While Ewoks seem like they might not be suited for piloting starships, the Star Wars Legends canon did include one. Aaron Allston’s run on the X-Wing series focused on the Wraith Squadron, a unit dedicated to intelligence operations in addition to fighting as X-Wing pilots. The Wraith Squadron had a running joke about an imaginary Ewok pilot, dubbed Lieutenant Kettch by the squadron. Lieutenant Kettch became a part of their undercover pirate crew’s identity. Ultimately, Lieutenant Kettch started as comedic relief in the series, but Allston used the plot arc to also illustrate the cruelty of the Empire when they experimented on Ewoks to try to make their own Ewok pilots.
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During the interview process for potential Wraith Squadron candidates, Wes Janson told Wedge Antilles that their next prospective pilot was an Ewok named Lieutenant Kettch. When Wedges expressed his disbelief, Wes insisted that Kettch had acquired prosthetics to help him reach the controls. Wes finally informed Wedge that it was a joke, but Kettch’s legacy had only just begun. At first, the Lieutenant Kettch effect just included the catchphrase “Yub, yub, Commander!” Once the Wraith Squadron adopted the undercover identity of the Hawk-bats, Lieutenant Kettch’s legend grew. First, Wes bought a life-size stuffed Ewok, dressed it in a New Republic pilot’s uniform and left it around the base for other pilots to find. When undercover as the Hawk-bats, all of the pilots’ communication systems were altered to disguise their voices, and Wedge’s voice is modulated to sound like an Ewok. Wedge let all of the instances slide because they were good for the team’s morale.
The Hawk-bats’ overall mission was to gain Warlord Zsinj’s trust and gather intelligence. They were eventually successful enough to gain an audience with the warlord and some of his associates, including General Melvar. Lieutenant Garik “the Face” Loran, a former actor, led this meeting in the guise of Hawk-bat leader General Kargin. While he is prepared for most of Zsinj’s questions, Face is caught off guard when Zsinj assumes that the squadron has an Ewok pilot due to the modulation to Wedge’s communication system. Thinking quickly, Face spins the tale of Kettch, fleshing the story out a bit more inspired by his Gamorrean squadmate Voort “Piggy” saBinring’s actual experiences. Face notes that “Zsinj and Melvar exchanged a glance, and Face suddenly felt his heart race. There was something in their expressions, as brief as that glance was, that told Face that this subject was of vital interest to them.” This scene indicates Lieutenant Kettch might have actually been the reason for the Hawk-bats’ success in securing the meeting.
Because of Face’s improvised explanation, in later Hawk-Bat missions, Wedge Antilles decided to fly wearing all black with the stuffed Lieutenant Kettch strapped to his body to make it appear to outsiders an Ewok was indeed flying his ship. This disguise increased Kettch’s notoriety further. After the Hawk-bat mission concluded, the Wraith Squadron side of the Lieutenant Kettch storyline culminated in Wedge convincing Wes that they had actually persuaded an Ewok named Chulku to learn to fly, a prank that ended with Wes naked in front of the entire squadron. Wes took the prank in good humor. However, the Wraith Squadron still was unaware of the Empire’s machinations that the story of Lieutenant Kettch had inspired.
The interest that Garik noted in Zsinj and Melvar was not merely idle curiosity. Another Wraith Squadron pilot, Castin Donn, discovered that they were experimenting on various humanoids, but he died before informing the rest of the squadron. After Zsinj’s agents started brainwashing loyal members of the New Republic to become assassins using biomedical information from these experiments, the Wraith Squadron began searching for his laboratories. Once Gara Petrothel, an Imperial spy turned New Republic ally, infiltrated the Iron Fist, she learned another shocking truth. Inspired by Kettch’s story, Zsinj extended his experiments to Ewoks to replicate Lieutenant Kettch. Kolot was the only successful result, with the ability to speak Basic and prosthetics to help him reach the controls of ships. Gara and Kolot worked together to free Zsinj’s test subjects. Alongside Kolot, Gara, now going by the alias Kirney Slane, decided to begin a shipping business out of Corellia.
Thus, Lieutenant Kettch began as comic relief and morale boost for the Wraith Squadron. Still, the running gag became more serious when it was incorporated into the Wraith’s undercover operation. Overall, the Lieutenant Kettch plot arc shows how Allston balanced humor with more serious storylines throughout the Wraith Squadron novels, ultimately using the idea of an Ewok pilot to comment on the Empire’s racism and exploitation of nonhuman species. While the legend of Lieutenant Kettch and the actual Ewok pilot Kolot currently are firmly in the Legends canon, perhaps the creators of the upcoming Rogue Squadron movie and Rangers of the New Republic series will include a homage to Lieutenant Kettch in the form of a new Ewok pilot for the new canon.
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