by: Jay Carlson

A couple weeks ago Entertainment Weekly released some new shots from The Force Awakens. One of those shots was of Rey liberating BB-8 from a fellow scavenger by the name of Teedo sitting atop a new creature to the Star Wars universe, a Luggabeast. This is how the little droid finds his way into our core group of characters.

 

This isn’t the first I’ve seen of these characters though. The scavengers and their unique creatures appear over many pieces of early concept art, a few of which I’ve included below.

What’s interesting is that in these early pieces the scavengers and Luggabeasts appear not just in the Jakku desert, but also in what appears to be a snow and ice terrain. It’s unclear whether they are limited to just Jakku in the final film or if we’ll see them elsewhere. It would be neat to see the scavengers picking over the remnants of battles across the star system.

In some or the pieces of concept art the Luggabeasts appeared to be purely mechanical modes of transportation, which eventually evolved to the better looking hybrid creature we see in EW’s image above.

Not surprisingly, Making Star Wars referenced Rey’s first meeting with BB-8 along with Teedo atop his Luggabeast. In their piece they refer to the scavengers as “hasslers” which is a term that was used to reference them in numerous production documents.

With Force Friday tomorrow we are in the final stage of the Force Awakens rollout. With things ramping up, what are you most looking forward to before the release? For me, it’s the new trailer which is just around the corner!