5 Star Wars Mistakes and Details You've Never Noticed

Just about everybody who enjoys Star Wars is aware of the occasional little mistake or oddity about that massive world; why do some ewoks have human eyeballs? How can the Millennium Falcon have made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs if that's a measure of distance? Why are the villains always so bad at building bases? Indeed these issues are common knowledge among many, and the movies have even done the work to make them make sense, but they were nonetheless mistakes in the first place (or at least perceived as such). Yet there are still others that simply go completely unnoticed, despite how significant they could be, as well as mistakes that are nothing of the sort. Here, we're going to explain five of these puzzling pieces of that far, far away galaxy in order to learn a little more about the movies we know and love. How big can these issues be, you may ask? (I'm sure you did) Well, let's take a look at our first conundrum.

WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THE SURFACE OF ENDOR

Endor is a commonly known planet given that it got so much screen time in 1983, thanks to Return of the Jedi. Covered in dense forests, Endor is commonly known to be the moon where the ewoks live, but...well, the movie never calls it such. In fact, that moon is referred to as "the forest moon of Endor," implying that the planet the moon is orbiting is Endor. It is entirely possible that the moon is named "Endor II" or something like that. It would be a slightly strange naming convention, but not unheard of, particularly in Star Wars where Yavin IV is a moon of the planet Yavin Prime.

This idea does, however, develop a wrinkle when you consider that (at least in Disney's canon), there is another moon of Endor in the movies, in 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. That movie sees Rey, Poe, and Finn travel to the remains of the Death Star II, which are on Kef Bir, listed on the official Star Wars website as one of nine moons in the Endor system.

It seems that Endor is most certainly the planet that the Forest Moon and Kef Bir orbit, and its surface is not actually seen on screen in any Star Wars film or show. This knowledge is something never really discussed in the Star Wars community, likely because of the simple explanation that the moon is simply called the "Forest Moon" rather than Endor, but EA's Star Wars: Battlefront strangely games list that moon as simply "Endor," and the Forest Moon is almost always referred to that way in discussion as well.

THE ONCE-PROUD STORMTROOPERS

There are some things that are just facts: Earth's sky is blue, pigs can't fly, and stormtroopers are horrible shots. And yes, all of that is completely true nowadays, but it wasn't always the case (and I'm not talking to some unknown point in history when pigs had wings). That's right, some of the most mocked henchmen out there simply shouldn't have earned that reputation.

As far back as 1977 during the very first Star Wars film, A New Hope, Obi-Wan makes a remark about stormtroopers being pretty good with a blaster. Naturally, that makes them seem like menacing threats not to be trifled with unless absolutely necessary. This lasts all the way until they can't do much of anything to stop the heroes from escaping the Death Star, but it seems so many people skipped past a very significant plot point in the film. As Princess Leia herself says, it was too easy and the Empire must have let them escape.

This is massive for the story, and the Star Wars universe, because the Empire tracking the Falcon back to Yavin IV lead to Luke Skywalker's famed trench run, not to mention that Leia was trying desperately not to tell the Empire the location of the Rebel base during her time on the Death Star. The Empire outplays the protagonists, and they have to try so hard not to hit any of them that one of the protagonists actually noticed. Nonetheless, though, the stormtroopers' shameful legacy was born and soon solidified to the point where canonically, Obi-Wan Kenobi seems to have simply had no idea what he was talking about when he described the aim of the stormtroopers.

KYLO REN'S TRAINING: COMPLETE

2017's The Last Jedi is a topic of hot debate, even still. I understand disliking it, but I personally love it and hey! That's okay! However something that even fans of the movie have some issue with is Supreme Leader Snoke telling Kylo Ren to meet him in order to complete Kylo's training towards the end of The Force Awakens, considering Snoke didn't really seem to do so in The Last Jedi. However! If you read the clues, they do line up.

I too felt some confusion about this since I couldn't figure out why Snoke was willing to die for Kylo's training. I (proudly) predicted that Kylo would kill Snoke to complete his training, since killing your master to complete your training is the way of the Sith and while Kylo is not Sith, he's not exactly the farthest thing he could be from that exceptionally angry bunch. The only option I could come up with to make that make sense was that somebody somewhere was controlling Snoke. And, well, it seems I was right.

