The last time we see Sebulba in The Phantom Menace, he’s sitting in the wreckage of his podracer while Anakin takes the victory. For a driver who built his reputation on pushing everyone else off the track, it’s a fitting exit. But Anakin leaves Tatooine, and the movies leave Sebulba behind with him. His racing career carries on through some very strange turns.
He Bought the Podracer That Had Just Beaten Him
Sebulba survived the crash at the Boonta Eve Classic. His enormous orange racer was wrecked, but he found a replacement with a rather embarrassing history. After the race, he bought Anakin’s podracer from Qui-Gon Jinn.
That’s quite a purchase for someone who had tried to sabotage the same machine before the race began. Sebulba had spent the competition ramming rivals and using illegal weapons to clear his path. Anakin’s homemade pod still got past him. Once Anakin was leaving the racing circuit to train as a Jedi, Sebulba was willing to pay for the vehicle that had helped make it happen.
He eventually returned to racing with a machine resembling his familiar orange podracer, either rebuilt or replaced. Losing to Anakin had cost him the race and his vehicle. It hadn’t ended his career.
He Was Still Famous During the Clone Wars
While Anakin was fighting battles for the Republic, Sebulba was still drawing an audience.
In The Clone Wars, a poster advertises a showdown between Sebulba and Ben Quadinaros. Quadinaros was the racer whose engines failed so spectacularly at the start of the Boonta Eve Classic. By this point, he was being promoted as Sebulba’s great rival. Anakin even kept a copy of the poster in his quarters at the Jedi Temple.
Another poster on Nal Hutta advertises a Sebulba autograph signing. There’s something funny about finding that notice while the galaxy is sliding deeper into war. Anakin is now a Jedi general, and the driver he beat as a child is still booking appearances for racing fans.
His Reputation Eventually Slipped
Sebulba’s celebrity didn’t last at the same level forever. During the Empire’s reign, around the time of Solo: A Star Wars Story, he became involved with a young aspiring racer named Volo Bolus.
In Star Wars: Beyond Victory, Volo wants to become a famous podracer. Sebulba has the experience and connections to offer a way into that world, but his own standing has fallen a long way from his days as Mos Espa’s reigning champion.
He acts as a dangerous mentor with a diminished reputation, drawing Volo into his crew and the criminal side of racing. Sebulba still knows the sport. He also knows how to use someone else’s ambition.
The launch trailer for Beyond Victory gives a look at this older chapter of his life, when his name still carries weight even though his glory days are behind him.
He Switched to Racing With Live Weapons
By the end of the Empire, Sebulba had moved into battle-racing. The name is fairly literal. Pilots race armed ships and fire on one another along the way. For someone who had already installed a hidden flamethrower on his podracer, the transition makes a certain amount of sense.
Sebulba flew a patched-together craft called the Widowmaker. He also owed the Hutts a considerable amount of money and had connections to pirates attacking Rebel supply lines. Those connections brought Lando Calrissian looking for him.
In “A Race for Answers,” published in Star Wars Adventures #23, Lando and Chewbacca enter a battle race near Neskar Station shortly after the Battle of Endor. They’re there to intercept Sebulba, but an Imperial Star Destroyer interrupts the event and orders the racers to surrender.
Lando rallies the competitors against the Imperials, and Sebulba helps fight them off. Once the danger passes, Lando returns to the reason he came. Sebulba tries to escape, only for the Millennium Falcon to cut him off.
He Returned as a Racing Veteran in the New Republic
Sebulba was still around after the Empire fell. Decades after his defeat on Tatooine, he appears in Star Wars: Galactic Racer, older, bearded, and still involved in a sport where intimidation can be as important as speed.
The Galactic League is an unsanctioned racing circuit backed by criminal syndicates. Its champion, Kestar Bool, uses his position to bully other competitors. A newcomer named Shade wants to bring him down, and Sebulba becomes an unlikely source of help.
Shade has to earn his respect, but Sebulba shares his racing knowledge and helps prepare the newcomer for Kestar’s tricks. When Kestar gains possession of Sebulba’s podracer, Sebulba offers Shade his spare so they can compete against him. He has a personal reason to see the champion lose.
After Kestar’s downfall, Sebulba and Shade’s mechanic, Hibi, are appointed to help run the League. The racer who once treated the rules as an inconvenience ends up with a say in how the competition operates.
He Still Remembered the Human Who Beat Him
Even after all those years, Sebulba hasn’t forgotten Anakin.
During Galactic Racer, he tells Shade about a human who once defeated him. The remarkable part, from his perspective, is that this gifted racer then disappeared from the sport. He remembers the impossible talent and the loss.
Anakin went on to become a Jedi, Darth Vader, and the man who saved Luke Skywalker from the Emperor. Sebulba outlived him. Now he’s helping another human get behind the controls of a podracer, with the memory of that first defeat still hanging over him.