This week’s Star Wars Character Spotlight will shine its light on Weazel, the character played by Warwick Davis in his second Star Wars role, after originally playing Wicket the Ewok as a child in Return of the Jedi. His return to Star Wars as Weazel was initially just a cameo, but in recent years we’ve seen him go on a bit of a journey.
Gambling on Boonta Eve
Weazel first appeared in a brief shot in The Phantom Menace during the Boonta Eve podrace on Tatooine. He can be seen watching the race in the stands, laughing with Watto and their friends. That cameo was presumably a way for George Lucas to give a nod to actor Warwick Davis, who was delighted to play Wicket as a child, having become a huge Star Wars fan after seeing the first two films in theatres. Nearly 20 years later, Warwick would be able to see his actual face in a Star Wars movie.
It’s only due to Warwick that we know anything about Weazel and what he was doing at the race. In an interview with Cinemablend, he revealed that he felt that Weazel had fallen in with a bad crowd and had started gambling, suggesting that despite his acquaintances, he was actually a good man.
Rebelling against the Empire
Warwick Davis provided a little more detail on what came next for Weazel over the next couple of decades. This is technically not canon, but it’s the best we’ve got. The actor felt that he decided to do something good with his life and in the face of oppression, joined up for a cause.
That cause was Enfys Nest and her Cloudriders, who were making waves in the underworld to help innocents fight back against the Empire. We next see Weazel 19 years later in Solo: A Star Wars Story, when he is revealed to be a member of the Cloudriders. They had been hijacking Crimson Dawn operations for a while, and are first seen in the film hijacking an operation to steal coaxium from the Empire.
Enfys Nest and her men wrestled for control of the coaxium from Tobias Beckett’s crew hired by Crimson Dawn, which included Han Solo and Chewbacca. They killed two members of the crew before they were forced to let go of the coaxium. It crashed into a mountain, causing a huge explosion.
Later in the film, Enfys Nest and the Cloudriders confronted Han, Qi’ra, Chewbacca and Beckett on Savareen, an outpost just outside the Kessel Run. They demanded Han hand over the coaxium that he stole, revealing that they were freedom fighters instead of pirates and that they would sell the coaxium to raise funds for causes fighting against the Empire. Weazel took off his mask to reveal his face during the confrontation, though he never speaks.
Han secretly cut a deal with them, handing them the coaxium in secret while double crossing Beckett and Crimson Dawn. The Cloudriders departed, and Weazel hasn’t been seen in live action since.
Battle of Jakku
Though he was finished in live action, Weazel has one more appearance in canon. He pops up very briefly in the Battle of Jakku comic miniseries Republic Under Siege. Here, he meets the Spice Runners of Kijimi and gets an audience with Zeva Bliss — mother of Zorii Bliss, leader of the Spice Runners decades later in The Rise of Skywalker — while her syndicate helps enforce a blockade for the rogue Imperial Admiral Adelhard.
Weazel arrived to warn the spice runners that Adelhard could not be trusted, bringing rumors that he was seeking the advice of the dark side cult Acolytes of the Beyond, led by a mysterious witch, and that he was also collaborating with multiple other syndicates. Zeva speculated that perhaps the admiral didn’t trust her as much as she thought.
When Weazel tried to scare them further by revealing that these other syndicates had a contract to kill Luke Skywalker, attempting to underline just how dangerous a situation the Spice Runners found themselves in, Bliss revealed that she had put out that contract herself. Weazel then left the meeting, presumably unharmed.
We have no idea how Weazel got all this information. Perhaps he was working for someone else, or he had just become well connected across the underworld, operating as an information broker of sorts. Very little explanation is provided in the comic.
What next?
Weazel is a minor character so it’s never clear exactly when we’ll see him again, but Warwick Davis is such a cult figure in Star Wars fandom that this likely isn’t the last we’ve seen of him. If he’s alive during the time of the Battle of Jakku, he could pop up again in future stories during the New Republic era, or in any stories during the Empire’s reign covering his time fighting alongside Enfys Nest. Hopefully we get to see him again someday.
Thanks to Wookieepedia, without whom I’d never have seen that Warwick Davis interview.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.