When the first trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu dropped yesterday, one of its many creature-packed visuals seemingly confirmed one of the most absurd pieces of casting surrounding the movie: that The Bear star Jeremy Allen White would be entering the Star Wars galaxy as a grown-up Rotta the Hutt, last seen as a tiny baby Huttlet in the 2008 Clone Wars animated movie.
Adult Rotta and Star Wars‘ yearning penchant to revisit characters no matter how minor weren’t the distressing things about the moment in the trailer, however. It’s that, whether it’s Rotta or notta, that Hutt was swole.
But of course, this is not actually the first time Star Wars has ever engaged with the concept of a muscular Hutt—Rotta is just the latest in a long line of times the series has explored the idea of what happens if you give a space slug a six-pack.
Swole Hutts in the Expanded Universe
Swole Hutts were much less common in Star Wars‘ old Expanded Universe—they mostly formed a part of contemporary Hutt society’s ancient history, where the species was depicted as a mighty warrior race, carving out their military empire in what would eventually become the broader sector of Hutt Space. Eventually, infighting among the Hutts led to a devastating civil war known as the Hutt Cataclysms, which laid waste to the Hutts’ homeworld, Varl, and nearly took the Hutts with it.
The surviving Hutts founded a new homeworld, Nal Hutta, and transitioned from a martial-focused society to a clan-based system known in Huttese as “Kajidics.” With the formalization of the Kajidics, Hutt society promoted competition through economic enterprise rather than military might, radically overhauling the cultural value Hutts placed on raw physical strength.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have examples of swole Hutts in the EU. The 1997 novel Planet of Twilight introduced us to Beldorion, a former Jedi who abandoned the Order and fell to the dark side of the Force. When he was encountered by Leia Organa in the early days of the New Jedi Order, Beldorion was revealed to have been using the Force itself to sustain a lithe, muscular physical form, granting him immense strength and prowess in lightsaber combat, to account for his decayed control over the Force in other forms. Buff or not, Leia was able to defeat the Dark Jedi after a brief duel, bisecting him.
Swole Hutts in Modern Canon
Swole Hutts, then, have become more commonplace in the modern, post-reboot Star Wars continuity, with Rotta becoming merely the latest in a line presenting a contrast to our typical vision of what Hutts look like.
Marvel’s Star Wars comics have served as a primary source of buff Hutts—just nine issues into the revitalized Star Wars ongoing back in 2015, we were introduced to Grakkus the Hutt, a crime lord obsessed with artifacts from the Jedi Order who attempted to add Luke Skywalker himself to his collection. Grakkus used a series of cybernetic legs to aid his mobility, but he was also incredibly physically strong and fit, proving to be much more sizeable than most depictions of Hutts. However, when Grakkus made a brief return during the events of the Poe Dameron comic series (set in the couple years running up to The Force Awakens), he was depicted more in line with the typical body type associated with Hutts after a lengthy period of imprisonment.
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