Shmi Skywalker Lars

Born on an unknown planet, Shmi Skywalker, along with her parents, were taken captive by pirates and forced into servitude during her early years in 66 BBY. Her life was marked by hardship, as she was transported between various star systems under the control of different masters. The pirates were only interested in keeping her alive if she provided some sort of service. Skywalker never discussed what happened to her parents, or if she even knew their fate. Before being acquired by the Hutts, Skywalker was once sold in a market similar to the Zygerrian slave market, which her son Anakin Skywalker would later visit during the Clone Wars.

Skywalker realized that while the Galactic Republic had outlawed slavery, its laws were unenforceable in the Outer Rim Territories, where survival depended on self-reliance. Ultimately, Skywalker became enslaved on the Outer Rim world of Tatooine during the concluding decades of the Republic Era. She developed a knack for working with machinery.

At some point, perhaps through the influence of the Force, the energy that connects all living things in the universe, Skywalker mysteriously became pregnant. Without a male figure involved, it was believed that the midi-chlorians were responsible for the conception. In 41 BBY, she gave birth to a son, Anakin Skywalker. His blood contained over twenty thousand midi-chlorians, surpassing even Jedi Grand Master [Yoda](/article/yoda] and all other Jedi in the galaxy, an utter vergence in the Force. The boy was the Chosen One, destined to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith, the ancient adversaries of the Jedi Order. An ancient Jedi mystic even predicted that the Sith would be defeated by a child born without a father. Despite not understanding the circumstances of the pregnancy, Skywalker accepted it and loved her son unconditionally. Initially, Skywalker was afraid after giving birth, but was relieved to find that her son was a normal infant. She also kept the true circumstances of his birth a secret from others, knowing no one would believe her or would be afraid of such unnatural circumstances.

Shmi and Anakin resided with other families in communal housing while enslaved by the female crime lord Gardulla the Hutt. Gardulla lost them in a bet to the Toydarian junk dealer Watto, who utilized Anakin's mechanical skills at his shop. While Watto could be a demanding master, he provided them with a home in the slave quarters of Mos Espa. Despite their poverty, she created a comfortable home for Anakin and herself through her hard work. When Watto didn't need Shmi, he allowed her to earn a small income cleaning computer memory devices. She created a small workstation in their home with the necessary tools and equipment. Additionally, Shmi and her son owned a few personal items, including an old protocol droid named C-3PO and a podracer, both built by Anakin. In a rare act of kindness, Watto also gave her an aeromagnifier as a gift for her hard work, which she kept in her workstation.

However, Watto was often unkind, knowing that Shmi had nothing valuable to trade except her son, whom she would never trade. He frequently took advantage of this, forcing Anakin to podrace, much to Shmi's distress. During one race, she watched in horror as Anakin crashed, but was surprised when he wasn't thrown from his podracer. Watto dismissed her concerns about Anakin's potential injuries before flying off. She went to the racing pit, reunited with Anakin, and saw that his legs were twisted from the crash. While she knew Watto would pay for Skywalker's legs to recover, Shmi held her son's hand for comfort. Before the medical droids made Anakin unconscious to work on his legs, Anakin promised he would always be with her, yet Shmi privately wished he would one day leave her for a better life.

Despite the horrors in which Anakin grew up, Shmi still tried to give him a normal and stable childhood. She taught him how to fix things and fend for himself, since the Republic was never there for her. She taught him that he deserved more than slavery. Most of all, she taught him compassion. On hard nights, Shmi would tell Anakin the Tatooine myth of the sun-dragon. The sun-dragon was a beast who lived inside the core of a star, guarding everything it treasured. It could survive through the hardest circumstances because it had the biggest heart in the galaxy, able to protect anything and everything it loved. Shmi told this story to her son to remind him that he was the sun-dragon. She never wanted Anakin to doubt in himself and the power of his love for others. Anakin recalled this story many times as an adult when he needed to remember what should guide him. It was something he kept close and told very few other people.

