10 Unhinged Lore Details Star Wars Dropped to Make Galactic Starcruiser Happen
Disney is calling time on Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, the absurdly expensive, lavishly immersive hotel experience meant to put you in the galaxy far, far away for fun, pleasure, and potentially ratting out Chewbacca. But Galactic Starcruiser went beyond Disney World—in Star Wars’ era of “everything’s canon” storytelling, the hotel has become an absurdly key location in generations of Star Wars stories.
Like Galaxy’s Edge before it, in the less than two years since it opened, Galactic Starcruiser’s setting, the Chandrila Star Liner Halcyon, has been woven into Star Wars lore across books, comics, and more in an attempt to lend a sense of importance to the hotel itself. Unlike Galaxy’s Edge however—which not only continues to exist, but given the time it’s allowed to have existed, has actually been fleshed out in plenty of ways beyond simply “this is also at a Disney Park you can go to”—Starcruiser’s short-lived dreams of draining wallets for trips to the stars now make its outsized impact on Star Wars fiction an even more peculiar hallmark of its already peculiar existence.
Read more
With four months to go before the Halcyon closes its docking rings to new travelers, it’s hard to say just for how much longer it’ll maintain a continued presence in the stories of Star Wars going forward. But one thing is already guaranteed: it’s been subject to some absolutely bizarro lore beats in Lucasfilm and Disney’s attempts to enmesh the setting into the galaxy far, far away’s history. Here’s some of the weirder ones.
The Space Hotel Is One of the Earliest Commercial Interstellar Transit Systems
Hyperspace travel is one of the most fundamental aspects of the Star Wars galaxy—its scope and its storytelling would be impossible without FTL travel. In recent years the saga has tackled this by exploring what a version of the galaxy can look like where it is still largely limited in some ways, like in the current second phase of the High Republic era, where the interstellar governance and travel of the galaxy is still difficult and uncharted.
And yet, apparently cruises like the ones taken by Chandrila Star Liners, the company behind the Halcyon, were some of the first widely accessible forms of hyperspace travel in the ages of expansion and exploration that shaped the spread of the Old Republic. Too bad accessible, price-wise, wasn’t something that was true of our world’s version.
It’s Named After Star Wars Rebels’ Space Whales (Sort of)
The Halcyon is a MPO-1400 Purgill-class star cruiser, evoking the giant space whale species that can bio-organically achieve hyperspace travel that was first encountered in Star Wars Rebels. The Purrgil were, in old spacer tales, meant to be the natural inspiration for civilizations to develop their own FTL travel, and given the other info we have that these star liners were some of the first widely available hyperspace transit, naming this class of vessel after the Purrgil would make sense.
Except they didn’t, because the Purrgil are the whales, and the Purgill is the cruiser class. I sure hope somebody at Chandrila Star Line was fired for that blunder.
The Halcyon Is Nearly 300 Years Old
If some of the first thing civilizations were doing with hyperdrives was strapping them to vacation ships, it’s probably not much of a surprise to learn that the Halcyon itself is a pretty old ship. What’s insane is how old: Galactic Starcruiser’s two-day experience is fictionally set during the vessel’s 275th anniversary celebrations of its first trip (of course, it was to Batuu, where Galaxy’s Edge is set). It’s been refitted internally over the years sure, as technology has advanced, but it’s kind of wild that now suddenly one of the most ancient starships in the galaxy is actually just a space hotel.
Lightsaber Training Exists on Board Thanks to Pirates
One of the several experiences guests can partake in while staying at Galactic Starcruiser is a lightsaber training routine, which, when you think about it too much, is already kind of insane considering that at this point in the timeline the Jedi have been largely eradicated for the best part of 50 years. Even crazier is the actual reason there are lightsaber pods on board the Halcyon: during the era of the High Republic, Jedi Master Nib Assek and her Wookiee padawan Burryaga saved the Halcyon from a Nihil raid, and the pods were built as a thank you to them. It’s like, I don’t know, building a gym if a firefighter saved your hotel.
Of Course It Was Built By a Little Freak
That lightsaber pod was built by the designer of the Halcyon itself, Shug Drabor. In true transmedia crossover potential, and because apparently everything must be designed after after Rise of Skywalker, Shug is an Anzellan, the same diminutive race as Babu Frik.
