Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker provided plenty of callbacks to the original trilogy, but one easily missable cameo opens up a new surprise.
A lot of the callbacks The Rise of Skywalker gives us are impossible to miss, but still charming to behold. Star Wars has come a long way, and the homage that the finale paid to the originals was touching in places. It was also, apparently, deeper than it seemed.
The bar scene on Kijimi already housed one secret—John Williams, intergalactic bartender. But there was another one you might have missed, one that I certainly missed, and one that Screen Rant managed to pick out—a certain bounty hunter making an appearance.
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According to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary, which has proven to be an immensely valuable resource to anyone who has seen the movie and left with a crap ton of questions, there was a surprise appearance from a Rothgar Deng, which is an alias for Dengar.
Dengar has a storied history outside of the Skywalker Saga, with his only appearance coming when Darth Vader hires a gaggle of the galaxy’s best hunters to find Han Solo.
But the history of Dengar goes back to the Clone Wars, where we just so happen to see a ton of him, living up to his brash style of hunting. He also makes plenty of appearances in graphic novels, such as the Han Solo series, since Solo has his own lengthy history with the bounty hunter.
The fact that Dengar has made it that long, avoiding death for years with his character traits, is frankly amazing, and a testament to a unique personality that—wait for it—would be a fantastic inclusion in some kind of spin-off. If not about him, then just including him, because I don’t know about you, but I want to know how someone who rushes into the face of death can avoid death for so long.
There is speculation that some “established Skywalker saga characters” could make appearances in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, and in my exploration of who that may point to, I included Dengar (as well as nearly every other bounty hunter). That was before I knew he was in the bar on Kijimi, which just adds to the appeal of including him in a Star Wars story.
Fans have always been engrossed in the criminal underworld of the Star Wars universe, and even for that underworld, Dengar is unique. He’s a human being, which makes him delectable castable, and he’d be a fascinating character to build a story arc for.
Oh, and he nursed Boba Fett back to health after the Sarlacc Pit, if you buy into that, so for all you Fett fans out there, you better be team Dengar too.