The Star Wars universe is almost as expansive as Disney Plus’ catalog of Star Wars titles. Between the epic lightsaber battles and Obi-Wan’s truly dad level sense of humor there are plenty of tasty morsels that get lost through the cracks. While some of the entries on this list are pulled from the days before Disney, they’re still circulating around in the Star Wars fandom. With that in mind, here are 10 Star Wars facts so dark you’re gonna have to call your therapist.
Droids feel pain but not happiness
While droids are an important part of Star Wars, some fans may not know the frankly terrible way the sentient bots are treated. It’s established that droids are able to feel pain and fear, but not joy. The sensations run so deep the little guys can even endure torture. During a scene in Return of the Jedi, a Gonk droid can be heard shrieking in pain as hot presses are touched to its wiggling feet. Without frequent memory wipes (which they don’t like, by the way), they can even suffer PTSD. Chopper, a navigational Astromech from the Star Wars: Rebels series, has a deep fear of Y-Wing starfighters, the style of ship he manned during the Clone wars.
In the comic, Star Wars: C-3P0, the droid recounts how he received his red arm from a once-rival droid named Omri that sacrificed itself for Threepio. The end of the issue has both droids contemplating their place in the universe and questioning how many lives they may not remember. While we know Threepio had his memory erased at least 3 times, it’s the final eraser that gave me pause. In Rise of Skywalker the droid sacrifices his memory for plot reasons, but R2-D2 is revealed to have a copy of his friend’s memory. If Artoo feels the need to keep a copy, it can only mean he learned from the events of A New Hope and has no desire to reteach his bipedal friend to just roll with it.
Threepio also expresses a desire to be more than a mechanical being during the Star Wars: Holiday Special. As the human crew of the Millennium Falcon rejoice Threepio says, he wishes to be “really alive” so that he and R2 could “share feelings” of joy with their human counterparts. Not only can droids feel pain, but they don’t even get the satisfaction of feeling cheer. While they can feel sorrow and friendship, a good laugh is just beyond their reach.
Bodiless monks in Jabba’s Palace
Back in the days before Jabba’s cartel controlled everything on Tatooine, Jabba’s palace was the home of the B’omarr Monks. In order to properly achieve enlightenment and inner peace, the B’omarr removed their own brains and inserted them into strange spider-like robots. Without physical selves, the monks began a timeless march to understanding. When Jabba took over Tatooine and made their temple his home, he allowed the monks to remain, delighting in their gruesome appearances. Deep lore even says that Jabba would allow the monks to remove his rivals brains for storage on the off chance they Monks could find useful information. After Jabba’s downfall, Bibb Fortuna also allowed the Monks to continue their journey to enlightenment. While the gruesome spiders were shown during the Book of Boba Fett trailers, the monks were never mentioned during the show.
Geonosian Genocide
Geonosis is the dusty red bug planet where the Clone Wars began. While only the epic finale of Attack of the Clones took place on Geonosis, the planet remained an embittered battle ground throughout the war. The primary manufacturing hub of Separatist droids, the Republic bombed the cities and factories above ground, destroying many surface cities and inhabitants.
The Jedi, in pursuit of Genosian Separatist leader Poggel the lesser, encounter the only remaining Geonosian Queen, who quickly meets her end at Anakin’s hand.
Geonosis is largely forgotten after this, but does come back around in Star Wars: Rebels. It’s revealed that the empire sterilized the planet and the species has one hope of survival: a queen egg that avoided destruction. Ezra Bridger prevents Saw Gerrera from destroying the egg and, though he does give the species a little more time, it’s ultimately not enough as the queen lacks the ability to reproduce. Darth Vader returns to finish the job he started and destroys the Geonosians once and for all during the Darth Vader comic. While Vader may have brought the ultimate end of the Geonosians, there is no doubt that the Jedi pushed the insectoid planet to the brink of destruction. It was under the Republic’s watch that the wide spread destruction began, after all.
Coruscant’s seedy underbelly
The glorious capital of the Republic has some truly incredible sights, but one lesser known aspect of the city lies where the light doesn’t penetrate. Far below the glitz and glamor of Coruscant’s upper levels there lies a dingy and tightly packed under city teeming with the poor, the criminal, and the forgotten. Said to be 5000 stories deep, the underground boasts its own micro climate, controlled by traffic passing thousands of meters above. The municipal processes that keep Coruscant proper functioning are carried out in the undercity, and subject its denizens to constant mechanical rumblings, movement, and the smell of refuse.
After Palpatine’s rise to power, those who refused to bow to his will flocked to the undercity, despite the mutant creatures that also made the planet’s floor their home. It became rife with not only the criminal, but also Jedi sympathizers and refugees of the new Empire. While most of the canon for Coruscant’s undercity was removed after Disney bought the property, fans can’t help but hold onto this one.
Ewoks Ate the Stormtroopers
Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi where the Ewok is banging away on Storm Trooper helmets during that massive party? Yeah, all of those storm troopers were certainly part of the Ewoks’ feast. The adorable little fuzz balls already showed willingness to eat humans after capturing Han and Luke. Not saying its a bad thing—the Empire wasn’t going to treat the critters with any more respect. Besides, how does that one saying go again, “waste not, want not”?
General Grievous‘ Origin
General Grievous, the six-arm-cyborg-windmill, is one of the most iconic Star Wars villains. From his first stint in 2003’s Star Wars: Clone Wars as an absolute murder machine to his appearance in the live-action Attack of the Clones as a super cool looking if not somewhat useless antagonist, Grievous certainly left his mark on fans. While most of this origin was retconned by Disney, it’s still a fun glimpse at what made the 2003 Grievous such a deadly foe.
