Kit Fisto Rules

I expect to be out of town today. And I had an idea for a bit of a dour Saturday Note, with examples from both fiction and real life, but you know what? The world is messy right now. You don’t need that. We need something fun. So we’re going to talk about a character who is both incredibly awesome and very underrated.

For Reasons.

Presently watching Kim’s Convenience while it’s still on Netflix (leaves in June). Behind on book reviews (again).

Anyway, your Moment of Zen.

You know who doesn’t get enough props? Kit Fisto.

Kit Fisto Rules

So if you’ve watched any materials relating to the Clone Wars, you probably saw him, or if you remember a green guy with a butt-ton of tentacles coming out of his head from the Prequel Trilogy, that’s Jedi Master Kit Fisto. A Nautolan Jedi Master, Fisto rarely gets a lot of focus in the movies as he’s not a main character, and yet in both the current Disney canon and the previous Legends canon, he’s widely recognized as an absolute champion who wrecks evil whenever he shows up on the scene.

“But wait, doesn’t he get killed by Palpatine in like, five seconds in Revenge of the Sith? That’s so lame!”

Listen here, nerf herder, that he got killed by the ultimate manifestation evil in the galaxy doesn’t count against him on my scorecard (though it counts very much against Palpatine, the dick). That’s a bit like saying, “He’s lame because he couldn’t survive in an erupting volcano!” Almost no one could, so I can’t see why that would be a mark against him. The fact that he was chosen to go face Darth Sidious at all shows that the other Jedi regarded him as Someone Not to Be Messed With, and I’ll remind you that he lasts five longer than the other Jedi in that scene who aren’t played by Samuel L. Jackson. I think that’s pretty darn impressive. The novelization of Revenge of the Sith explicitly calls him one of the Jedi Order’s greatest swordsmen and warriors, which is born out by what we see in canon.

For instance, in The Clone Wars, the first episode to really give him focus has Kit Fisto taking on General Grievous solo, putting the cyborg on the backfoot, and the only reason he doesn’t outright win is because Grievous cheats and brings in Magnaguards–he does that sort of thing a lot. Even then, the guards don’t score a hit on Master Fisto, he manages to get out unscathed (the only party member to do that in the episode, unless you count his astromech droid).

There’s a scene early on in The Cestus Deception (which is no longer canon, after the Disney buyout–a shame, because that book has Obi-Wan’s Lawyer Snail Friend) in which we’re introduced to the idea of a Jedi Killer Droid, a robot so deadly it has people worried. Kit Fisto promptly volunteers and kills it.

I find Fisto’s lightsaber skillz to be surprisingly impressive when we dig into his preferred style. Unlike Obi-Wan’s Form III (the defensive style), or Dooku’s Form II (the duelist’s style), Fisto’s preferred form of lightsaber combat is Form I, Shii-Cho, which by all accounts is the basics of lightsaber combat. Supposedly it wasn’t even really built for dueling and advanced defenses. And yet the man mastered it enough to take on the 

In both the old, 2D Clone Wars and the CGI The Clone Wars serieses, Kit Fisto gets scenes showing assignments to Mon Calamari, the watery world Admiral Ackbar is from. Being amphibious, Fisto does just fine there, with a lightsaber that’s been adjusted to work underwater in deep pressure.

Also, despite Aayla Secura having a bunch of fanboys in real life, in the old canon, I’m pretty sure that Kit Fisto is the only one who ever actually kissed her. Admittedly, that was to save her from drowning, though I don’t think that’s how any of that works:

I don't know if that counts for anything, really, but I found that a bit surprising.

He’s also just kind of an all-around chill guy! He smiles a lot more than most Jedi do, tends to display a laid-back attitude (unless, of course, he absolutely needs to get serious, like when fighting Grievous). Also Phil Lamarr gives him a Jamaican accent? Not sure why he did that, but I don’t really mind, it’s an interesting decision.

This is all a fascinating trajectory of a character who is basically a nobody in the original movies? The design was recycled from villain concept art, as the idea of a villain with head tentacles was considered for a while before discarded. It was eventually re-used for one of the Jedi who appeared in the Battle of Geonosis in Attack of the Clones and the rest is history: we got one of the coolest Jedi Masters in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

The dude is darn cool, okay? I feel like the Disney canon hasn’t done as much with the background Jedi Masters, except to make them foils to Anakin and/or Ahsoka. Kit Fisto still manages to get a lot of characterization in there, though, which I like! And it mostly matches what we had before, though some of his more impressive feats are still left out. He’s memorable, he’s powerful, he’s cheerful, and he’s an all-around awesome character.

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