Star Wars: The Mandalorian Addresses How Characters Use the Bathroom in Space

Star Wars has launched its first ever live-action TV series with The Mandalorian on Disney+, and as many fans hoped, the long form of television is allowing for some deeper world-building of the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is primarily an harder-edged Noir western type of Star Wars story, but that doesn’t mean it’s totally without a sense of humor. In fact, during The Mandalorian‘s premiere we get the answer to a question that many fans have probably asked at some point: how do you go to the bathroom while traveling across the galaxy far, far, away?

Thanks to The Mandalorian, we now know: Vacc-tube. The answer is Vacc-tube.

WARNING Mandalorian SPOILERS Follow!

The first episode of The Mandalorian sees the titular bounty hunter come to a bar to on an icy planet to collect a bounty. After an intense bar fight with some local thugs, The Mandalorian collects his quarry, and sets off to deliver him to his guild leader Greef Carga (Carl Weathers). During that journey, The Mandalorian’s prisoner announces that he has to ‘evacuate his thorax’ (i.e., go to the bathroom), and for the first time we get to hear a Star Wars character actually name the the franchise’s version of a bathroom: “the Vacc-tube”

As you can see above, the Vacc-tube looks pretty much like a toilet, with a name that seems to indicate it could use the vacuum of space as its method of waste disposal. Ultimately we don’t get to see the Vacc-tube in operation, as The Mandalorian’s prisoner tries to use the bathroom run as premise to sneak off the ship – and ends up getting ambushed by the Mandalorian and encased in Carbonite.

Obviously, if you’ve ever seen other sci-fi movies (see: Alien: Resurrection) you know that the Vacc-tube system must have some kind of a suction control system, or users would end up getting their guts sucked out into space. The other thing this scene in The Mandalorian makes clear is that tight confines of spaceships make privacy and discretion while using the Vacc-tube a near impossibility. Gross. No wonder so many Star Wars characters travel solo.

It’s details like this scene that makes The Mandalorian and the concept of Star Wars live-action TV so much fun for fans, as even the Star Wars animated series haven’t ventured into this kind of potty humor (pun).

The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+; Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20th.