Grievous, formerly known as Qymaen jai Sheelal, was a reptilian humanoid from a war torn planet called Kaleesh where he was regarded as a demi-god due to his fighting prowess. When the love of his life, a fighter named Ronderu lij Kummar was killed, Sheelal renamed himself “Grevious” since he would never stop mourning his fallen love.
Driven by despair he became a warlord and nearly decimated his rival clan—the Huk—who reached out to the Jedi for support. The Republic not only placed an embargo on Kaleesh but also fined the population heavily. Suddenly destitute, the planet was rocked by famine and thousands of Grievous’ people died poor and starving. This cemented his hatred of the Jedi and allied him with the Separatists, who agreed to take on his planet’s massive debt. Impressed by his skills but not by his arrogance, Dooku staged a Jedi assassination and crashed a shuttle Grievous was in, mortally wounding him. As the Kaleesh lay dying, Dooku told him of the Jedi plot and promised him the power to claim revenge. Grievous agreed, and the cybernetic baddy we all know was born. Unfortunately, George Lucas’s idea of the character was much more “Saturday morning cartoon villain,” and the badass back story was dropped.
Wat Tambor’s Treatment of… Everyone
Though Tambor had little screen time in the films, the Techno Union representative is behind several of the darker Clone Wars: Animated Series stories. During the early stages of the Separatist invasion, Tambor headed efforts to conquer Ryloth, the home planet of Twi’leks. Tambor was brutal, carpet bombing cities, starving his captives, and eventually using the civilian Twi’leks to form living shields to thwart the Republic’s advances. His horrific treatment of the Twi’leks inspired Cham Syndulla who would rise as one of the key rebel leaders.
Next to outright genocide, Tambor’s treatment of Echo might seem tame. After the former ARC Trooper was captured, Tambor used him to create an algorithm based on attacks crafted by Echo and Captain Rex. That knowledge was ultimately used to help the Separatists defeat key Republic strategies. In order to do this, he retro-fitted the clone with cybernetic implants, removing large portions of biologic tissues, and kept him comatose for more than a year.
The aftermath left Echo more machine than man and instilled a lasting fear of medical droids. At least his enhancements gave him the means to join the Bad Batch.
Count Dooku’s treatment of his own people
Speaking of Bad Batch, season two gives viewers a sneak peek at how Dooku governed his home world of Serenno. With his history as a Jedi and his ascension to Dukedom after the removal of his own corrupted brother, one might think that Dooku was a just ruler. Unfortunately, his association with the Sith and the dark side made Dooku a greedy warlord. The Sith lord plundered many planets, including his own, in an effort to fund the Separatists war. He was more than successful, with a war chest so massive the Empire had to spread it over several carriers.
After the Sith was killed and the Empire established, an orbital bombardment was ordered. Just like the events on Kamino, Serenno was bombed from above and those that survived pushed into the forestlands around their former homes.
How everyone treated force sensitive children
Let’s face it, anyone reading this probably wanted force powers at some point in their lives. But any force user raised during Palpatine’s time was out for a difficult ride. In the Clone Wars animated series, the soon-to-be-emperor dispatches Cad Bane to retrieve a Jedi Holocron filled with a list of Force Sensitive children. The bounty hunter brings not only the Holocron but also two potential younglings to Mustafar for Palpatine’s experiments.
The infants’ distress is met by Palpatine ensuring them that “They’ll cry no more” while a surgical droid warns him that children this young won’t survive slave conditioning. Palpatine goes on to describe an army of force sensitive spies that can peer into any corner of the universe, something that sounds an awful lot like the future Inquisitorius.
Living up to his name, he follows that with an insidious aside, “If the surgery fails, I will have lost nothing.”
While most inquisitors seem to have been manipulated to the dark side rather than brainwashed, it’s still a grisly look into the Sith’s pure evil.
It wasn’t only Palpatine that abused force sensitive children. In an issue of Star Wars: Dark Times its revealed that, near the end of the war, Jedi rescuers would only ferry force sensitive children off world. While Wartimes are tough, its hard to justify only saving potential future Jedi.
Force sensitive children were often taken from their homes as infants. Obi-Wan recalls being on the older side when he was taken from his home at 3 years old. While being a Jedi Knight was regarded as a noble profession, it still seems more bad than good to take children from otherwise loving homes. The trials for knighthood all ran the risk of killing a youngling. If a youngling failed to return from certain Jedi trails, their master was expected to wait until death for their missing Padawan. More egregious is the notion that not all younglings become Padawans. While not much is said about those not chosen, we do know a Council of Reassignment exists to deal with the unwanted younglings. I guess someone has to clean the Jedi temples floors.
Why there are so many desert planets
One of the chief complaints about recent Star Wars installments has been the over use of desert planets. What some fans may not know is why many planets have become wastelands. Also known as glass planets, many of the dessert worlds are what remain of planets already consumed by war. Whether through the over plundering of natural resources, or the Empires favorite move of carpet bombing cities, the now desolate planets are all that remains of long forgotten civilizations. Both Jakku and Tatooine’s histories say that they were once verdant paradises but some “unknown phenomena” (cough bombs cough) collapsed the ecosystems. Star Wars: Legends confirmed Tatooine’s desertification was created through mass bombing of the surface, but Disney retconned much of the planet’s history.
