Jolli was a Human female pirate who served on the crew of the notorious Crimson Jack's gang during the era of the Galactic Civil War. Short-tempered and quick-triggered, Jolli was abandoned by her fugitive father as a young girl, instilling in her a deep hatred of men. Driven to prove herself as better than any man, Jolli became adept with a blaster and a skilled starfighter pilot before joining Crimson Jack's crew. Jolli soon became one of Jack's most trusted crew members, but her deep-seated insecurities from her childhood led to a breakdown in 0 ABY.
That year, Jack captured Han Solo, a smuggler and Rebel hero to whom Jolli developed an attraction. As Solo guided Jack to a supposed Rebel treasury on Drexel, Jolli was unable to reconcile her hatred of men with her attraction to Solo, leading her to display violent and erratic behavior. When Solo escaped, Jolli was picked to lead Jack's starfighter complement in a battle against Solo's Millennium Falcon, but saw her Y-wing irreparably damaged in the sortie. Infuriated by Jack's refusal to tow her back to his cruiser, Jolli rammed the remains of her Y-wing into the cruiser's munitions deck, killing herself but utterly destroying Jack's pirate operation.
A Human, Jolli grew up on the run, the daughter of a fugitive from the Galactic Empire. For a time, Jolli and her parents lived in an outlaw hideout on a frontier world, but when she was still a young girl the Empire tracked her father down and attacked the stronghold. In the ensuing firefight, Jolli's father decided to leave Jolli and her mother behind, deciding that the two of them would be dead weight as he continued his flight from justice. Left behind in the burning wreckage of their home, Jolli was orphaned shortly after when an Imperial aerial torpedo killed her mother. Alone on the fringes of the galaxy, Jolli grew into a short-tempered, man-hating hired gun with considerable skill with a blaster. Eventually, Jolli took up piracy, joining the notorious gang led by a man known as Crimson Jack. Jolli subsequently took up residence on Crimson Jack's battlecruiser, a former Imperial Star Destroyer acquired by Jack after it was damaged in a battle with Rebels.
Although she was still relatively new to the piracy game by 0 ABY, Jolli quickly became one of Crimson Jack's most trusted guns, honing her craft as Jack's gang plundered unfortunate ships across the galaxy. That year, Jack's tractor beam ensnared a particularly notable ship: the Millennium Falcon, personal freighter of Han Solo, a notorious smuggler, Rebel hero and an acquaintance of Jack's. Jolli accompanied Jack as part of the boarding party, pulling a blaster on Solo and his Wookiee companion Chewbacca when they considered making a stand. Although Solo nearly needled Jolli into starting a firefight, Jack calmed her down and together they raided the ship, leaving the Falcon with an amount of treasure that shocked Jolli— but not before leaving a homing beacon on the vessel.
Jack's gang soon found another big catch: Princess Leia Organa, former Senator of Alderaan and Rebel leader, whom they captured traveling alone across the starlanes. Although they hoped to receive a large ransom from the Rebels for Organa's safety, the Princess proved to be feistier than expected. Instead, Jolli and the gang tracked down the Falcon, coming upon it as it departed the planet Aduba-3 and once again taking hold of the vessel. However, this time they didn't plan to rob Solo and Chewbacca. Instead, they planned to kill the smugglers, slowly and painfully, as an example to Organa of what could happen to her if she didn't cooperate. Setting their blasters to slow burn, Jolli and several gunmen fired at their captives, only to be overpowered by the hulking Wookiee Chewbacca, who simply moved through the blasts and incapacitated several of Jolli's men.
In a standoff, Solo and Crimson Jack decided to negotiate, with Solo promising that he could help them gain an even greater treasure than the gang had previously taken from him. Jolli, Jack, Solo, Organa and Chewbacca returned to Jack's private quarters for a feast, where the conversation became more amiable, although Jolli kept her blaster trained on Solo throughout. Solo revealed that he and Organa were acquainted: Solo had been previously rewarded by the Rebel Alliance for saving the Princess from the Empire's clutches and the two had developed a romance, which Organa seemingly corroborated. After Solo offered to lead Jack to the supposed Rebel treasury in the Drexel system, Jolli led Organa back to her cell in the ship's brig. Although Jolli expressed some admiration for how Organa handled the situation, her respect turned into an explosion of anger when Organa complimented Solo's kissing ability, which triggered Jolli's hatred of men.
Organa's comment on kissing proved to have a lasting effect on Jolli, awakening an interest in Solo that both obsessed her and repulsed her, and sent her into rages. After the battleship approached the Drexel system, Jolli made a comment about kissing while in the ship's hangar, prompting several crewmen to make advances on her—Jolli responded by letting loose with her blaster, nearly killing them all in the process. Crimson Jack arrived in time to slap the weapon out of her hand, but agitated by Solo's presence, Jolli dealt the Corellian smuggler a firm slap. Despite the violent outburst, Jolli soon resumed her place by Jack's side when the ship entered range of Drexel. However, upon arrival, the ship's scanners indicated that Drexel was a waterworld, the crew sensed something was amiss. Jack believed that the Rebels couldn't possibly have a treasury on such a world, and fearing that Solo was attempting to pull a fast one, Jolli and her captain drew their blasters.
