Jakku

The planet was first seen in the 88-second The Force Awakens teaser trailer released by Lucasfilm in November 2014.[1][2][3] 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.[1]

Jakku is a major setting in the 2015 Star Wars film The Force Awakens[4] and its novelization.[5][6] The homeworld of main character Rey, it is a harsh and inhospitable desert planet on the outskirts of the galaxy.[7] In the film, Resistance X-wing fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) comes to Jakku seeking vital information held by explorer Lor San Tekka (Max von Sydow).[8] 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 stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), but Poe is presumed dead when their ship crashes in the desert. Meanwhile, BB-8 has befriended local scavenger Rey (Ridley); 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 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. 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 (one shown in The Force Awakens) 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.[9][10] In early concept development stages, the planet was conceived as a "junk planet" which would have "wreckage from the previous Star Wars movies".[11]

Jakku was first introduced in two novels released on September 4, 2015: Chuck Wendig's Star Wars: Aftermath (2015) and Claudia Gray's Lost Stars. 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.[1] The battle is also depicted in the final book in Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, Empire's End (2017),[12][13] 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.[14] The reference book The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary establishes that this battle occurs one year and four days after the Battle of Endor depicted in Return of the Jedi, 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.[15]

Jakku appears or is mentioned in multiple other works, including Rey's Survival Guide (2015) and The Weapon of a Jedi (2015) by Jason Fry, and the 2015 short stories "High Noon on Jakku" (2015) and "All Creatures Great and Small" by Landry Q. Walker.[1]

The 2015 action shooter video game Star Wars Battlefront features downloadable content (DLC) titled Battle of Jakku,[16][17] which includes two maps set on the planet.[18] Jakku also features in the 2017 sequel action shooter video game Star Wars Battlefront II as a non-DLC map titled Starship Graveyard, with 4 different gamemode variants. Jakku is also a location in the two Lego-themed action-adventure video games 2016's Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the upcoming 2020's Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.[19]

The planet is featured in a Lego Star Wars playset called Encounter on Jakku.[20][21]

Jakku appears in the Disney Parks and Resorts attraction Star Tours – The Adventures Continue.[22][23]