Shug didn’t just design the Purgil-class, but established Chandrila Star Line itself, spinning out into luxury travel from his days as a charter company owner with his mother on Chandrila. The Halycon’s engines are shaped in a “Drabor Configuration” in honor of him, but really, it’s mostly just that he’s from a race of little guys from the most recent movie.
It Was Temporarily Turned Into a Fascist Retreat
In its operation over nearly three centuries, the Halcyon has been through several owners—the Hutt Cartels purchased it during the Clone Wars, for example, presumably because the interstellar cruise industry just wasn’t having a particularly great time clashing with the interstellar conflict industry’s busy calendar. But the reason no one was sunning around aboard the Galactic Starcruiser during the age of the Empire?
The Empire took it and turned it into a officer’s retreat, a combination of lawless pirates skulking about its lower decks while Imperial bigwigs wined and dined and hoarded treasures across the galaxy above.
The Halcyon Was Vital to the Founding of New Republic
Whatever happened to not only rapidly overthrow Imperial control of the Halcyon at the climax of the galactic civil war, but also refit it to be back to its normal self, the galactic starcruiser was already ready to go in the days and weeks after the Battle of Endor. And it’s a good job it was, because Mon Mothma convinced Han and Leia, who had been wedded in a small ceremony on the forest moon after the events of Return of the Jedi, that what the galaxy needed to believe in the face of the rapidly splintering Empire’s propaganda machine about the death of the Emperor was to see that Love Was Real.
It’s Mon who pushed Han and Leia to go on a public honeymoon aboard the Halcyon (it should be noted as a Chandrilan company, it’s impossible to say if the incoming chancellor of the New Republic had any investments in Chandrila Star Line, but that’s another bananas/mundane Star Wars story to tell for another time) as essentially a way to tour the galaxy and let worlds know that the Rebels really had begun overthrowing the Empire in earnest. If Disney World didn’t exist, whose to say how the birth of the New Republic would’ve happened?
Ben Solo *Might* Have Been Conceived There...
Look: nothing’s certain, and of course, when the book that covered Han and Leia’s honeymoon, Beth Revis’ Princess and the Scoundrel was coming out, we even speculated that it was just as unlikely that the Organa-Solo wedding/press tour was not the moment the couple conceived their son Ben. In other Star Wars canon sources, Han believes Ben was conceived on Endor during the victory celebrations, while in others Leia believes it was during post-wedding dalliances aboard the Millennium Falcon.
But either way: Han and Leia go on their Halcyon cruise at some point in 4ABY, while Ben is born sometimes in 5ABY, on the same day the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant sign the Galactic Concordance that ends the civil war. You could futz that there’s around nine months between those two events. You could. Especially because it’s very funny that one of the ways to make Galactic Starcruiser important to Star Wars canon would be to make it the official conception venue for Important Skywalker Lineage Babies...
And God Damn, There’s a Tiny Chance Luke and Leia Were Too
... and I say that because while it’s just as vague, there is a very similar window of time that Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala were aboard the Halcyon together that, with enough temporal futzing, could also mean that Luke and Leia were conceived board the vessel.
The Halcyon Legacy comic miniseries done to advertise Galactic Starcruiser includes a flashback issue where, while undercover on a mission to observe a Republic Senator planning to defect to the Confederacy, Padmé and Anakin decide to use their cover to just publicly spend time as a married couple. They walk around the same fake-garden area you can visit (for the next four months at least), they partake in a bizarre-looking Gladiator-esque sparring combat routine, and yes, there’s lots of romantic time for smooching and uh, other things.
This mission canonically takes place at some point in 20BBY, while Revenge of the Sith is in 19BBY. Once again, you could put a nine-month-or-so time frame between these two events. You could. Star Wars gives you that opportunity to imagine the most immersive of Galactic Starcruiser experiences.
The Ship’s Lounge Singer Has an Album You Can Listen to Right Now
This one’s not as insane as the other details aboard the ship, but Gaya, the Twi’lek songstress who regales Galactic Starcruiser dinner attendees with songs, actually recently put out an in-universe album. She’s obviously not the first time Star Wars and diegetic music have crossed paths like this—Galaxy’s Edge has had multiple albums of DJ Rex’s music from Oga’s Cantina released, even—but Gaya’s album only dropped on May 4 this year, making the timing a little awkward. Hopefully she finds another gig somewhere else after her Halcyon residency closes in September.
The album’s not bad though! Her self-titled single “Gaya!” is kind of a banger.
More from Gizmodo
Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
