Jake Farrell

The human Jake Farrell began his career as a flight instructor for the Galactic Empire, but quit when he realized that he was training young pilots to become cold-blooded killers. He retired to hardscrabble Derango 4, but was unfulfilled by retirement and soon returned to the controls of a starfighter, this time joining the ranks of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. He was integrated into the Rebel Alliance Starfighter Corps' Yellow Squadron and committed himself to the group under the callsign Yellow Seven. He flew an old, modified R-22 Spearhead for the squadron and soon became a champion of the craft.

In 4 ABY, Farrell swapped his R-22 for an RZ-1 A-wing interceptor when he joined the Alliance's mixed-starship Gold Squadron, flying as Gold Four under Gold Leader General Lando Calrissian. That year, the Alliance fleet gathered in the Sullust system in preparation for an attack on the Imperial Death Star II superweapon under construction above the moon of Endor. Having sent ahead an advance strike team to disable the Death Star's shields, the fleet jumped through hyperspace to the Endor system, where Gold Squadron began an attack run with other starfighter squadrons. Before they reached their target, Calrissian realised that the Empire knew the attack was coming and so called off the attack run as the shield was still up. Having fallen into a trap, the Alliance forces then found themselves surrounded by a larger Imperial force which had deployed its own starfighters.

Gold Squadron and the other rebel fighters engaged the Imperial fleet in order to buy the strike team more time. When the team did finally succeed in disabling the shield, Calrissian called for all of Gold Squadron and Red Squadron to follow him into the interior of the incomplete Death Star. Farrell was among those that flew with Calrissian along the superweapon's surface before diving into the superstructure while pursued by TIE/ln space superiority starfighters and TIE/IN interceptors. Under Calrissian's orders, the fighters locked onto the strongest power source within the Death Star, which they believed would be the power generator they were targeting.

After the X-wing starfighter pilot Keir Santage was shot down by the pursuing TIEs, Calrissian ordered those with him to split up, having Farrell and Norra Wexley, who was flying a Y-wing as Gold Nine, try and lure away some of the enemy fighters while heading to the surface. Upon reaching a junction, Farrell and the other pilot split right down a narrow tunnel, successfully diverting two of the TIE fighters and one of the Interceptors to chase them while only two Interceptors remained on Calrissian and Red Leader Wedge Antilles, who piloted the sole remaining fighter accompanying Gold Leader. Calrissian and Antilles then destroyed their two remaining pursuers before reaching the Death Star's power generator and destroying it. The pair then had enough time to escape the Death Star's superstructure before the superweapon exploded, with Wexley also surviving the battle. An RZ-2 A-wing interceptor squadron in the Starfighter Corps of the Resistance, a successor of the Alliance, was named Farrell Squadron.

Jake Farrell was a sage instructor, but gave up the role upon realizing that his students would eventually become cold-blooded assassins. He found retirement unfulfilling and it could not contain his itch to be back in a starfighter.Becoming a champion of the R-22 he was renowned by the time of the Battle of Endor. Farrell had light skin and brown eyes.

At Endor, Farrell wore a gray flight helmet with a sealed and pressurized green flight suit. Over the top of the suit, he had a gray flak vest with a small, black emergency life support unit mounted on the front. His outfit also included a belt with room only for the smallest items of additional equipment, including miniature emergency flares. He wore -soled flight boots with additional energy-shielding 'gaiters' that protected his lower legs from the parts of the cockpit they were nestled in. Farrell flew an R-22 Spearhead under Yellow Squadron, a RZ-1 A-wing interceptor with a red and white paint scheme in Gold Squadron, and on another occasion flew an RZ-1 A-wing interceptor with a blue and white paint scheme.

Jake Farrell was portrayed by Michael Drew in the 1983 original trilogy film, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. The role is unnamed and uncredited in the film and was identified only as "pilot" in the script. In the current Star Wars canon, Farrell was first identified in the article "KSE A-wing starfighter," which was published by De Agostini in the "Starship Fact File" department of Star Wars: Build the Millennium Falcon 29 on around July 22, 2015. The character's name originated in the Star Wars Legends continuity, where it was first used in the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: Rebel Assault. The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem, a 2021 adaptation of the original trilogy by Jack Mitchell, erroneously describes Santage as the one to lure TIEs away with Wexley rather than Farrell, whose presence is omitted from the scene entirely.

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