Star Wars followers love just one thing more than a thriller: speculating about how that thriller may have connections to different components of the galaxy far, distant. However for as a lot because the franchise does certainly share that love of holding all of it related, it’s not all the time truly planning on doing that.
Ever since we’ve seen its cluster of islands on The Acolyte, the unknown planet that the Sith Stranger calls home has been speculated by fans as doubtlessly being one other key locale: the planet Ahch-To from The Final Jedi. It definitely appears very comparable, given the huge oceans and luxurious, mountainous island outcroppings—though location filming for the planet came about on the Portuguese island of Madeira, moderately than Skellig Michael, the Irish island used to movie Ahch-To within the Star Wars sequel trilogy. In the latest episode we realized it even has its personal Porg-esque native wildlife within the type of the Skura, little beings that appear to be a mashup of a duck and an anteater. Plus, there can be one thing extremely Sith concerning the concept of darkish facet customers hiding within the shadows the place the Jedi would least count on it: the house planet of the first Jedi Temple.
However alas, Star Wars followers craving connection, in line with showrunner Leslye Headland, the planet could be very a lot not Ahch-To. “It’s not Ahch-To. I do know it’s comparable, and it was deliberately presupposed to be comparable by way of terrain and feeling remoted and surrounded by water and fewer lush inexperienced and extra rocky,” Headland lately confirmed in an interview with Collider. “However the concept is that cortosis is mined on this planet, so I don’t suppose that’s the case with Ahch-To. A part of the explanation that is his dwelling base is that cortosis is a really uncommon steel. I don’t suppose we are saying it explicitly within the present, however that’s a purpose it’s not Ahch-To.”
Headland additional famous that explicitly solely figuring out the world as “Unknown Planet” in The Acolyte‘s location playing cards was an intentional nod to the collection’ main perspective being that of the Jedi Order and the Republic. “It’s an uncharted planet that they haven’t [mapped],” Headland added, pertaining to a component of the Excessive Republic setting that’s not come up typically in The Acolyte, however serves as a significant piece of worldbuilding within the transmedia e-book and comics initiative that established the period: that this can be a time interval the place the Republic and its allies are still expanding territory and charting the galaxy. Simply because it’s unknown to them, doesn’t imply individuals just like the Stranger didn’t find out about it already—and in figuring out it, he acquired entry to a device like cortosis he may wield towards his enemies.
Whether or not or not the world will stay unknown by the tip of The Acolyte‘s first season stays to be seen—the presence of cortosis deposits has had as many followers as these speculating it could possibly be Ahch-To speculating that the world may as an alternative probably be a canonical version of Bal’demnic, a cortosis-rich ocean world that acted as a base of operations for Darth Plagueis and his grasp, Tenebrous, within the EU novel Plagueis. For now, typically a planet simply appears like one other planet.
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