Gargan, Yarna D'al

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Askajia

• Species:
  Askajian

• Gender:
  Female

• Affiliation:
  Criminal

• 

From the Movies

Gargan was the corpulent, six-breasted dancer that performed in the court of Jabba the Hutt. She, alongside dancers Oola, Rystáll, Lyn Me, and Greeata, gyrated for the Hutt's amusement.

From the Expanded Universe

Yarna D'al Gargan was the daughter of an Askajian chieftain. Prior to her servitude to the Hutt, she danced for the honor of her tribe in a large competition and won. She lived a quiet existence with her mate Nautag and her four cublings.

Yarna's life took a terrible turn when she and her mate were captured in a slaver raid. The slavers had killed one of Yarna's children in the attack. The slavers presented Yarna and her family before Jabba the Hutt for sale. Nautag resisted and challenged his captors, so he was fed to the rancor before Yarna's very eyes. The other three children became the property of the Hutt, and he kept them in his town house in Mos Eisley.

Yarna not only danced for the Hutt, but also performed simple cleaning around the throne room. She was known by the cruel nickname of the Ugly One, and Jabba had her put on warty make-up appliances that hid her true beauty. With these Huttese "beauty patches," Gargan reminded Jabba of his parent. Yarna quickly became Jabba's favorite dancer, calling upon her soothing sand-wave ballet when he couldn't sleep.

Yarna was not technically a slave of Jabba's, but rather one of his many servants caught in an inescapable "contract." Yarna befriended the slave girl Oola, offering encouraging words of advice during her brief servitude. The other dancers viewed her as a mother figure of sorts, though she found it difficult to bond with them. The others in the court saw her as an object of derision and scorn. She was accosted and nearly had her essence consumed by Dannik Jerriko, the Anzati vampire, while at Jabba's.

Yarna stayed behind when Jabba and most of his entourage departed in his mighty sail barge for the Great Pit of Carkoon. In the empty palace, the dancer befriended the mercenary Sergeant Doallyn. The two were there to greet Tessek, one of the few survivors of the Carkoon disaster. It was from the shifty Quarren that they learned that the mighty Jabba was dead and that Gargan was free.

Using a cache of items she had carefully hoarded during her stay at the palace, Gargan had planned on buying transport off Tatooine. Doallyn needed her help to locate vital trace-breather cartridges needed for his race to survive. In exchange for his protection, Gargan offered to help Doallyn off-planet.

Yarna had to traverse the Dune Sea to get to Mos Eisley, to free her children before Jabba's assets were sold to the highest bidder. Doallyn came to her aid, piloting a landspeeder over much of the distance.

An attack by a krayt dragon derailed their escape plans. Yarna carried Doallyn's wounded form the remainder of the way to Mos Eisley, shedding much of her water-retaining bulk in the process. In Mos Eisley, she traded some of her valued jewels to purchase the needed breather cartridges for Doallyn, risking never seeing her children again. Doallyn, touched by Gargan's selflessness, used his own hoarded krayt dragon pearl to purchase the cublings' freedom, and a vessel with which to leave Tatooine. Yarna was finally reunited with her cublings, Nautag, Luka and Leia (the latter two named for those who won Gargan her freedom).

Doallyn and Gargan, having been through so much together, purchased a ship and traveled to Geran. They decided to become free traders, specializing in textiles and gemstones. When extra credit was needed, Gargan moonlighted as a dancer.

Three and a half years after the Battle of Endor, Yarna D'al' Gargan performed the Dance of the Seventy Violet Veils at the wedding of Han Solo and Leia Organa on Coruscant. At this event, she was spotted by a designer of exotic lingerie and was recruited as a model for his extravagant jeweled brassieres.

As an Askajian, Yarna has more than one heart. Her body is extremely efficient at storing water for survival on desert worlds such as Askaj and Tatooine.

Behind the Scenes

Yarna D'al Gargan was known simply as "Gargan" during production. In the final credits of Return of the Jedi, she is identified as "Fat Dancer." Gargan was played by Claire Davenport.