Valance faces, Bounty Hunters pushes back on what we expect from a Star Wars story. Valance challenges the core themes of the “Skywalker Saga,” with its focus on bodily potential. The prequel, original, and sequel trilogies all focus on one Jedi honing their skills within the Force. Mastery of the Force requires physical and mental discipline achieved through training. Thus, when Anakin, Luke, or Rey use the Force, it’s an expression of the physical potential originating from their bodies.
The franchise doubled down on this when creator George Lucas introduced the concept of midi-chlorians in the prequels. Qui-Gon explained them as “a microscopic life form that resides within all living cells,” and powerful Force users such as Anakin have a high number of midi-chlorians in their blood. As such, the “Skywalker Saga” was focused around the biological potential of a select group of bodies. The existence of midi-chlorians and the emphasis on bloodlines assigned a sense of meaning to the bodies of each hero. Midi-chlorians determine which characters are “special” before anything notable in life actually happens to them.
In contrast, Valance offers a different take on bodily potential in Star Wars, this time from a distinctly disabled point of view. While Anakin and Luke are, of course, disabled characters, their limb differences do not factor into their everyday experiences to the extent that Valance’s do. This should certainly not be seen as a “failing” on behalf of the franchise. Diverse representations of disabled experiences is absolutely vital. That said, Valance provides a glimpse at what Star Wars could be if it made disability an explicit topic across all of its mediums. He proves that Star Wars already has the seeds for fruitful conversations about disability.
Beilert Valance in Star Wars: Bounty Hunters. Courtesy of Marvel.
While Valance has had to train his new body in a way not dissimilar to a Jedi a la Rey, Ethan Sacks’ writing makes it clear that the narrative world of Star Wars does not see him with the same type of heroic aura. In Bounty Hunters #30 by Ethan Sacks, Paolo Villanelli, and Arif Prianto, Valance picks up the body of a Stormtrooper over his head while fighting. The Stormtrooper exclaims, “He’s a monster!” because of Valance’s enhanced strength. In response, Valance cathartically screams, “I am––WHAT THE EMPIRE MADE ME!”
Valance thus represents the flip side of bodily potential within Star Wars. While his cyborg body was created as a weapon by the Empire, he chooses to fight for the betterment of ordinary people––as a bounty hunter, not in the established, heroic form of a Jedi. He possesses bodily autonomy, even after the Empire denied him it. This contrasts mainstream depictions of disabled people as being without personal agency, and is a more pointed critique of the Empire than Force-wielding Jedi will ever be.
As such, Bounty Hunters explores the realm of possibility, narrative or otherwise, that exists within Valance’s cyborg form. This is a revolutionary approach to disabled bodies in media, where all too often a character’s disability signals the end of their life, or their arc. While shows like Star Trek: Discovery have made great headway in representing characters adapting to their new normal, Star Wars‘ films and television shows have yet to catch up to this conversation. Hopefully, upcoming Star Wars projects can follow Valance’s lead, and imagine a more radical future.
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