It’s not often that we get to peek behind the curtain at the creative design process in a galaxy far, far away but this piece of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker concept art gives us exactly that – while also connecting to two Star Wars spin-offs.
Concept designer Jake Lunt Davies shared artwork on Instagram, revealing three (presumably) background characters that didn’t make the cut.
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More interesting than Episode 9 seemingly almost featuring a girl gang lounging around on a speeder is the fact that they each have connections to either the sequel and prequel trilogies, Solo, or The Mandalorian.
“The girl on the left was an alien I did for the casino in The Last Jedi and the centre girl was also a species for TLJ as well as making appearances in Solo and the Mandalorian. And a Twi’Lek in the right,” Davies said.
Whether you liked Rise of Skywalker or not, the relative lack of new alien species was a black mark against a franchise that so often embraced weird and wonderful character designs. It’s heartening to see they found homes on-screen elsewhere.
It’s not clear that the character that appeared in both Solo and Mando was the same character – most likely not unless Lucasfilm has been playing the super-long game with the most minor of minor aliens – but it’s nice to see that this sort of world-building still goes on behind the scenes.
