Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s been out for nearly a month now and so far, has been met with widespread critical acclaim. That said, there is a certain disquiet rumbling amongst a subset of the fandom due to the movie’s bold choices and unexpected turns. In contrast to the familiar, nostalgia-tinged The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi is keen to challenge our presumptions about the saga.
All that said, it’s still made with a lot of love for what has come before and as such features many a nod to the previous films in the franchise. There are some great obvious ones, for example, such as R2-D2 replaying Leia’s hologram message from A New Hope, the attack on Crait calling back to the Battle of Hoth and, last but not least, the poorly-kept secret that was Yoda’s cameo.
However, Episode VIII also features a lot of callbacks and references that are much easier to miss. Which is why we’re happy to tell you that on this week’s episode of The Star Wars Show, Leland Chee, Pablo Hidalgo, Matt Martin, and Rayne Roberts of the Lucasfilm Story Group revealed all of the film’s easter eggs. Again, some of these are pretty obvious and you’ll no doubt have caught them, but we’re sure that there’s at least a few clever nods on the exhaustive list below that’ll have slipped by you.
Ready to dive in?
- A compass found in Luke Skywalker’s library was initially featured in Star Wars Battlefront II when Luke is seen picking it up. The device is hinted as what helped him find Ahch-To.
- Luke possesses a Kyber Crystal necklace.
- The cover on one of the Ancient Jedi Texts features the Jedi emblem, which has been featured in numerous material including Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
- Another Battlefront II connection where in the Resurrection DLC, Iden, Zay and Shriv find the plans for the Dreadnought Star Destroyer – which would help Poe Dameron and his fleet during their mission in the opening of the film.
- The official Droid Repair Bay from the VR game of the same name is included in The Raddus ship.
- Rogue One connection with reference to Hyperspace Tracking explored decades later in the events of The Last Jedi.
- The Millennium Falcon dice was not featured in The Force Awakens but is seen in The Last Jedi in one of the film’s most sentimental scenes.
- The Fathier on Canto Bight that Finn observes through the binoculars is named “Hothstuff”.
- DJ’s name is a reference to an Elvis Costello poster. He also wears a hat that spells, “Don’t Join”.
- In The Force Awakens, the birds seen flying around the island are Porgs. The Last Jedi happens to show what these flying creatures look like.
- The scene in the First Order laundry room with the steam iron is a callback to the first official Star Wars fan film, Hardware Wars.
- When BB-8 is in his First Order disguise, he beeps similarly to CH-33Z, the mascot of the weekly Star Wars Show on YouTube.
But wait, there’s more!
- The holo of Leia R2-D2 projects for Luke inside the Millennium Falcon is archive footage from A New Hope.
- Actor Noah Segan, who has appeared in every Rian Johnson film (Brick, The Brothers Bloom and Looper) appears in this film as an X-Wing pilot named Stomeroni Starck.
- All three of Mark Hamill’s children appear in the film as Resistance members.
- Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has a cameo in the trenches before the Battle of Crait occurs. In a nod to his film, his tunic features the aurebesh text reading, “Our War”. Edwards’ cameo comes full circle thanks to having Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman cameo as the Death Star operators in Rogue One.
- Andrew Jack, the film’s dialect coach reprises his role as Resistance member Caluan Ematt from The Force Awakens.
- Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish have brief cameos as Resistance members.
- Frequent Rian Johnson-collaborator Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a voice cameo as Slowen Lo, the alien on Canto Bight complaining about Finn and Rose Tico’s Resistance Transport Pod being parked on the beach.
- Puppeteer Brian Herring appears in the film as one of the Resistance soldiers in the trenches during the Battle of Crait.
- The film gives story group members Pablo Hidalgo, Rayne Roberts and Kiri Hart shout-outs via an alien saying the phrase, “Pablo-Rayne-Kiri”.
- Mark Hamill’s second credit in the film is as Dobbu Scay, the troll-like alien who is on Canto Bight filling BB-8 up with coins. Dobbu Scay is a nod to the film’s editor, Bob Duscay.
- Warwick Davis and his daughter play two members of “The Lucky Three”, who were featured in one of the Canto Bight short stories.
- A dog-like creature in the casino is designed to resemble Carrie Fisher’s French Bulldog, Gary.
- The screaming female creature in the Fathier chase sequence has a floating-dog creature that she let’s go while panicking. The floating-dog creature then floats around like a deflated balloon.
And…exhale. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi again. This time, with our eyes peeled.
