Spoilers for the newest episode of “The Book of Boba Fett” are included in this article.
Despite their disagreements on many issues, Tatooine’s citizens do appear to have a common dislike of womp rats. In fact, it seems like everyone in the “Star Wars” universe despises them, ever since Luke Skywalker braggingly claimed in 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope” that he had bulls-eyeed womp rats from his T-16 skyhopper. Even the Jedi seem to support employing violence against the four-legged creatures, despite all their discourse about living in harmony with the Force and the natural world. On the animated “Clone Wars” series, Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, “There’s more than one way to skin a womp rat.”
A womp rat is a kind of rodent that can grow to a height of roughly two metres and has evolved to thrive in desert environments like the one on Tatooine. These creatures have grey skin and spiky black hairs that run down their backs. They frequently strike in swarms to overwhelm their prey. The other inhabitants of Tatooine have long hunted womp rats for sport or food, or in the case of the Tusken Raiders, for use as decorations for their clothing. They do not, however, live in fear of them. They featured in “Star Wars Battlefront II” in 2017, and over the years, they have been mentioned by name in a number of “Star Wars” novels, comic books, and animated TV series. Now that “The Book of Boba Fett” has been released, we can clearly see the creatures in live-action.
Din Djarin 1, Womp Rats 0
Din Djarin visited his old haunts on Tatooine in “The Book of Boba Fett” episode 5, “Return of the Mandalorian,” where he once more ran into Amy Sedaris’s plucky mechanic Peli Motto. However, an unexpected visitor that found its way into Motto’s spaceport on Mos Eisley ensured that their reunion was anything but a quiet one.
One of Motto’s cute but defenceless BD troops was assaulted by a womp rat before its master raced in with a laser gun in hand before Din arrived. But things didn’t go according to plan, and just as Din arrived to save the day, Motto found herself (in a tragic but humorous turn of events) being dragged away by the beast to who knows where. While testing the new (and by “new,” I mean “old and defunct”) N-1 starfighter that Motto gave him on the same track where a teenage Anakin Skywalker once participated in the Boonta Eve Classic in 1999’s “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” Din also passed by another womp rat. Din flew close enough to the creature to imply there is no love lost between him and the desert rodents even if he managed to avoid shooting it.
Wednesdays mark the debut of brand-new episodes of “The Book of Boba Fett” on Disney+.
