With over 300 playable characters and 23 planets to discover, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is an expansive game.

Developed by TT Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive, it’s packed with deep cuts and sly jokes from the world’s most popular sci-fi franchise. It’s clear that a lot of love has gone into making this game – so it’s kind of baffling that a widely hated and criticized minor character made it at all.

You remember Watto – he’s the long-nosed slave trader, looking for money and speaking with an accent widely perceived to sound Yiddish. He possessed Anakin and Shmi Skywalker, and once told Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace that “tricks of the mind do not work on me; than money. The Skywalker Saga sees Watto go from merchant to loan shark – sending players on a quest called “Wupiupi Whoopee” to forcibly collect his money. (Wupiupi is a form of currency on Tattooine, in case you haven’t already figured out that Watto loves money.)

In The Skywalker Saga, Watto, once described as a “hook-nosed merchant insect” by The voice of the village in 1999, recruits players to become his enforcers.

“Ehhh! You come at the right time, huh? I have deadbeats who owe me money,” he said. “I was just looking for someone… ‘persuasive’ to pick them up!”

On one planet, you sneak into someone’s house to force them to pay. In another, you ransack a debtor’s house, find and steal his diary to locate the hidden money. When players arrive on the third planet, they must beat a “Defiant Deadbeat” until she finally gives in and pays. It’s brutal, in a strangely family-like way.

“Think she can hide my money from me, right?” Turn this place upside down if you must! Watto says of one such client.

Watto was widely interpreted as an anti-Semitic stereotype in film along with several other cartoonish depictions of non-white people, including Trade Federation Gungans and Nemoidians. Watto is not explicitly a Jew from outer space, since the Star Wars series is set “a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” – but the problematic depictions don’t have to be 1:1 copies.

Historically, propaganda has portrayed Jews as filthy, grotesque creatures with long noses and evil eyes. They were portrayed as schemers to fatten their own bellies and enrich themselves with an unwitting goodwill population. Foiling a Jew’s shady schemes was a virtue, even if it meant avoiding paying a rightfully owed debt. Consider the infamous Shylock in Shakespeare The merchant of Venice – he is a wicked and cruel moneylender who uses appearance to inflict pain on his non-Jewish debtor, even instead of recovering his money.

In the end, Shylock loses all the money owed and more, and is forced to convert to Christianity. The triumph is echoed in The Phantom Menaceas Qui-Gon Jinn cheats at dice to win the freedom of Christ-like Anakin, the son of a virgin mother, and the Force itself.

When Anakin returns to Tattooine in attack of the clones, he finds Watto destitute, bearded and wearing a hat that resembles a style worn by Hasidic Jews. The Jew has fallen.

It’s been 20 years since Watto last appeared in a star wars movie, and instead of being a greedy merchant and slaver, he’s now a greedy pawnbroker who sends gamblers to beat up women and vandalize their homes. This “new” occupation is no less troubling or problematic than the old one. Historically, many Jews held positions as moneylenders because usury was prohibited by Christian law (according to the Torah, Jews cannot charge interest, only other Jews). These roles reinforced anti-Semitic stereotypes of greedy and cruel Jews and led to forced expulsions of Jewish populations in England, France, Germany and Portugal, to name a few.

To put it simply: making a Jew – or a notoriously Jewish character – a predatory pawnbroker is a problem.

Watto is a cruel, Jewish moneylender. This is a new pick from TT Games and Warner Bros. Interactive, not a holdover from past canon. The “Wupiupi Whoopee” side mission allows you to piece together depictions of vicious moneylenders stalking debtors who, according to Watto, “need more convincing than others”.

Watto could have easily been a playable character available for purchase for 50,000 studs, no missions needed. If the developers wanted to avoid his role as a slaver, they could still have given him a new profession that wasn’t tied to centuries of anti-Semitism. The lack of sensitivity is staggering.

He is not a descendant of Abraham, but Watto still looks like the worst vision of a Jew. Anti-Semitic hatred grew, and some of it was even shared by a member of the star wars family (his character is available as part of the DLC). In 2022, there is no need to perpetuate these harmful stereotypes, especially when evil is now happening in the real world.

TT Games and Warner Bros. Interactive should have thought more about Watto. Instead, they’ve created a new Shylock, available to everyone ages 10 and up. Complete the quest, pay to unlock him, and you’ll be greeted with his cheerful declaration, “What a great day to earn some money, huh?”