Shmi also tried to treat Anakin whenever she could. Most of the food they were able to acquire resulted in very bland dishes, but on the rare occasions when Shmi had extra things to barter with, she took Anakin out to the food markets in Mos Espa. In particular, she would take Anakin to a food vendor that sold franikhad, a meat dish common on desert planets.

One day, she had woken Anakin from a dream where he was a Jedi and freed her. She appreciated his good natured ambition, but warned him against attracting the wrong kind of attention by being doing altruistic deeds. Then an Otoga-222 maintenance droid came in and warned them both of the work Watto wanted them to do while he was gone. The Toydarian needed Anakin to go to the Mos Eisley spaceport to pick up a shipment. By night, Anakin had come home and was going to bed. Shmi asked him if he stayed out of trouble, to which he lied and said he had.

One day, Anakin returned home with a group of individuals, including the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, the Queen of Naboo, Padmé Amidala, disguised as a handmaiden, the Gungan Jar Jar Binks, and the astromech droid R2-D2, seeking refuge from a sandstorm. Initially, Shmi and her son thought these off-worlders had come to liberate the enslaved, but they soon learned that the group was stranded on Tatooine after their Naboo Royal Starship's hyperdrive was damaged during a diplomatic mission to the galactic capital, Coruscant. Unable to afford a replacement with only Republic dataries, they were stuck. When Anakin offered to help Qui-Gon and the others obtain money for the hyperdrive by winning the upcoming Boonta Eve Classic podrace, Shmi initially disagreed. However, she relented when Anakin reminded her of her own words about helping others.

While Anakin repaired his podracer, Qui-Gon inquired about Anakin's father. Shmi explained that while she carried and raised him, he didn't really have a father. Later, Qui-Gon tested Anakin's blood and discovered that he was exceptionally strong with the Force. Due to his high concentration of midi-chlorians and the peculiarity around his birth, Qui-Gon believed that Anakin was the prophesied Chosen One.

The following day, Qui-Gon challenged Watto to a wager, knowing that Watto never turned down the chance to gamble. He put Anakin's podracer against Shmi and Anakin's freedom, but Watto did not see the worth in surrendering two enslaved beings for just one podracer. Qui-Gon and Watto eventually settled on just Anakin's freedom should he win the race. Shmi along with the off-world visitors then attended the Boonta Eve Classic. Despite the extremely high risks, Anakin won the race, and Watto had no choice but to honor his promise to emancipate Anakin.

Following the race, Shmi and her son embraced each other with Shmi, expressing pride in her son's achievements. After securing Anakin's earnings from Watto, Qui-Gon informed Shmi that he had freed Anakin and offered to train him as a Jedi. Anakin asked if Shmi would be going with them, and was heartbroken when Qui-Gon broke the news. Putting her own feelings aside and knowing that this was the path Anakin needed to take, Shmi was able to convince Anakin to leave without her by explaining that her place and future were on Tatooine. Anakin was moments away from leaving with Qui-Gon when he ran back to his mother. Terrified that he would never see her again, Shmi reminded him that as long as he believed in his heart that they would reunite one day, then they would see each other again. Anakin made a solemn vow that he would return and free her someday. Adjusting his pack on Anakin's back, she told her son to be brave and to not look back, before he left with Qui-Gon to prepare his new life.

Later, Shmi was walking through the spaceport where Jira told her to keep her head up. She told her that Anakin was in a better place, but Shmi already knew that. In her house, C-3PO held onto the idea that Anakin would one day return. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. She opened the door to see a Tusken Raider, she immediately closed the door to prevent it from getting in. The Tusken kept the door open using a gaderffii stick and held a black melon through the door. She backed up as the Tusken entered her home, with C-3PO informing her of what a black melon offering represented. She knew what it was, and asked why the Tusken had come. C-3PO translated a story the Tusken Raider told of Anakin freeing him from slavery. As the Tusken left, she held the melon in her hands. Her son had returned like C-3PO said he would, in a way. C-3PO stated that he would come back in more than just stories, but that didn't matter to her, she had dreamed that he would become a Jedi and he was already on his way doing so.

