Kane Starkiller fled to the Fourth Moon of Utapau after the Knights of Sith supplanted the Jedi-Bendu as bodyguards to the Galactic Emperor. When the Galactic Empire arrived at Utapau, he was forced to flee, and his son Deak was killed.
Kane asked General Luke Skywalker to take Annikin as his Padawan. He could not instruct his son in the Force because he was a cyborg, though he had kept this a secret even from his family. Only his head and right arm were organic. He was dying because his mechanical replacements were slowly failing. He sacrificed himself in Gordon by donating the energy pack which powered his electronic heart, which the heroes needed to power the freighter and hibernation chambers required to reach the Forbidden Systems.
- Kane appears for the first time in the rough draft to the original film. In the first draft, he becomes known as . By the second draft, he becomes known simply as "The Starkiller" and he is the father of Luke Starkiller; he survives to the end of that version and is not a cyborg. In the following story synopsis, he is deleted and replaced by a crazy old man encountered on the road. The notion that Luke's father was a cyborg was incorporated into the story of Darth Vader. Coincidentally, Kane's cyborg body had a chest plate on his torso that resembled a similar chest plate on Vader's life-support armor.
- Another father-son relationship is similar as well; the one between Kol Skywalker and his son, Cade Skywalker, including Kol's eventual sacrifice. The presence of large numbers of Sith, and their suborning of the New Galactic Empire closely parallels events recounted in the rough and first drafts.
- It is unknown who Kane's wife and Annikin and Deak's mother was, or what happened to her, as she is implied to be dead.