The Death of Santa

Well, it had to happen eventually.

I’m glad it happened the way it did. If he had to go, I’m glad he fell to two of my favourite people – Pablo Hidalgo and Dave Filoni.

I suppose, for posterity, I should explain a little about the life and death and rebirth of Santa.

Back in the late 1990’s, I started working with Marcus Hearn and magazine creators Warrender Grant as one of the writers on the first release of the Official Star Wars Fact File. (The magazine partwork launched in 2002, but a few of us had been brought in early to write for the pitch versions.) One thread that I particularly enjoyed, and that I wrote the majority of, was Battles & Events. There, as the name suggests, we covered the history of the Star Wars Saga. Along the way, I was able to bring in a whole lot of different sources to help tell as complete a story as possible.

What we did with the Fact File was something that, at the time, hadn’t really been attempted before. There was no Wookieepedia, and the online resources that did exist, back in the days of dial-up access, were a little sparse at times. We had a lot of help from Lucasfilm, including a d

evilishly handsome editor, but my own library was often my only recourse. Fortunately, it included the vast majority of West End Games’ output (including material by a young Mr Hidalgo).

The Battle of Endor featured heavily in the B&E strand. I wanted to put names to faces, where possible. This was complicated by the fact that the guys outside the bunker weren’t, with the exception of the lead cast, the same guys inside the bunker. The Galaxy Guide that covered Endor filled in certain gaps, providing names and events that, for example, detailed what the commando team did while Luke, Leia, Han and the others were messing around with teddy bears. Corporal Deleva’s excellent shot through the open window of an AT-ST, for example, made it in.

There was one glaring omission, however, that made itself felt while writing for Issue 44. One of the most recognisable characters in the commando team had no name. I’m talking about this guy:

It fell to me to name him so, with permission from the approvals team at LFL, he was christened Nik Sant. ‘Gramps’ to his team mates.

Yeah, alright. It was a little on the nose. White fluffy beard, ho-ho-ho, Saint Nick. Even Wookieepedia got the joke pretty quickly, as their listing of Nik Sant proves. Still, it was a bit of fun that filled a little gap, and that was that for the better part of fifteen years.

Then, the rumours of the death of Nik Sant began.

The addition of Clone Captain Rex to the cast of the animated series Rebels in its second season caused more than a few people to note that Rex really did resemble a certain Rebel Alliance Pathfinder commando. It’s entirely understandable, really:

The rumours were fed officially, but at Star Wars Celebration 2017, in Orlando Florida, the following image was ‘accidentally’ thrown up on the big screen during discussions about the fourth season of Rebels, and then made its way to Pablo’s Twitter feed. And here it is:

It is still all a bit of a tease. Nothing is fully confirmed, one way or another. Will Rex make it out alive from what looks like a very dangerous final season of the show? Nik Sant’s life hangs by a thread, and it is a very slender thread indeed.

Do I mind?

Hell no!

I love Rex. Having watched his character develop beautifully through the Clone Wars animated series and on through Rebels, I would love it to be him at the Battle of Endor. That would be just perfect.

Also, if Nik Sant is going to go, if Santa has to be killed off, well, to have that axe in the hands of Mr Hidalgo and Mr Filoni? That would be a fitting end.

All together now… Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.