A hallmark of the Star Wars franchise has long been the myriad alien species that populate that galaxy far, far away.
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first standalone film in the Star Wars franchise, is no exception. The film introduced several new alien characters and species to the Star Wars universe.
Pablo Hidalgo, a member of the Star Wars Story Group, spoke to StarWars.com about some of his favorite aliens to appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Here’s what he had to say.
More information on the new character in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story can be found in Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide, the new reference book written by Hidalgo.
Oolin Musters
Hidalgo began with the alien that Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) was sharing a prison cell with at the beginning of Rogue One.
“Well, one thing to clarify that he is actually a she,” Hidalgo says. “The novelization of Rogue One by Alexander Freed clarified that Jyn’s cellmate calls herself Nail. In prison, I guess it’s worthwhile to have a tough nickname. Turns out everyone else calls her ‘Kennel’ because she’s got parasites. Her ‘real’ name is Oolin Musters. And she is played by Kiran Shah (a man, but hey, that’s acting for you).
Hidalgo also explained that the alien was originally designed to appear on Jedha.
Edrio and Benthic
Hidalgo then discussed the Tognath, or Two Tubes, characters from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Edrio and Benthic.
Edrio and Benthic share a special relationship that is unique to the Two Tubes species and goes beyond what humans would consider siblings.
“Tognath hatch from eggs that nurture in a suspension jelly,” Hidalgo explains. “While in that jelly, two or more eggs might graft together and create a bond that continues throughout their life. But, those eggs don’t have to come from the same parent.”
In a sense, it sounds like a biologically built-in version of being “blood brothers,” but a less easily broken bond.
Pao
Another non-human character from Rogue One: A Star Wars story is Pao, a Drabatan who joined up with the Rebel Alliance.
“I think Pao may be a bit more gung-ho than your average Drabatan, but I hope his people would be proud to consider him a representative of their species,” Hidalgo explains. “One story idea I wanted to put in the Ultimate Visual Guide was that he had a mild-mannered civilian life prior to joining the Rebellion. He was an engineer who felt he had to do something about the Empire.”
The Drabatan are also known for their “haunting love songs.”
Bistan
Bistan was featured in some of the promotional material for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the “space monkey” generated a bit of buzz around him.
Bistan is actually a member of the Iakaru species.
“Though they’re not a space age people, I don’t see them as primitives,” Hidalgo says. “They’re beyond Ewok technology but maybe not as technically inclined as Wookiees. Also, I think Bistan is probably wilder than the average Iakaru.
“By the way, I named the Iakaru after the Amazonian uakari monkey, but in doing so, I created the potential for the most misspelled alien name ever, since people are inclined to read that capital ‘I’ in Iakaru as a lower-case ‘L’. Sorry, everyone.”
Moroff
The character Moroff of Saw’s militia brought a little known species from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, now the Star Wars Legends line, into the modern canon.
“For Moroff’s species, I reached back to the old Expanded Universe lore and plucked a very obscure alien from the old roleplaying game.” Hidalgo says. “There was a character named Rollos who was a Gigoran in a 1994 story. They have a lot in common with Wookiees in that they’re often exploited for their strength, but a few tough ones have found a way to make that work for them by becoming brutes for hire. So the ones you’re more likely to run across in the galaxy are thugs, as we saw in the Doctor Aphra comic.