A decade prior to the outbreak of the [Clone Wars](/article/clone_wars], Watto's gambling addiction left him impoverished, forcing him to sell Shmi. Her path to freedom began when a moisture farmer named Cliegg Lars met Shmi and fell in love with her. By manipulating Watto into a gambling game that the Toydarian lost, Lars purchased and freed her, around 27 BBY, and they eventually married. Shmi became a loving stepmother to his son, Owen Lars. C-3PO also lived with them. Upon her release, Shmi also helped the White Suns liberation movement that focused on freeing Tatooine's enslaved people, using her mechanical and technical talents to build a device that could locate and remove the tracking chip forced into all enslaved beings. The device was made out of kitchen equipment and saw its first use on Shmi herself and succeeded, but subsequent uses on others showed it needed to be perfected.

Approximately four years after the Invasion of Naboo, Padmé sent her handmaiden Sabé to rescue as many people from slavery as she could, including Shmi. Unfortunately, Sabé's efforts went in so many wrong directions, because it enlisted help from so many untrustworthy sources. Watto had seemingly disappeared along with Shmi, and when Sabé asked of her whereabouts, they could only tell her that she had been sold. When passing through Shmi's former residence, she noted a sign on the door that was likely a mark of the local liberation movement; in truth, it was indeed the mark of the White Suns.

By the end, Sabé's efforts lead her to buy the freedom of over twenty five individuals, reporting back to Amidala that among the freed beings were Anakin's old friends, Kitster Banai and Wald. Undeterred, Amidala asked Sabé to continue her efforts to free more people on Tatooine, although she soon needed to leave to help Amidala in the Galactic Senate. Although Amidala and Sabé remained unaware of her fate, Shmi had a quiet yet happy life at the Lars moisture farm in Tatooine's Jundland Wastes, spending many happy years together with her husband as farmers. However, she spent many nights with an ache in her heart and looking at the stars, as she was worried about where Anakin was and his well-being. One month before the Battle of Geonosis, Shmi was out gathering mushrooms that grew on the moisture vaporators when a group of Tusken Raiders kidnapped her and took her to their camp. Cliegg assembled a rescue party, involving about 30 participants, involving Cliegg himself, but the Tusken goons gained the upper hand and slaughtered most of Cliegg's ambition, especially with Cliegg's leg being severed in the process. Believing Shmi to be dead and unwilling to risk any more lives, Cliegg aborted the mission.

However, Shmi was still alive but had been severely tortured and brutalized. Meanwhile, her son Anakin, now 19 years of age and a Padawan under Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, sensed her distress through Force-induced nightmares. Anakin immediately set off to Tatooine to find and save her with Senator Amidala accompanying him. After meeting with Watto, Anakin and Amidala arrived at the Lars family farm and learned about his mother's fate after Anakin left for Coruscant: freedom, marrying Cliegg and becoming stepmother to Owen Lars, and her kidnapping. Despite Cliegg' advice, Anakin traveled into the wilderness to find her. He eventually found the Tusken Raider camp.

After infiltrating the camp, he found the tent where Shmi was being held. There, Anakin encountered a bound and emaciated Shmi, who was near death. Right before her death, she managed to tell her son that she was proud of him and that she loved him. She was complete after seeing her son and died in his arms. Shmi's death threw Anakin into a fit of rage, and he took his first step into the dark side of the Force when he avenged his mother by killing every Tusken Raider at the encampment, including the women and children. The following morning, Anakin returned to the Lars moisture farm with his mother's body. Shmi was mourned by both her son Anakin and husband Cliegg, as well as Amidala, Owen, and his girlfriend, Beru. They all attended her funeral, where Beru served blue milk and cheese to everyone after.

Shmi's passing had a substantial impact, significantly shaping Anakin's descent into the dark side. Before his mother's interment, Anakin confided in Amidala, expressing regret for his inability to save her. He also pledged to attain such immense power that he could prevent death. Subsequently, Skywalker admitted his involvement in the Tusken Raider massacre as retribution for his mother's demise. Anakin's remorse over Shmi's death rendered him vulnerable to the seduction attempts of the Sith Overlord Darth Sidious, who sought to draw him to the dark side.

