Prince Xizor

Perhaps the slimiest crime lord to ever grace the under levels of coruscant, Prince Xizor leads the Black Sun in the less-than-scrupulous activities around the galaxy. Slavery. He’s your guy. Drugs? Xizor manages the market. Black market weapons? You guessed it. On top of all that, the Falleen uses his pheromones to cause females to lust after him against their wills (yep huge yikes)  and do his bidding. . . That part didn’t age so well but is believable in its own way. Needless to say, it’s not hard to dislike the green-skinned, purple-clad crime lord with a top knot. He is, after all, a predator in every way.

In addition to his appearance, prestige, and general unsavoriness, Xizor’s character is defined by his relationships with the other characters of the Star Wars universe. His rivalry with Darth Vader is not too dissimilar from that of Dwight Shrute and Andy Bernard competing to be Michael Scott’s right-hand-man in The Office (which of course makes the Emperor Michael Scott in this analogy). Or, to use another analogy, this kind of petty backstabbing is largely akin to Mean Girls. Beyond Vader, Xizor becomes enamored with Princess Leia in a super creepy way, obsessed with killing Luke Skywalker, and secretly hated by Dash Rendar. Talk about drama.

It’s easy to see why Xizor hasn’t caught on compared to the likes of Thrawn, for instance. On the one hand,  it is due to the fact that Thrawn had a singular author in Timothy Zahn to shepherd his character across multiple eras of Star Wars storytelling, whereas Xizor’s creator, Steve Perry, penned one and only one Star Wars book in its entirety, plus a few others in partnership with Michael Reaves (the MedStar duology, Death Star, and a short story). On the other hand, it has to do with Xizor’s manipulation of individuals through the use of his powerful pheromones being a little less savory than Thrawn’s art appreciation skills. . . Regardless, Xizor’s story did extend beyond his grand entrance in Shadows of the Empire. A handful of Legends appearances give weight to Xizor’s dominance in the criminal underworld. Shadow Games, from the aforementioned Michael Reeves and Maya Katherine Bonhoff, pays homage to Shadows of the Empire with a Xizor and Dash Rendar-centric prequel story. Xizor functions as an adequate villain throughout Legends whenever Black Sun’s criminal gang serves the story, such as Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn, or Reeves & Bonhoff’s Coruscant Nights series. 

Xizor even appears to have popped up as an animated Easter Egg in the Clone Wars revival  alongside other shady characters such as Dryden Vos. The mere existence of Maul and Vos alongside a Falleen in a Canon show begs the question if they will reappear in more stories to come. The future is unclear but exciting nonetheless! Xizor would certainly fit alongside Maul, Q’ira, and the Pikes if the Crimson Dawn syndicate is further explored. That being said, maybe having Donald Glover’s Lando and Xizor in the same frame would be too much charisma for the pixels to contain. 

What do you think of the Purple Prince? The one with the pheromones, not the musician. How does he stack up alongside other proprietary villains from the Expanded Universe? Be sure to check out our massively collaborative Shadows of the Empire crossover event over on Youtube.com/youtini.