Rodian

Rodians are among the Original Trilogy’s most immediately recognisable alien species, and they’re represented in the Black Series by a single character whose three seconds of screen time generated one of the franchise’s most sustained debates. Greedo — the Rodian bounty hunter who corners Han Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina and doesn’t leave the conversation — is the species’ sole Black Series representative across three figures, two of which are deliberate tributes to the vintage toy lines that made him culturally significant long before the Han shoots first controversy gave him additional weight.

Rodians in Star Wars

Rodians are native to Rodia — a jungle world whose ecosystem was largely destroyed by industrial development before the planet’s population managed to reverse the damage. The cultural consequence of that near-catastrophe is a species with a deep attachment to hunting: Rodian society places enormous value on tracking, pursuing, and catching prey, and that cultural emphasis has made them natural candidates for the galaxy’s bounty hunting networks. They’re not universally mercenaries — Rodians appear in the Republic Senate, in the Jedi Order as supporting characters, and in various civilian roles — but the hunter identity is the franchise’s primary Rodian association.

Physically they’re distinctive: green scaly skin, large multifaceted eyes that provide excellent vision, a rounded snout, and the specific antenna-like sensory organs on their heads. The design communicates predator efficiently — the multifaceted eyes suggest something built for tracking, the facial structure suggests something built for pursuit. When you see a Rodian in the cantina, you understand immediately that this is not a species whose members wandered there by accident.

Their sensory capabilities — particularly hearing and smell — are above average for humanoid species, which suits their cultural specialisation in tracking. In the expanded universe, Rodian hunters compete in formal bounty hunting guilds and track prey across multiple star systems. The franchise rarely explores this in depth, but the cultural texture is consistent across the material that does.

Greedo and the Cantina

Greedo’s scene in the Mos Eisley Cantina is one of the most famous in science fiction film history, and it’s famous primarily because of a decision made not in 1977 but in 1997. In the original theatrical release, Han Solo shoots Greedo under the table without warning — a pre-emptive kill that establishes Han as someone who survives by acting first, a pragmatic criminal whose moral compass is oriented entirely around self-preservation. In the 1997 Special Edition, Greedo shoots first and misses at point-blank range, which established a different Han: someone who only kills in self-defence, whose violence is reactive rather than proactive.

The debate about which version is better — dramatically, characterologically, logically — has never resolved, partly because the two versions establish genuinely different versions of who Han Solo is at the start of his story. The original version’s Han is the one who eventually chooses the Rebellion not because he was always good but because something changed him. The Special Edition version’s Han is someone whose subsequent arc is less of a transformation.

What the debate rarely addresses is Greedo’s role in it. He’s the one who changes meaning depending on the edit — either the victim of a pre-emptive strike by a man with something to lose, or a bounty hunter who takes a shot and misses at a distance of about two feet. The second reading is harder to take seriously as competent bounty hunting, which is part of why the original version has more defenders.

Three Figures, Three Eras of Collecting

The Black Series Rodian collection is unusual in being explicitly about toy history as much as about the character. All three Greedo figures are ANH-era, but they serve different collecting purposes.

The Orange Wave Phase 1 Greedo from 2013 is the line’s original — the first Black Series Greedo, produced in the line’s founding wave alongside the first Darth Maul, Sandtrooper, and R2-D2. It’s a pre-Photo Real figure whose face printing shows its age on a human character, but Greedo’s alien design means the quality gap is less visible than it would be for a human. As a collector item it marks the line’s beginning.

The 50th Anniversary Kenner Greedo is a deliberate tribute to the 1978 Kenner action figure — the vintage toy that made Greedo culturally significant for a generation of collectors before they knew anything about him shooting first. The Kenner figure was one of the original Star Wars line’s most produced aliens, present in toy boxes across the late 1970s and early 1980s as simply “Greedo,” a character defined entirely by his green skin and his bug eyes rather than any narrative. The 50th Anniversary release honours that specific history.

The 50th Anniversary POTF2 Greedo tributes the Power of the Force 2 line from the 1990s — the Kenner/Hasbro collector line that preceded the Black Series and that introduced the modern era of Star Wars collecting. POTF2 is culturally significant for collectors who came to the hobby in that era, and the tribute figure acknowledges the collecting lineage that the Black Series inherited.

Together the three figures are a complete history of Greedo as a collector object — from the original 1978 figure concept through the 1990s collector revival to the Black Series era — compressed into a single species entry that is, underneath the toy history, about a Rodian bounty hunter who didn’t walk away from a booth in the Mos Eisley Cantina.

All Rodian Figures in the Black Series

Check off the figures you own with the Black Series Checklist.

---

Part of Star Wars The Black Series | Species Index. Related: Mos Eisley | Cantina Confrontation | Kessel Run | Species Index.