The Mandalorian & Grogu Could Take Inspiration From Star Wars’ Strangest Hutt
Meet Beldorian, the buffest of Hutts.
In the Star Wars galaxy, the first alien we meet from a species often becomes a guideline for their kind. Yoda was a powerful Force user, and every member of his species we’ve met since, from Yaddle to Grogu, is also powerful. A Twi’lek danced for Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi, so it became common knowledge that female Twi’leks were often entertainers, slaves, or both.
By the same token, Jabba the Hutt’s lazy, tyrannical crime lord has become the blueprint for the Hutts as a whole. Sure, The Clone Wars’ Ziro the Hutt was a colorful Truman Capote-inspired character, but most Hutts are like the powerful gangsters we see in The Book of Boba Fett. That wasn’t always true, however, as a Hutt from the old, non-canon Legends timeline proved to be an exception — at least briefly.
Lost Legends is an Inverse series about the forgotten lore of our favorite stories.
Planet of Twilight showed Leia facing off against another terrifying Hutt leader.
Back in 1997, in the shadowy era between the Original Trilogy and the prequels, Barbara Hambly wrote Planet of Twilight. It’s the perfect example of an old Legends novel: Leia and Luke are on two separate Jedi missions, a plague ravages a planet, there are weird space cults, an ex-girlfriend of Luke’s pops up, and, most notably, we get a new example of an old species.
That newcomer was Beldorion, a Hutt with an illustrious past. Originally trained as a Jedi — the only known example of a Hutt Jedi — Beldorion fell to the Dark Side and reigned as the sole ruler of Nam Chorios, the planet where the Jedi Council sent him. Centuries later (Hutts can live for 1000 years), Beldorion kidnaps Leia. In what must have been a major déjà vu moment for her, she had to slay the Hutt to regain her freedom. Thankfully, she had a lightsaber this time, and engaged in a full-on duel with the fallen Jedi.
Leia fighting Beldorion, the surprisingly buff Hutt, as seen in 2000’s The Essential Chronology.
Surprisingly, this forgotten novel may have major implications for the upcoming Mandalorian & Grogu movie. It was recently announced that The Bear star Jeremy Allen White will portray Jabba’s son Rotta, but we didn’t get any details about the character. However, Star Wars leak site Bespin Bulletin reported that a source said his character will look “buff.” Ripped Hutts are hard to come by in canon, but if Beldorion was strong enough to hold his own in a duel with Leia, he clearly wasn’t a layabout.
That’s not Planet of Twilight’s only connection to The Mandalorian & Grogu. The movie is set 13 years after the events of A New Hope, which is almost exactly when the new film takes place. Rotta is considerably younger than Beldorion — he should be approximately 100 in the movie — but this fallen Jedi could inspire his character. Could he be Force-sensitive and looking for Grogu? Could he be ruling a planet? There’s plenty to work with here.
Beldorion might not be the best subversion of Jabba, as he was still a tyrannical leader who described himself as a “lazy old slug.” But, when the going got tough, he was still willing to flex his muscles. Rotta could make the galaxy a lot more interesting by following in his slime trail.
