Star Wars: Outlaws may focus on a fresh character — smuggler, thief, and all-around baddie Kay Vess — but it’s also a story set right in the middle of the original Star Wars trilogy. The game takes place between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. That gives plenty of room for familiar heroes and villains to show up throughout the game, and they definitely do.
How exactly does Outlaws fit into the larger picture of the Original Trilogy? How does the game create connections between Kay and iconic Star Wars heroes and villains? Here’s what you need to know.
Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Outlaws!
Lady Qi’ra and the Scarlet Dawn
In Outlaws, Kay slowly makes a name for herself and climbs the ranks of the game’s various crime syndicates. It’s inevitable that she’ll eventually run into a few familiar faces. The Star Wars franchise certainly has its share of memorable crime lords.
Kay eventually meets Crimson Dawn leader Lady Qi’ra during her mission to the icy planet Kijimi. Qi’ra was played by Emilia Clarke in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story (though she was voiced by Tamaryn Payne here), where we learned she was Han’s former flame before being recruited into Dryden Vos’ organization. The film ends with Vos’ death, and Qi’ra goes to meet with the true head of the Crimson Dawn, Darth Maul.
If you’ve only been following the Star Wars movies, you may not know how Qi’ra’s story has panned out since then. She eventually takes control of the Crimson Dawn after Maul is killed shortly before the events of A New Hope (as seen in the animated series Star Wars Rebels). Qi’ra has played a key role in Marvel’s Star Wars comics; she is at the center Bounty Hunter Wars Crossover 2021where he steals a carbonite-frozen Han from Boba Fett and auctions him off to the highest bidder. In Outlaws, ND-5 even mentions this ill-fated auction to Kay.
As War of the Bounty Hunters and subsequent storylines show, Qi’ra’s ultimate goal in Crimson Dawn is to exploit it to destabilize the Empire. As Maul’s committed apprentice, Qi’ra understands better than anyone how Emperor Palpatine has been pulling the strings of the galaxy for decades. Qi’ra wants to free the galaxy from Sith tyranny, which she alludes to when she talks to Kay about true freedom. So while Qi’ra comes across as an antagonistic character in this game, manipulating Kay and using her to weaken the upstart Clan Ashigava, her goals are ultimately quite noble.
What happens to Qi’ra after the events of Star Wars: Outlaws? As depicted in comics such as Star Wars: Crimson Reign and Star Wars: Hidden Empire, Qi’ra eventually takes action against Palpatine. Although she fails to destroy the Sith, Qi’ra’s actions facilitate the Rebel Alliance gain much-needed support and lay the groundwork for Palpatine’s ultimate defeat at the Battle of Endor. With the Crimson Dawn in ruins, Qi’ra goes into hiding. Her story after Return of the Jedi has yet to be told.
The Wrath of Darth Vader
Is it a proper Star Wars game without an appearance by the Dark Lord of the Sith? Darth Vader himself plays a diminutive but pivotal role in Outlaws, as players learn the truth about Sliro and Zerek Besh. It turns out that the galaxy’s newest and hottest crime syndicate is actually just a front for the Imperial Security Bureau. Sliro himself is a soldier of the Empire, albeit one who has used his position to amass great wealth and power.
The ISB played a major role in many Star Wars projects during the Disney era, most notably Star Wars: Jedi Survivor and the Andor series. This organization represented another form of Imperial rule during the Galactic Civil War. Star Destroyers and Death Stars are great, but when it comes to rooting out terrorists and Rebel sympathizers, sometimes a more subtle hand is needed.
As Outlaws reveals, this is exactly what Palpatine has tasked Sliro with. Zerek Besh’s goal is to build a immense intelligence network that can penetrate the criminal underworld and expose the identities of many hidden Rebel agents. But while Sliro has managed to quickly build a powerful syndicate, he hasn’t truly achieved the results Palpatine desires. This is where Vader comes in. He’s a fearsome enforcer, there to remind Sliro that failure for someone in his position means death.
