Aurra Sing makes her first “Star Wars” appearance in “The Phantom Menace”; she’s simply observing the podrace through macrobinoculars from a distant plateau. Yet it’s obvious that a fair amount of time went into her character design: the pasty white skin, the topknot emerging from an otherwise bald head, and what’s that — an antenna?
But, played by model Michonne Bourriague, she only has that one scene, so why bother putting her in the movie at all? To sell action figures, of course.
But we need not be so cynical; George Lucas’ franchise is about telling stories as well as selling action figures. I like action figures; I have the 12-inch Aurra action figure and its companion book, “Aurra Sing: Dawn of the Bounty Hunters,” which was published in 2000. However, with an action figure you can only 1, look at it, and 2, tell other people that you own it. (Furthermore, those things get harder to do when 1, you no longer have your parents’ basement to display “Star Wars” toys, and 2, your friends have become adults and no longer care what toys you own.)
With books, comics and TV shows, though, you can experience the story of that action figure. The presence of Aurra in “Episode I” is a rather obvious attempt to give the prequels the first of a pantheon of characters like those from the classic trilogy that filled those wonderful mid-’90s books, “Tales from the Mos Eisely Cantina,” “Tales of the Bounty Hunters” and “Tales from Jabba’s Palace.”
Obvious or not, it worked. Dark Horse Comics showed us Aurra as a hunter who specializes in killing Jedi (how’s that for a badass reputation?), and now I’m loving her run on “The Clone Wars,” where she has come to life as a darn scary villain voiced by Jaime King. One early theory about Aurra floated by fans was that she was actually Boba Fett (Trivia: Doug Chiang’s first sketch of Aurra was labeled “Babe Fett”), but while that didn’t pan out, she has certainly proven to be as ruthless as Boba (and, as we learned in the Season 2 finale, she is in fact a mentor to Jango’s son).
When Aurra attempts to assassinate Padme in a Season 3 episode, sure, she infiltrates the senator’s quarters with the requisite stealth we’d expect from a competent bounty hunter. But once she has Padme in her sights, her guns are blazin’. Also in Season 3, she teams with Cad Bane — as his equal. And when the hapless Castas insults her in a Season 2 episode, she shoots him dead. Aurra is one of those bad guys that heroes don’t defeat, they merely escape from.
No, Aurra Sing isn’t Boba Fett; she’s worse. And as a villain, arguably better.
Main image: Lucasfilm