With each addition to the Star Wars franchise, there has been new creatures or droids that have delighted audiences and found their way onto lunchboxes and pajamas. Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be the same. The fandom’s obsession with the movie’s creature du jour is in full swing before the flick hits theaters.
Moments after The Last Jedi’s new trailer was dropped, it started: porg mania.
The little creature, a Furby-esque creature which is native to the world where Rey and Luke Skywalker had met by the end of The Force Awakens, shows up for a second in the trailer, but its cry from the cockpit of Millennium Falcon was all it took. This was followed by tweets, memes, and fan arts. There was no escaping the giant saucer eyes and flapping wings.
The reaction was by design. Like the studio did with BB-8 before Force Awakens, Lucasfilm had been touting porgs as a New Cute Thing. It started in July when a D23 video had shown the bugger in development.
That was followed by a piece on StarWars.com that had touted “We know only one truth: We love porgs” and offered an explanation of the cuteness from Lucasfilm story group’s Pablo Hidalgo.
“Porgs are native to Ahch-To,” he explained. “In many ways, they’re the Star Wars version of puffins. They build nests. They can fly. Their babies are called porglets. You fall into those deep, soulful eyes. I think a lot of people are going to want a porg as a pet.”
The porgåsbord has continued with Lucasfilm and announced upcoming porg toys, Tumblr brimming up with fan tributes and director Rian Johnson talking about how a group of porgs is called “a murder”. People were so invested in these creatures that they slid into Johnson’s mentions with frustrations that the director had got a Twitter hastag avatar for his name while one did not exist for the little guy.
The nerd war has not been fought yet but we will not know the outcome until Star Wars: The Last Jedi hits theaters on December 15.
