Jakku is a fictional desert planet in the Star Wars universe, first featured in the 2015 film The Force Awakens. Remote, lawless, and inhospitable, it is the homeworld of main characterRey, played by Daisy Ridley. The film focuses on two distinct localities, Tuanul Village and Niima Outpost, near a starship graveyard. The planet is also depicted in novels such as Chuck Wendig's .
Appearances
Film
The planet was first seen in the 88-second The Force Awakensteaser trailer released by Lucasfilm in November 2014. The Force Awakens writer/director J. J. Abrams first mentioned its name at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California in April 2015, identifying Jakku as the setting in the trailers and revealing that it is where the character Rey lives. Jakku is a major setting in the 2015 Star Wars film The Force Awakens and. The homeworld of main character Rey, it is a harsh and inhospitable desert planet on the outskirts of the galaxy. In the film, Resistance X-wing fighter pilotPoe Dameron comes to Jakku seeking vital information held by explorer Lor San Tekka. Poe is captured by the First Order but leaves the data behind with his astromech droid, BB-8. He escapes with the help of turncoat stormtrooperFinn, but Poe is presumed dead when their ship crashes in the desert. Meanwhile, BB-8 has befriended local scavenger Rey ; pursued by the First Order, she and Finn flee Jakku with the droid aboard the Millennium Falcon. Later in the film, Rey has a vision of being left on the planet as a child and being taken by Unkar Plutt after touching Luke Skywalker’s old lightsaber. The planet appears briefly in . Rey has a flashback-like vision of her parents leaving her on the planet before they were killed. The planet also appears in a montage alongside Bespin and Endor after the film’s climactic battle on Exegol; a burning Star Destroyer can be seen falling behind an old Imperial destroyer as the galaxy rises up to defeat the First Order. The scenes on Jakku were filmed in the UAE section of Rub al Khali desert, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In early concept development stages, the planet was conceived as a "junk planet" which would have "wreckage from the previous Star Wars movies".
Literature
Jakku was first introduced in two novels released on September 4, 2015: Chuck Wendig's ' and Claudia Gray's '. The latter depicts some of the Battle of Jakku, the final confrontation between the forces of the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance over the planet. The battle is also depicted in the final book in Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, ', which explains that Palpatine kept an observatory on the planet to map the Unknown Regions, where in the event of his death, the Empire would re-form as the First Order. The reference bookThe Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary establishes that this battle occurs one year and four days after the Battle of Endor depicted in Return of theJedi, and is the last major stand of the Empire and battle of the Galactic Civil War. 29 years later, around the time of The Force Awakens, the debris field in the desert is called the Starship Graveyard. Jakku appears or is mentioned in multiple other works, including ' and by Jason Fry, and the 2015 short stories "High Noon on Jakku" and "All Creatures Great and Small" by Landry Q. Walker.
