'Star Wars' Finally Explains A HUGE Plot Point From 'A New Hope'

The Mandalorian is back, and it has been touted as the best Star Wars since the original trilogy. It has honed in on the western aspect that was so front and center for a portion of the original movie from 1977. It helps that the second season premiere brings the characters back to Tatooine, even expanding the worldbuilding of what people are used to thinking of as a bland, boring desert planet. The season premiere shows that there is still more to Tatooine than meets the eye, and even sheds a bit of light on a detail from the original film.

The premiere featured the Tusken people, introduced as Sand People in A New Hope. After attacking Luke Skywalker in that film, they are startled away by some sort of animal call that Ben Kenobi projects. We have known since the novelization of that film by Alan Dean Foster, released in November 1976, that the howl was actually supposed to sound like a Krayt dragon. The sound of the howl has changed with revisions to the film since 1997, but the howl of the Krayt dragon in the Disney+ series has been compared to the original one that predates the Special Editions of the original trilogy. Plus, Kenobi may have confronted a Krayt dragon before, if the book Star Wars: Myths & Fables is anything to go by. So it makes sense that he would adopt its howl for a moment like this.

Sure, we already knew that the Krayt dragon howl scared away the Tuskens. But The Mandalorian shows that the Tuskens (some of them, anyway) have personally tried confronting a Krayt dragon. It was not just that the howl sounded scary; they are familiar with the creature and know how threatening it can be. The Mandalorian gave us our first live-action glimpse of the creature in the flesh, which is astonishing to see after decades of only seeing its skeleton in the desert, when it came to the films. The Tuskens know how the dragon can devour a Bantha with ease. It can even eat an entire Sarlacc. It is no wonder that the few Tuskens ran away when they heard Kenobi's howl. When Ben told Luke that the Sand People would be back in greater numbers, maybe he knew that the Tuskens have a beef with Krayt dragons and that they would gather all of their forces to get rid of one. After all, in The Mandalorian, the Tuskens in play were willing to gather all of their forces against the monster.

The showdown against the Krayt dragon in the season premiere was spectacular. It showed just how difficult it is to go up against the beast. Plus, the series has done a great job of adding more dimensions to the Tuskens. People are so used to viewing them as attackers, but the villagers are not completely blameless either. There is a range of good, bad, ugly, and everything in between among these different sets of people, which makes them all feel more real. But when there is a common threat, it is possible for them to band together, and that feels very Star Wars.

Personally, all of this makes me more excited for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, because we see that there is a lot more that can happen on Tatooine than just having Kenobi sit around or wander the desert the entire time. I personally do not necessarily need to see Kenobi fight a Krayt dragon, but perhaps there are other creatures on the planet that could be threatening.

Written By Steven Shinder

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