Let’s take a look at the ringed planet in the Death Star DLC
By now, you’ve probably noticed the ringed planet in Battlefront’s Death Star expansion.
It’s featured very prominently in the background—its asteroid ring also plays a key factor in the Death Star Blockade map—and it can be seen during all three phases of Battle Station.
So just what is this planet? It turns out that LucusFilm/EA/DICE are staying mum on the topic.
First, let’s get the obvious out of the way. This planet is not the red giant Yavin.
Yavin, which the Death Star orbits in A New Hope, is a gas giant. From what I can tell, the planet in the background of the Death Star expansion has a solid rocky surface, so it isn’t gaseous.
Yavin also lacks the same ring structure that this planet has:
Next, one popular theory I heard before release was that this planet is Geonosis. It made sense to me at the time.
Geonosis, which appeared in Attack of the Clones, is a rocky red planet and it also has a ring filled with asteroids. The bug-like Geonosians also played a key role in the building of the first Death Star. Because of these factors, Geonosis seemed a likely candidate.
However, Battlefront’s lead designer, Dennis Brannvall said during Monday’s livestream that the planet had never made an appearance in Star Wars prior to the Death Star DLC.
“It’s not a planet we’ve seen before,” he said. “So it doesn’t have a name that I can share at this time.”
So this rules out Geonosis. Also, upon further inspection, Geonosis appears to have more yellow and orange than the mysterious Death Star planet:
So with both these possible planets ruled out, some speculated that it might be Jedha.
Jedha is new to the Star Wars universe and will feature in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which arrives to theaters this December. Jedha, as show below, has a rocky surface similar to the Death Star DLC’s mysterious planet. According to the Star Wars Databank, Jedha is “frosted by a permanent winter” and “serves as a holy site for pilgrims from across the galaxy who seek spiritual guidance.” The first Death Star also spent time above Jedha during the final stages of its construction:
However, Jedha is a moon, while the planet in question doesn’t seem to orbit any other celestial bodies (save for a distant sun).
LucasFilm Story Development Executive Pablo Hidalogo also later debunked the Jedha theory:
@randomnascar @WookOfficial Ol Jedha is as ringless as a well kept tub.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) September 21, 2016
Hidalgo further joked that the planet will go into Wookiepedia as “Unidentified Ringed Planet.”
So it seems like the creatives in charge of the Star Wars lore in Battlefront are staying tight-lipped about the planet’s actual name and history. That could change in the future, however.
“It’s an unnamed planet for now,” Brannvall said during the livestream. “Maybe, in the future, some more info will be revealed.”
Clarifying how Battlefront fits into the Star Wars canon, he added:
But it’s important when you look at Battlefront and where it is in the Star Wars universe, it’s not supposed to be at a specific point in the timeline. This is a sandbox, a toy box, where you will play with authentic miniatures, authentic characters, authentic locations and authentic sounds. But the environments and what you’re doing there is just a sandbox.
While I would certainly like to know more about the planet, I understand where LucasFilm/EA/DICE are coming from. Their hope is to evoke feelings from familiar moments, like the battle over the Death Star or the asteroid chase scenes in Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones. Battlefront definitely does an excellent job at capturing that “Star Wars feeling” and I think the latest expansion really nails it.
Still, fingers crossed that we might get more info on this mysterious planet in the future!
