The Star Wars universe is home to some of the most compelling and engaging characters ever created. If that weren't the case, people wouldn't have continued obsessing over it after the first movie hit theatres in 1977. Its incredible villains roaming the galaxy are a critical part of what makes the Star Wars franchise such an interesting world.
Many of those villains were created by circumstance and not by their own choices. A lot of these characters weren't born evil but the nature of the galaxy around them just pushed them in the wrong direction.
10 Tatooine Is Overrun With Misunderstood Tusken Raiders
One of the earliest alien species introduced in Star Wars were the Tusken Raiders, referred to pejoratively on Tatooine as Sand People. They attacked Luke Skywalker before being scared off by Obi-Wan Kenobi. They also appeared in the prequel movies as similar mindless desert thugs.
It wasn't until The Mandalorian that they started being treated like complex characters with history, culture, and even language. They became villains in the eyes of fans due to extremely limited interactions depicted in the films.
9 The Grand Inquisitor's Past May Have Been More Intricate
After the fall of the Republic and the extermination of the vast majority of the Jedi, Darth Vader and the Emperor created a group of Inquisitors. These Force-sensitive dark side emissaries were tasked with eliminating whatever Jedi were left, as well as any other nuisances like Maul.
Their leader was The Grand Inquisitor, and he was the main villain in the first season of Star Wars: Rebels. But it's also heavily implied that he used to be a Jedi Temple Guardian. How he made the transition to the dark side was likely more about the environment he found himself in than anything else.
8 Hondo Ohnaka, The Pirate King Of Star Wars
The Separatists and the Republic weren't the only groups at work during the Clone Wars. A group of Weequay pirates commanded by Hondo Ohnaka became prevalent during the war thanks to big moves, like kidnapping Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano. Not at the same time, fortunately.
Hondo wasn't necessarily a bad guy. He was just running a lot of hustles to get by in a rough galaxy. When the moment called for it, Hondo would do the right thing and help his friends. Had there not been a war on, Hondo's life might have turned out a lot differently.
7 The Sad Journey Of Asajj Ventress
Out of all the tragic figures in Star Wars, Asajj Ventress might be the most tragic. Born a Nightsister on Dathomir, she ended up being taken away by a criminal overlord to save her clan. Asajj was saved and trained by a Jedi who was then killed by pirates.
Then, she ended up being trained by Count Dooku who subsequently fired her at Palpatine's request. In the end, she died a hero fighting against the Separatists. Her life was filled with choices not made by Ventress. Virtually everything that happened to her was not Asajj's choice.
6 Savage Opress Was A Poor Man's Darth Maul
When Asajj returned to Dathomir, she and her Nightsisters formulated several plans to gain revenge on Dooku. One of them involved giving Dooku a new apprentice in the form of a mystically jacked-up Dathomirian male named Savage Opress.
While Savage was incredibly powerful, his future was at the whims of everyone around him. That included Maul once they finally connected. His life and death were completely out of his hands as he was dragged into a career as a villain by situations well out of his control.
5 Boba Fett Was The Literal Clone Of A Bad Guy
Being a bounty hunter doesn't inherently make someone a villain. In the Star Wars universe, it appears to be a perfectly valid career choice as a significant portion of the individuals living in it are bounty hunters. And the most infamous of them all is Boba Fett.
Boba wasn't necessarily a bad guy, though. He was just cloned that way. As a clone of Jango Fett who watched his pseudo-father die at the hands of Mace Windu, Boba Fett likely never stood a chance at having anything close to a normal life.
4 Kylo Ren Should Have Had A Much Different Life
As the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo, Ben Solo should have grown up to become one of the greatest heroes the galaxy ever knew. Instead, he was manipulated by the Emperor into becoming just like his grandfather, Darth Vader.
Kylo Ren was not the architect of his own fate in the least. He was completely played by someone who had been trying to force the galaxy to be what he wanted it to be for decades. In the end, Kylo was another victim of the Emperor's lust for power.
3 Doctor Aphra Has Some Rough Friends
So far, Doctor Aphra has only appeared in the current world of Star Wars comics published by Marvel. But she has also quickly established herself as a fan-favorite character thanks to her archaeological shenanigans.
Aphra is not a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. But she does tend to end up working with a lot of very bad people. In her defense, Darth Vader doesn't generally take no for an answer. Getting sucked into his world was not a choice she made, nor was it something she could avoid.
2 Darth Vader Should Never Have Been A Sith Lord
Anakin Skywalker was discovered on Tatooine as a child by Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. While he didn't know this was the case at the time, it was all downhill in his life from there. Being trained as a Jedi was the first step on his path to being Darth Vader.
His entire life was one long manipulation at the hands of Darth Sidious, the Sith Lord who would become Emperor Palpatine. Arguably, the only decision he truly made for himself the entire time was killing the Emperor on the second Death Star.
1 The Clone Army Was The Ultimate Group Of Unintentional Traitors
The Clone Wars weren't called like that because it was fought entirely by Jedi. Without the army of Clones fighting alongside the Jedi, the war would have been over in a matter of weeks. Unfortunately, the Clones were turned by the Emperor to destroy the Jedi and take over the galaxy on his behalf.
Each Clone was implanted with a biological chip that would cause them to follow the Emperor's orders. That included Order 66. It was that moment that turned the vast majority of the Clones from heroes into villains without their knowledge or consent.