Solo, Anakin

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Coruscant (born on Nespis VIII)

• Species:
  Human

• Gender:
  Male

• Size:
  1.73 meters

• Weapon:
  Lightsaber

• Affiliation:
  Jedi

• 

From the Expanded Universe

Anakin Solo inherited much from his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker. Aside from the name, he was also prodigiously talented in the Force, as a pilot, and as a mechanic.

The youngest son of Han and Leia Organa Solo, Anakin was born during a time of crisis. The resurrected Emperor began a campaign of terror, threatening worlds throughout the New Republic with a diabolical new weapon, the Galaxy Gun. While still in the womb, Anakin was threatened by the Emperor, who sought to preserve his dark spirit in a young body and targeted the unborn child. This clone of Palpatine was killed before he could continue his evil plot.

During infancy, Anakin Solo was sequestered from the rest of his family, growing up in an armored and armed nursery on the hidden planetoid of Anoth. After a botched kidnapping attempt by Imperial forces, Han and Leia decided to keep the family together on Coruscant.

Anakin was a quiet child. While his older siblings, the twins Jacen and Jaina, had each other to play and bicker with, Anakin would often sit by himself, focused in his little world. He rarely spoke, but he was undeniably bright. Even as a toddler, he had the mechanical aptitude to disassemble and modify his nanny droids!

When Anakin was seven years old, he was swept into the events of the Corellian crisis, an ultimately defeated insurrection attempt in the Corellian system. Conspirators tried to take over immense planetary repulsors scattered throughout the system and harness their power as weapons. Through the Force, Anakin was not only able to discover the repulsor hidden on Drall, but was able to instinctively activate it just by touching it.

Anakin began instruction at his Uncle Luke's Jedi academy at the age of 11. There, he made friends with a precocious nine-year old named Tahiri. The two shared a number of adventures, freeing the spirits of trapped Massassi children from an ancient Sith temple, awakening the ancient Jedi Master Ikrit, and recovering the long lost lightsaber of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Aside from Jedi training, Anakin honed his piloting skills through formal training on Coruscant. He became a capable pilot, following in his father's footsteps. His piloting skills were needed during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion that shook the galaxy 21 years after the Battle of Endor.

Fifteen-year old Anakin was forced to fly the Millennium Falcon in its escape from the doomed world of Sernpidal. The freighter was taking on as many refugees as possible before Sernpidal's moon could crash into its surface. Anakin kept the Falcon grounded as long as he could, soaring away from the cataclysm at the last possible instant. This decision resulted in the death of Chewbacca, who was unable to board the Falcon in time.

The death of the beloved Wookiee forever changed the dynamics of the Solo family. Anakin blamed himself, as did Han Solo, who was too consumed by grief and anger to be worried about hurting his son. It was many dark months before the two reconciled.

Further straining familial relations were the fundamentally opposed Force philosophies adopted by Anakin and Jacen. Though they were both apprenticed to their Uncle Luke, the two had very different outlooks on what it meant to be a Jedi. Anakin believed the Force to be a tool at a Jedi's disposal, to be used whenever possible in attempt to quash evil. Jacen was far more serene, and took a measured, pacifistic stance, believing any aggressive use of the Force to be a step towards the dark side.

This debate came to a head just before the Battle of Fondor. The Corellians wanted Anakin Solo to again activate the ancient repulsors of their system and use Centerpoint Station as a weapon to destroy the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Jacen felt that using the Force to wield a weapon so huge was tantamount to mass murder. Anakin gave in to his brother's arguments, but the Corellians fired anyway, without the help of the Jedi. The resulting misfire destroyed both enemy and allied fleets. Anakin blamed both Jacen and himself for the casualties.

When the Yuuzhan Vong came to Yavin 4, threatening the Jedi students studying there, Anakin impetuously rushed off to save them. He freed Tahiri from imprisonment, and found an unlikely ally in Vua Rapuung, a Yuuzhan Vong outcast. In his short time with Rapuung, Anakin gained a better understanding of the strange alien menace.

Despite the spreading chaos and destruction of the ongoing war, there were moments of renewal and affirmation of life. In his rescue of Tahiri, the two young friends discovered affectionate feelings for one another within their hearts. While driving away the Yuuzhan Vong from the world of Yag'Dhul, Tahiri and Anakin exchanged their first kiss.

Anakin's bold stance and daring nature made him into a popular figure among the Jedi and New Republic. Many privately whispered that he would someday take Luke Skywalker's place as the most powerful Jedi. The bloody events of the ongoing war would indisputably provide an answer to that speculation.

On a daring mission in to the heart of Yuuzhan Vong territory, Anakin Solo led a strike force of Jedi to find and destroy the source of the deadly Jedi-hunting voxyn. He died valiantly in combat, and the Force transmitted the resonance of his death across the galaxy to his family.

Behind the Scenes

In the early 1990s, when the Expanded Universe of Star Wars fiction was exploding with new tales, many projects were being developed concurrently. As such, authors would have to be flexible to incorporate events developed by others, since the novels and comics in the works took place all over the Star Wars timeline.

When author Kevin J. Anderson began work on the Jedi Academy Trilogy, he built upon the continuity developed by Timothy Zahn. At first, Anderson didn't know he'd have to add in the major events of Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy's Dark Empire comic series -- events that included a resurrected Emperor Palpatine, the devastation of Coruscant, and the conception of a third Solo child!

By the time the Jedi Academy Trilogy starts, Anakin has already been born. He did not become an expressive character until Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star, but even there he is mostly a cooing infant. With Roger McBride Allen's Corellian Trilogy of novels, Anakin began to develop personality that set him apart from his older, twin siblings.

Anakin starred in his own series of young reader books published by Boulevard Books. The Junior Jedi Knights series, with books by Nancy Richardson and Rebecca Moesta, chronicled Anakin's studies at the Jedi Academy and his meeting with Tahiri. They were also important since they visually established the character with fully illustrated cover art.