Star Wars followers love just one thing more than a thriller: speculating about how that thriller might have connections to different elements of the galaxy far, distant. However for as a lot because the franchise does certainly share that love of preserving all of it linked, it’s not at all times really planning on doing that.
Ever since we’ve seen its cluster of islands on The Acolyte, the unknown planet that the Sith Stranger calls residence has been speculated by followers as probably being one other key locale: the planet Ahch-To from The Final Jedi. It actually appears very comparable, given the huge oceans and plush, mountainous island outcroppings—though location filming for the planet happened on the Portuguese island of Madeira, reasonably than Skellig Michael, the Irish island used to movie Ahch-To within the Star Wars sequel trilogy. In the most recent episode we realized it even has its personal Porg-esque native wildlife within the type of the Skura, little beings that seem like a mashup of a duck and an anteater. Plus, there can be one thing extremely Sith in regards to the thought 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, based on showrunner Leslye Headland, the planet may 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 just lately confirmed in an interview with Collider. “However the thought is that cortosis is mined on this planet, so I don’t suppose that’s the case with Ahch-To. A part of the rationale that is his residence 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 motive 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 sequence’ major perspective being that of the Jedi Order and the Republic. “It’s an uncharted planet that they haven’t [mapped],” Headland added, referring to a component of the Excessive Republic setting that’s not come up typically in The Acolyte, however serves as a serious piece of worldbuilding within the transmedia guide and comics initiative that established the period: that this can be a time interval the place the Republic and its allies are nonetheless increasing 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 realizing it, he obtained entry to a software like cortosis he might 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 might as a substitute presumably be a canonical model 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, generally a planet simply appears like one other planet.
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