During the Clone Wars conflict, Anakin experienced a vision through the Force featuring Shmi on the world of Mortis. There, he faced numerous trials orchestrated by three potent entities known as the Force wielders, who aimed to ascertain his true identity as the Chosen One. In reality, the Son, a Force wielder embodying the dark side, had taken on the guise of his deceased mother. This false Shmi urged Anakin to abandon his love for Amidala, whom he had secretly wed shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, asserting that his love was not genuine and that she was a curse to him, before morphing into the Son.

Around 18 BBY, Obi-Wan, residing in isolation on Tatooine following Order 66, visited Shmi's grave to offer an apology for failing her son. Sometime thereafter, it's believed that Owen and Beru interred both Shmi and Cliegg's headstones to protect Shmi's grandson, Luke Skywalker, who had been entrusted to their care. Years later, Obi-Wan left toys for Luke beside her weathered headstone for Beru to discover.

When Anakin, now the Sith Master Darth Vader, endeavored to corrupt a kyber crystal to forge his own crimson-bladed Sith lightsaber, the gem resisted, presenting him with a series of visions. One such vision depicted Anakin returning to the Lars residence, carrying Shmi's lifeless body in his arms.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Fortress Vader, Vader stepped through a gateway created by Darth Momin, encountering visions of his past that embodied his fears and dark thoughts. Upon entering the portal, Vader witnessed his pregnant mother and a ghostly image of Sidious behind her, echoing Shmi's words to Qui-Gon about Anakin's lack of a father, before transitioning to the subsequent segment of his visions.

Around 3 ABY, not long after revealing his paternity to Shmi's grandson, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader revisited the Lars moisture farm. While examining the farm's ruins, the investigative droid ZED-6-7 noted that Shmi's death at the hands of the Tusken Raiders was among the records highlighting the long-standing hostility between the Tuskens and moisture farmers.

In 35 ABY, following the complete annihilation of Darth Sidious and the Final Order, the Jedi Rey journeyed to the Lars homestead on Tatooine, the final resting place of Shmi Skywalker. There, the former forager interred the lightsabers of Luke Skywalker and his sibling, Leia Skywalker Organa Solo, Shmi's grandchildren born to Padmé Amidala. The Skywalker lineage concluded with the deaths of Leia and her son, Ben Solo; however, Rey—the descendant of Darth Sidious—chose to adopt their surname to honor the Skywalker family.

Shmi Skywalker Lars possessed a serene, unselfish, empathetic, and benevolent nature. Her love for her son Anakin was boundless, and she willingly sacrificed herself to grant him the chance of a better existence. Even during her time under Watto's ownership, Shmi maintained hope for eventual freedom, accepting her circumstances and finding joy in her relationship with Anakin, cherishing their simple life in the Slave Quarters Row.

Cliegg avowed that Shmi was the finest partner a man could desire, deeply affected by her demise at the hands of the Tusken Raiders.

Shmi possessed considerable skill in mechanical repairs, mirroring her son Anakin's abilities. She was also known for her maintenance and survival proficiencies. Following her marriage to Cliegg Lars, she acquired the skills necessary to operate the Lars family's moisture farm.

Shmi Skywalker was brought to life by Swedish actress Pernilla August in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. She reprised her role as Shmi in The Clone Wars season 3 episode "Overlords."

In 1998, the announcement came that Anakin Skywalker's mother would be named Shmi and that August would portray her. When the original trilogy was re-released in cinemas and VHS to mark the twentieth anniversary of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope the previous year, Star Wars Trivial Pursuit was launched to coincide. The limited-edition game featured a separate set of questions that previewed the first installment of the new trilogy, two of which revealed these specific details.

In an early draft of The Phantom Menace, her name was Shmi Warka. Vanity Fair suggested that Shmi's death in Skywalker's arms was based on Director George Lucas's personal experiences with his mother, Dorothy Lucas, who spent much of his childhood confined to bed with an illness potentially related to pancreatitis.