Star Wars fans love one thing more than mysteries: speculating about how that mystery might have connections to other parts of the galaxy, far, far away. But while the franchise certainly shares that love of keeping everything connected, it doesn’t always intend to do so.
Since we saw his group of islands on The Acolytethe unknown planet that The Sith Stranger Calls Home has been speculated by fans as potentially another key location: the planet Ahch-To of The Last Jedi. It certainly looks like a lot, given the island’s vast oceans and rocky, mountainous outcrops – although filming for the planet took place on the Portuguese island of Madeira, rather than Skellig Michael, the Irish island used to film Ahch-To in the Star Wars continuation of the trilogy. In the last episode we learned that it even had its own local Porg-like fauna in the form of the Skura, small creatures that resemble a cross between a duck and an anteater. Plus, there’s something incredibly Sith about the idea of dark side users lurking in the shadows where the Jedi would least expect them: the homeworld of the First Jedi Temple.
But unfortunately, Star Wars Fans are hungry for connection, says showrunner Leslye Headland, the planet is very not Ahch-To. “It’s not Ahch-To. I know it’s similar, and it was intentionally meant to be similar in terms of terrain and feeling isolated and surrounded by water and less lush greenery and more rocks,” Headland recently confirmed in an interview with Collider“But the idea is that cortosis is mined on this planet, so I don’t think that’s the case with Ahch-To. One of the reasons that’s its base is because cortosis is a very rare metal. I don’t think we say it explicitly in the show, but that’s one of the reasons it’s not Ahch-To.”
Headland also noted that he only explicitly identified the world as an “unknown planet.” The AcolyteThe series’ location maps were an intentional nod to the show’s primary perspective, that of the Jedi Order and the Republic. “It’s an unexplored planet that they haven’t[mapped],” Headland added, addressing an element of the High Republic setting that isn’t often discussed in The Acolytebut serves as a major world-building element in the transmedia book and comic book initiative that established the era: it is a period when the Republic and its allies are ever expanding territory and map the galaxy. Just because it’s unknown to them doesn’t mean people like the Stranger didn’t already know it – and in knowing it, he gained access to a tool like cortosis that he could use against his enemies.
It is not yet known whether the world will still be unknown at the end of The AcolyteThe first season remains to be seen — the presence of corticosteroid deposits had as many fans as those speculating that it might be Ahch-To speculating that the world might instead be a canonical version of Bal’demnica cortosis-rich ocean world that served as a base of operations for Darth Plagueis and his master, Tenebrous, in EU novel PlagueisFor now, sometimes a planet just looks like another planet.
Want to know more about io9? Find out when you can expect the latest news wonder, Star warsmAnd Star Trek outings, what’s next for the The DC Universe in Film and Televisionand everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
