We’ve expanded our knowledge of Solo: A Star Wars Story quite a bit so far today via Entertainment Weekly’s launch of their exclusive coverage for the film. Not only did we learn the name of the character played on screen by Paul Bettany, we also have a name and some details on a new planet that will be quite familiar to some segments of the Star Wars fan community.
The planet is called Mimban and EW provides us with the following information that goes along with the image featured above:
At first, this photo didn’t look like much. Some dirty Imperial officers and a medical droid in a hazy photo. But then Lucasfilm revealed where it was set: Mimban. It’s a name that will delight Star Wars completists because the planet has one of the longest histories in galactic lore.
Keeping with this universe’s tendency toward planets with one dominant ecosystem, Mimban is a swamp world, a marshland. It has an atmosphere full of thunderstorms, so its sky is perpetually overcast and the land is always draped in mist.
The planet was the setting of the 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Allan Dean Foster, which took place two years after the events of the original Star Wars and saw Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia stranded on the muddy planet while Darth Vader searched it for a Force relic known as the Kaiburr crystal.
The novel is no longer canon, but as the first major follow-up story to Star Wars, predating even The Empire Strikes Back, it remains dear to the fans who’ve been following since the beginning.