Vader ultimately seals Sliro’s fate by agreeing to give control of Zerek Besh to Jaylen Vrax (revealed to be Sliro’s estranged half-brother). However, thanks to Kay, Jaylen is stopped before he can pass on valuable information to the Empire, and Zerek Besh is effectively destroyed along with Jaylen himself.
In her own way, Kay is a factor in the fall of the Empire in the run-up to Return of the Jedi. The destruction of Zerek Besh deprives the ISB of a valuable resource and weakens what was one of Palpatine’s most potent weapons against the Rebellion. The failure of Zerek Besh likely caused Palpatine to turn even more to battle stations and weapons of mass destruction as a means of maintaining order. And we all know how that ends for him in the end…
Gambling with Lando Calrissian
While most of the main characters from the original Star Wars trilogy remain MIA in the Outlaws, busy rebuilding the struggling Rebel Alliance, Kay meets one key character during her travels. It’s only fitting that she meets up with fellow rogue and gambler Lando Calrissian (voiced by Lindsay Owen Pierre).
Lando appears to be back in the game at his aged level as he approaches Kay on a mission to recover a valuable artifact he lost in a high-stakes game of Sabacc, a nod to when Lando infamously lost the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
But after recovering the artifact and helping a group of Rebels repel an Imperial attack, Kay learns the truth behind her mission. Lando had been using the artifact as a covert means of gaining intelligence from a Rebel spy planted in the criminal underworld. His days of idly gambling away his most valuable possessions are now a thing of the past.
This questline gives more insight into Lando’s role in the Rebellion before he became “General Calrissian” in Return of the Jedi. At this point in the timeline, Lando and Chewbacca have tried and failed to free Han from Jabba the Hutt’s palace, and Lando has not yet assumed the secret identity of Jabba’s palace guard. He is simply waiting, fighting alongside the Rebels, and proving he has the heart of a hero.
Lando also shows us what Kay could become if, like him, she were to fully commit to a cause bigger than herself. As mentioned earlier, Kay ends up dealing a major blow to the Empire without even intending to. What could she have accomplished if she had chosen to do so? For now, though, Kay is busy protecting her crew and picking up a few credits wherever she can. Maybe she’ll think of something bigger in a sequel.
We know this won’t be the only time Kay and Lando meet. The first DLC story campaign for Outlaws, “Wild Card,” will reunite the two as Kay enters the Sabacc tournament while working for the Empire.
Meeting the future resistance
Outlaws may be set in the original trilogy, but there is one familiar character from the sequel trilogy who makes an appearance throughout the game. While on a mission to the planet Akiva, Kay meets a teenage mechanic named Temmin Wexley (voiced by Sam Scherzer). Fans may know him better as Resistance pilot Snap Wexley (played by Greg Grunberg in the films).
The game is based on Temmin’s origin story as told in the Star Wars Aftermath novels. At this point in his life, Temmin is alone, his father having been captured by the Empire and his mother serving in the Rebellion. He is a humble mechanic who builds droids to keep him company. Eventually, however, Temmin will follow in his mother’s footsteps and join the Rebel Alliance, training under no less an authority on starship piloting than Wedge Antilles. The rest is history.
Hondo Ohnaka Easter Egg
Outlaws contains an Easter egg that seems to directly set up future DLC missions. During one of Kay’s encounters with Sheriff Quint of Tatooine, Quint makes a reference to the infamous pirate Hondo Ohnaka. Hondo is basically ubiquitous in animated series like The Clone Wars and Rebels, and it looks like he’ll be making his video game debut soon.
This Easter egg appears to be setting up the game’s second DLC campaign, dubbed “A Pirate’s Fortune.” There, Kay will team up with Hondo to seek out a legendary treasure. But can she really trust this notoriously selfish criminal? Probably not.
Which iconic Star Wars character should Kay Vess meet? Vote in our poll above and let us know what you think in the comments below.
For more on Star Wars Outlaws, check out IGN’s review of the game and learn what fixes have been made in the latest patch.
Jesse is IGN’s gentle staff writer. Let him borrow a machete for your intellectual thicket, I follow @jschedeen on Twitter.
