Sy Snootles – ‘Star Wars’ Character Spotlight
This week, the _Star Wars_ Character Spotlight shines on Sy Snootles, the female Pa’lowick first seen singing the “Jedi Rocks” musical number in _Return of the Jedi_. For decades, her story was limited to that musical number, but her life has since been expanded in _The Clone Wars_ animated series and various reference books and novels.
## **Sy and Ziro: A Romantic Tragedy**
Some time before the Clone Wars began, Sy Snootles was a singer on Coruscant. During her stint there, she started dating and fell in love with Ziro the Hutt. For reasons we don’t really know, Ziro was ordered by his more powerful nephew Jabba to send the singer away from Coruscant.
Sy was devastated, not only because she had to leave her lover but presumably also because she had to live behind her comfortable life in the capital of the Republic. Ziro promised that he would bring her back, and she waited for his call while she spent her time performing in Hutt Space and the Outer Rim. Though she would still sing for high-profile clients, she was living a far less flashier lifestyle than before. The call from Ziro never came and she came to resent him, believing he had abandoned her.
During this time, she became a spy for the Hutt Cartel and even did some bounty hunting work according to _Ultimate Star Wars_ , though this must have been more espionage and assassin work than gunslinging.
Her earliest appearance in _Star Wars_ canon comes in _The Clone Wars_ animated series in Season 3’s “Hunt for Ziro” arc. After Ziro was broken out of prison on Coruscant and held in a Hutt jail cell on Nal Hutta, Sy Snootles was hired by Jabba the Hutt to kill Ziro and locate his holo-diary, which contained information on the Hutt Council.
After a performance for the Hutt Council, she snuck off to Ziro’s cell and broke him out. The pair of them fled the palace and escaped to Ziro’s childhood home in the bogs of Nal Hutta nearby. Ziro promised Sy that they would be together and would run away as soon as he retrieved his holo-diary, which he had secured in a safe place offworld. Sy played along and pretended to be excited to live their lives together, but was secretly intent on getting revenge.
They took Ziro’s mother’s ship and travelled to Teth, where he had hidden his diary. As soon as he recovered it, Snootles shot him in the chest and took it from him. She left him to die and though his dead body was soon found by Quinlan Vos and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sy was long gone. We don’t know this for certain, but presumably she handed the diary over to Jabba.
## The Max Rebo Band
At some point in the next decade, Sy Snootles moved away from spywork and bounty hunting and focused exclusively on her music career. According to the _Star Wars Character Encyclopedia_ , she met dancer Greeata Jendowanian on a luxury liner, and the pair became good friends as they made money performing as a duo.
They were soon spotted by the musician Max Rebo while performing in a cantina. Rebo asked Snootles join his Max Rebo Band, and she accepted on the condition that Greeata come with her. Sy enjoyed performing in the Max Rebo Band, and became quite taken with fellow band member Snit, who officially changed his name to his stage name Droopy McCool at her suggestion.
By the time of _A New Hope_ , the band had a residency in Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine, though Sy and other band members were not happy about it. Max Rebo had signed the contract in a rush, with the band only getting paid in free meals. They were playing for one of the most powerful beings in the world, but weren’t making any money to show for it. According to the _Force Collection_ card game, Sy returned to the spy game once again as she fed information from Bib Fortuna to Jabba’s enemies.
Sy Snootles is next seen in the children’s novel _Bounty Hunter_ , when Bossk arrives at the palace looking for an Imperial astromech droid. Next, she can be seen in the first issue of the _Darth Vader_ comic, as she and the band were ordered to leave after Vader arrived to talk with Jabba shortly after the Battle of Yavin.
She’s not seen again until _Return of the Jedi_ , where she performed the song “Jedi Rocks” with The Max Rebo Band shortly before the dancer Oola was fed to Jabba’s pet Rancor. Sy was audibly shocked at seeing one of her fellow employees sent to their death. Nevertheless, she was compelled to join the band on Jabba’s sail barge when they went to execute Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca at the Sarlacc Pit.
She gets her own POV chapter in _From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi_ , and we learn that she and other band members survived the destruction of the sail barge.
## What next?
Sy Snootles is fairly unimportant to the larger story so it’s difficult to imagine when she might return to _Star Wars_ , though it seems she survived _Return of the Jedi_. It appears that she cut ties with Max Rebo after that, as he can be seen playing in Mos Espa in _The Book of Boba Fett_ , but Sy Snootles is nowhere to be seen.
It’s possible she could pop up again as a Hutt informant if a story in the New Republic era ever required it, though the Expanded Universe never did anything like this — she became a spice addict there and her career died — it’s very unlikely that we’ll see her again.
Thanks to _Wookieepedia_, which summed up a couple of key details on the formation of The Max Rebo Band that I was unaware of.
##### Josh Atkins
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Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
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