Star Wars Land is shaping up to be a literal dream come true for STAR WARS fan who has dreamt of venturing off to a galaxy far, far away so they can fight bad guys, fly X-Wings and drink blue milk out of weird plastic cups (and yes, it does come from blue cows). But one of the biggest takeaways for the biggest fans will be that they now have a bevy of new material to add to their encyclopedia of very useful WARS knowledge, as it was announced by Lucasfilm at Star Wars Celebration that the new theme park will officially be a part of the franchise canon.
What that means is that some of the areas, tech and weird slimy creatures being designed for the attraction aren’t just silly little details, but creations we could see in the TV shows, movies, games. One such aspect is the new planet the engineers are working on, and Disney’s Scott Trowbridge spoke about what they want these new places to mean for park attendees:
We wanted to build new Star Wars stories, new Star Wars destinations, but this time you can be in the story. We want you to discover your own Star Wars story. That requires going to a new place with lots of new stories to discover.
Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo, who is also an architect for the STAR WARS galaxy, described the planet in more detail, without revealing the name, but hinted that it’s a hyperspace jump from Jakku, and that massive STAR WARS fans may know where he’s talking about:
We had to not only figure out where this place is on the galactic map but what it’s history has been throughout galactic history…It’s a bit off the beaten path. I’m not going to tell you where it is, but I will tell you that it is on the map. For those Star Wars cartographers who always obsess over where it is, know that we obsess over it, too, and know that putting a dot on the map brings a lot of history to it, and we’ve begun examining what the ramifications of its location are.
Trowbridge also did some more shedding of the light:
It’s a remote frontier outpost somewhere on the edge of wild space. This used to be a vibrant trading port back in the old sub-lightspeed days. But now with the advent of hyperspace, its prominence has fallen and faded a little bit, which made it a great spot for those who didn’t want to be on that mainstream path — the smugglers, the bounty hunters, rogue adventures looking to crew up, the people who don’t want to be found… basically all the interesting people.
Here's some nifty concept art from the park:
We’ll have to wait until 2019 to see this new place with our own eyeballs, but the notion they’re not just recreating the same places we’ve seen, and are actually working to build something new as well is exciting. It means that when people go to Star Wars Land they’ll actually get to see something completely different to what they’re expecting – and that doesn’t just mean watching Rey and Boba Fett getting a falafel and gossiping about “that one” Stormtopper who keeps stealing other people’s food out of the break room fridge. She knows who she is…Becky.
Catch STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI on December 15.