If there’s one thing we know as an absolute certainty in the Star Wars universe it’s this: stormtroopers can’t hit a damn thing. But what about everybody else? All of our major heroes pick up a blaster at one point or another, so how is their accuracy when it comes to hitting their targets? One intrepid fan counted all the shots fired throughout the saga and did the math, and the answer may be a little surprising.
First off, the ground rules: the Reddit user who did all the calculations, Troelski, only counted shots where the result of a hit or a miss was clear. Any shot that we don’t see land one way or the other is simply not counted. Having said that, it turns out that stormtroopers can hit their targets, at least the ones trained by the First Order. Finn is currently sitting with 100% blaster accuracy. To be fair, he only takes four shots whose results can be confirmed, but all four shots hit, putting him at the top of the list. He said he could shoot blasters.
Following Finn are a couple of our leading ladies who have more than one movie’s worth of shooting under their belt. Padme Amidala has a completely respectable 84% hit rate with 11 out of a total of 13 shots landing. Behind her is Princess Leia with 66% accuracy, landing 8 out of 12 shots. Both are perfectly acceptable numbers, and fairly impressive. The enemy would likely not expect royalty to be so good with a blaster, which is probably why they end up dead.
The sweet spot for Star Wars accuracy is just above 60% as three of our heroes come in as a group very close together. Chewbacca has the second highest number of shots taken with 19, but only landed with 12 for 63% accuracy. Luke Skywalker only took eight shots, but five of them landed, putting him right below Chewie at 62%. Then at 61% we find Rey with eight hits out of 13 shots taken.
Finally bringing up the rear, in the last place we’d expect to find him, is Han Solo. To be fair, there are a couple of important caveats to the Solo numbers. First, he takes significantly more shots than anybody else on the list at 45. Secondly, in both The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi he actually has perfect accuracy. However, he apparently has stormtrooper level accuracy in Episode IV, which ends up dropping his total accuracy down to 57%. He’s still more likely to hit than not, but only barely.
Do you think Finn will remain at the top of the heap? There’s also still some potential for many of the characters to improve their accuracy before the end of Episode IX. Who do you think will end up the ultimate Star Wars crack shot?