The Rise of Skywalker, another controversial Star Wars movie, revealed that Palpatine was still kicking around (or more accurately, he was kicking around again after his previous death) and had been pulling the strings of the First Order from the beginning. While I very much wish the sequel trilogy had hinted at bringing the old Emperor back in such a way, it does actually explain exactly why Snoke was accepting of losing his life to shape Kylo Ren into the new Supreme Leader, considering Snoke may well have had no identity or thoughts of his own. He may simply have been a puppet of Palpatine the whole time, as Palpatine attempted to create a new body.

Palpatine isn't necessarily puppeteering Snoke in a direct sense, but there's quite possibly nobody in the Star Wars galaxy who has ever been better at manipulation than him. He may well have tortured and broken Snoke to his will, or controlled him with an inhibitor chip like the clone troopers. Regardless, this leads us to the only example on the list where a movie seemed to completely accidentally explain a strange detail of its predecessor.

REY IS NOT THE BEST FIGHTER

Well, she is, but hear me out. Rey is a great fighter for an average civilian, having been seen using her staff with great skill in The Force Awakens. But, there are a number of people who see her expert combat prowess as a flaw later in that movie and, more importantly here, in its two sequels.

It's generally been accepted that Rey was able to hold her own against Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens because he was injured (physically and emotionally, considering the whole Han Solo dad stabbing thing), but it is a common perception that after that, she simply is somehow good at fighting. Rey has some skill yes, but if you look closely, she is consistently worse than Kylo is. This isn't to bash on either of their characters, I honestly love both, but I couldn't help but observe and look for evidence to explain her immediate skill.

But skill is not the right word for it. As a prime example, she fights the Praetorian Guards (those incredibly cool red guards) in The Last Jedi and comes out with only a scratch. If you tally down the guards, however, something becomes clear: she is not as good as Kylo, and even the guards know it. During that fight, Kylo and Rey begin the battle back to back, which may be where this misconception that they are equal in lightsaber skill comes from, but the bulk of the fight shows Rey consistently fighting only one guard at a time. In fact, she only kills three total, and she loses the fight against the last one, she just gets a little assist from Kylo.

Kylo Ren however kills five of them, and he fights multiple at once consistently. This skill is echoed later against the Knights of Ren, whom he dispatches in an all-too-short 10 seconds or so, while Rey simply doesn't fight anyone. She deflects and redirects some blaster fire to take down a few guards, but in the Exegol sequence this takes place in, in The Rise of Skywalker, she doesn't actually duel anybody.

Even against Kylo again on Kef Bir, with a year of training behind her lightsaber belt and with Kylo opting not use his lightsaber for the first portion of the fight, she still needs his focus broken by Leia reaching out to him in order to win. Rey needs assistance and handicaps compared to her force dyad counterpart at every point. Hopefully she has a chance to do better and wield something a little more like the staff she's used to in the upcoming Star Wars movie set after the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but we will see.

BOBA FETT'S LIKELY SARLACC ESCAPE

Ah yes, Boba Fett, professional cool guy and bounty hunter extraordinaire. Audiences may have hoped he would play a large role in Return of the Jedi after his appearance approximately three years earlier (in-universe and in real life!) in The Empire Strikes Back, but alas, it was not to be. He was sent down a sarlacc pit to be digested for a thousand years.

It has been a subject of debate within Star Wars fandom whether he should survive that, with some stating that that was his death in the movie and any return was purely a retcon. While it may be the case that he wasn't intended to come back, you only have to look a little closer at that so-called death sentence to realize just how likely Boba Fett was to escape.

The sarlacc pit digests its victims for a thousand years. For some reason, this always gives me the impression that everyone ingested is stuck for that whole time, and I even tend to imagine they'll live through the whole thing despite that obviously not being possible for most species. In reality, you could have at least a day or two to escape before you die from a combination of the heat, stomach acid, and lack of any food or drink. Boba Fett is an expert bounty hunter, despite how he didn't do more than show off for the most part in the original Star Wars trilogy. He was shown to have a number of tools at his disposal even in his limited time, so it seems nearly impossible that something as simple as that fall into a fairly long ticking clock would kill him.