Staring down a pair of gun barrels, Solo asked for Organa to be brought up from the ship's brig, promising that she would be able to help explain everything. Jolli was dispatched to bring Organa up to the bridge, although it became tense trip after Organa irritated Jolli by suggesting that her animosity towards Solo might be because she was attracted to him. However, shortly after Jolli and Organa reached the bridge, the entire cruiser was rocked by some sort of gravity disturbance: a sonic jammer operated by ship wreckers on Drexel's surface had ensnared the craft and was trying to pull it in. Her thoughts still swirling around her attraction for Han Solo, Jolli was caught unawares by Organa, who managed to slip away with Solo and Chewbacca and reach the Millennium Falcon, fleeing to the planet below.
Matters were far from settled, however. Although the crew of the Millennium Falcon managed to disable the sonic jammer keeping them all bound to Drexel, Crimson Jack's gang remained in orbit, waiting for Solo and his friends to poke out their heads. Anticipating a fight, Jack set Jolli on overseeing repairs on his starfighter complement, most of which had been damaged during Solo's escape. Under Jolli's direction, three of the craft were restored to function, which Jack proclaimed was good enough for him. With a showdown with Solo coming, Jack let Jolli know that he intended to use her bloodthirsty streak to full effect. Placed behind the controls of a Y-wing fighter and leading the three-person Raider Squadron, Jolli was sent down to Drexel's surface, firing upon the Millennium Falcon and chasing it back up into the crosshairs of the two other fighters in space. However, although they attempted to drive the Falcon into the cruiser's tractor beam, Solo skillfully evaded the onrushing fighters and the Falcons guns killed Jolli's two squadmates.
Alone and with the Falcon bearing down on her, Jolli responded by roaring right back at Solo's freighter, attempting to clear the ship without exposing herself to the Falcons laser cannons. She very nearly succeeded, scraping her Y-wing across the ship's hull and seriously damaging both the Falcon and her own fighter. The impact sent Jolli's craft out of control, and as the Y-wing started to break apart, Jolli radioed in a request for Crimson Jack to send a magnetic pulse beam to bring her back to the ship. However, Jack refused, fearing that it would interfere with his signal system, leaving Jolli on her own. Infuriated, Jolli resolved that if she was going down, she was bringing Jack with her. As Jack met Solo to parlay out in space, Jolli turned the listing remains of her Y-wing towards Jack's battlecruiser, cannons blazing. As her cannons took out Jack's backups outside the ship, Jolli made a suicide run on the cruiser—as she slammed into the ship's munitions deck, her Y-wing's remaining live torpedos caused an explosion that utterly destroyed the cruiser. Shortly afterward, Solo shot and killed Jack, the only survivor of the blast. While searching the wreckage, Solo and Organa found Jolli's corpse in the mangled remains of her Y-wing. Before blasting away from Drexel in the Millennium Falcon, Solo gave Jolli the kiss that she had once obsessed over.
Adept with a blaster and a talented starfighter pilot, Jolli was exceptionally quick-triggered and swift to anger, ready to start shooting at even the slightest provocation. Oftentimes, the only person who would be able to calm her down was her boss, Crimson Jack. Jack took it as a sign of Jolli's relative inexperience in the piracy game: he preferred that she keep her gun in the holster, as it was difficult to get more credits out of dead men. Jolli's anger sometimes surprised and disturbed her with how suddenly it erupted, although one consistent trigger was a deep-seated hatred of men that she carried with her throughout most of her life. Jolli was driven by the idea of being tougher and harder than any man around her, fueling her hostility towards the male sex. This stemmed from her father's abandonment of her as a child, as her father's comment that she and her mother weren't "good enough" drove her to constantly feel the need to prove to everyone around her that she was, in fact, good enough. That insecurity had an effect on the people working under her: when serving as a flight commander, she constantly felt the need to assert that she was in charge, irritating her fellow pilots.
However, after meeting Han Solo, Jolli developed an attraction to the smuggler, which interacted with her loathing of men to create a dangerous combination. Jolli began obsessed with the idea of kissing Solo after a comment from Leia Organa—she soon began talking about it unbidden with crewmates on the ship, and exploding with rage when they responded with advances. Jolli's attraction to Solo was obvious to the people around her, but the pirate only responded with angry denial when it was pointed out. Although Jolli seethed with barely restrained hostility towards most people she interacted with, she had some respect for Organa, admiring her ability to handle Solo. However, she was jealous of Organa's presence on board, lashing out by flirting with Jack's crewmen and then spurning them. The pirate was known for wearing skimpy clothes, but her sartorial choices were expressly not to please men: rather, they had a combat application, giving her maximum freedom of motion. Jolli had purple hair and green eyes.
Jolli first appeared in Star Wars (1977) 7, written by Roy Thomas and released in 1977. Jolli later returned to become a major supporting character in a story arc beginning with Star Wars (1977) 11, before being killed in Star Wars (1977) 15. During her appearances in the Marvel Star Wars series, Jolli was illustrated by Howard Chaykin and Carmine Infantino.
- The Official Star Wars Fact File134
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia