Xhalax Sun
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| Farscape character | |
 |
|
| Xhalax Sun | |
|---|---|
| Title | Senior Officer |
| Homeworld | N/A |
| Race | Sebacean |
| Gender | Female |
| Affiliation | Peacekeepers |
| Portrayer | Linda Cropper |
Xhalax Sun is a fictional character from the television series Farscape, played by Linda Cropper.
Xhalax is the mother of Aeryn Sun, with whom she had never formed a personal relationship due to Peacekeeper rules.
Xhalax is first seen in season three of the series, as the leader of a Peacekeeper retrieval squad sent to recapture Talyn. It is revealed that Xhalax, a former spaceship pilot, had been forced to become an assassin as punishment for her crimes of having formed a romantic relationship with another Peacekeeper, intentionally chose to have a child with him, and then established contact with that child (albeit briefly), all of which violated Peacekeeper rules.
When her crimes were discovered via security camera when she secretly visited Aeryn when Aeryn was a child, in order to inform her that her life was not an accident or an assigned birthing to fill the ranks, Xhalax was forced to choose between killing Aeryn and killing Aeryn's father, Talyn (for whom the aforementioned Talyn had been named). Her superiors told her that after making this choice she would be forgiven and allowed to return to being a pilot, but she was never reinstated in her former position and was instead assigned assassination missions from that time on. This line of work slowly made her become cold and bitter, seemingly destroying the love that she'd shown during her clandestine visit to young Aeryn's barracks, and the love for which she'd sacrificed the life of her lover in order to save their child.
Decades later, when she was assigned to the Peacekeeper retrieval squad, she met Aeryn once again and explained what had happened after she'd visited Aeryn. She accused Aeryn of being sentimental and weak for having named the spaceship Talyn after the father she'd never met. That encounter ended with Talyn seriously crippled and Crais having claimed to have killed Xhalax to prevent her from completing her mission to capture Talyn for the Peacekeepers. In reality, he had allowed Xhalax to leave them because he knew that otherwise, the Peacekeepers would simply send another retrieval squad.
Aeryn encountered Xhalax once again later on, and a situation arose from which only one could escape alive. During a tense standoff, Aeryn managed to reason with Xhalax only to see Xhalax shot down by Bialar Crais who through no fault of his own misinterpreted the standoff as unacceptably dangerous to Aeryn. Dying, Xhalax told Aeryn that her true selfdom had been killed years before by her unyielding loyalty to the Peacekeepers. Her last request was for Aeryn to let her fall from the high ledge where their standoff had taken place. As a token of respect, Aeryn acquiesced.
