Luke Skywalker may have stumbled upon the first accidental Star Wars easter egg. Back in 1976, Mark Hamill read about the legendary David Bowie on the set of the first Star Wars film. But, where he found that review is really weird: inside the head of an iconic Star Wars creature.
On Friday, Mark Hamill continued his now-daily tradition of tweeting something that is both compelling and informative to Star Wars fans. This time, it was all about how the inside of one of the Dewback lizards on Tatooine was created with newspaper paper-mache. One of the newspapers apparently had a review of a David Bowie concert in Paris. Hamill was so into it that he read the review by flashlight inside of the head of the Dewback. What’s cooler here? It’s hard to pick. Mark Hamill reading something by flashlight? The fact that it was about David Bowie? Or the fact that David Bowie’s essence was somehow grafted into the inside of a giant alien lizard on the set of Star Wars? These are the questions that haunt all our dreams.
For what it’s worth, the actual physical Dewback wasn’t a huge part of the original Star Wars. These big lizards are only glimpsed in a few scenes, and they mostly don’t do much but sit there. Maybe they are too busy thinking about David Bowie?
In the 1997 special edition, George Lucas added CGI Dewbacks to several scenes of A New Hope, most infamously to the “Look, sir, Droids!” sequence where Stormtroopers locate little pieces of metal left behind by R2-D2 and C-3PO. Those Dewbacks didn’t leave footprints in the sand either because they were astral-projecting, or because they were computer-generated.
There haven’t been Dewbacks in any of the new Star Wars movies. But because Solo: A Star Wars Story could return to Tatooine, it’s possible we could catch a glimpse of these space lizards, sitting around, sunning themselves by Jabba’s palace.
In the meantime, Star Wars fans will keep a close watch on Mark Hamill’s Twitter feed. You never know what Master Skywalker is going to start talking about next. In the meantime, somebody please get Hamill a memoir book deal? We need all this stuff in one place.
