history

When the first trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu dropped yesterday, one of its many creature-packed visuals seemingly confirmed one of the most absurd pieces of casting surrounding the movie: that The Bear star Jeremy Allen White would be entering the Star Wars galaxy as a grown-up Rotta the Hutt, last seen as a tiny baby Huttlet in the 2008 Clone Wars animated movie.

Adult Rotta and Star Wars‘ yearning penchant to revisit characters no matter how minor weren’t the distressing things about the moment in the trailer, however. It’s that, whether it’s Rotta or notta, that Hutt was swole.

But of course, this is not actually the first time Star Wars has ever engaged with the concept of a muscular Hutt—Rotta is just the latest in a long line of times the series has explored the idea of what happens if you give a space slug a six-pack.

Swole Hutts in the Expanded Universe

Leia and Beldorion’s duel depicted in The Essential Chronology. © Bill Hughes/Del Rey.

Swole Hutts were much less common in Star Wars‘ old Expanded Universe—they mostly formed a part of contemporary Hutt society’s ancient history, where the species was depicted as a mighty warrior race, carving out their military empire in what would eventually become the broader sector of Hutt Space. Eventually, infighting among the Hutts led to a devastating civil war known as the Hutt Cataclysms, which laid waste to the Hutts’ homeworld, Varl, and nearly took the Hutts with it.

The surviving Hutts founded a new homeworld, Nal Hutta, and transitioned from a martial-focused society to a clan-based system known in Huttese as “Kajidics.” With the formalization of the Kajidics, Hutt society promoted competition through economic enterprise rather than military might, radically overhauling the cultural value Hutts placed on raw physical strength.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have examples of swole Hutts in the EU. The 1997 novel Planet of Twilight introduced us to Beldorion, a former Jedi who abandoned the Order and fell to the dark side of the Force. When he was encountered by Leia Organa in the early days of the New Jedi Order, Beldorion was revealed to have been using the Force itself to sustain a lithe, muscular physical form, granting him immense strength and prowess in lightsaber combat, to account for his decayed control over the Force in other forms. Buff or not, Leia was able to defeat the Dark Jedi after a brief duel, bisecting him.

Swole Hutts in Modern Canon

© Guiu Vilanova, Dean White, Giada Marchisio, and Joe Caramagna/Marvel Comics

Swole Hutts, then, have become more commonplace in the modern, post-reboot Star Wars continuity, with Rotta becoming merely the latest in a line presenting a contrast to our typical vision of what Hutts look like.

Marvel’s Star Wars comics have served as a primary source of buff Hutts—just nine issues into the revitalized Star Wars ongoing back in 2015, we were introduced to Grakkus the Hutt, a crime lord obsessed with artifacts from the Jedi Order who attempted to add Luke Skywalker himself to his collection. Grakkus used a series of cybernetic legs to aid his mobility, but he was also incredibly physically strong and fit, proving to be much more sizeable than most depictions of Hutts. However, when Grakkus made a brief return during the events of the Poe Dameron comic series (set in the couple years running up to The Force Awakens), he was depicted more in line with the typical body type associated with Hutts after a lengthy period of imprisonment.

Elsewhere in the comics we were also introduced to Bokku the Hutt in the 2020 relaunch of the Darth Vader comic series. A ranking member on the Grand Hutt Council that guided Hutt civilization, Bokku was an extremely muscular Hutt who unfortunately crossed paths with Darth Vader in his attempts to locate the carbonite-frozen body of Han Solo. In the aftermath of an attempted auction of Solo’s body by the Crimson Dawn syndicate leader Lady Qi’ra, Bokku was slain by Vader.

That brings us to Rotta (or seemingly so, as the Hutt in the trailer has yet to be confirmed explicitly as such—although an appearance of the Desilijic clan emblem in the trailer heavily suggests a connection to Jabba’s family). The Mandalorian and Grogu actually marks the first time we’ve seen Rotta as an adult Hutt, having only appeared as a Huttlet during the events of the 2008 Clone Wars movie, where he was the subject of a kidnapping plot aided by the Separatist confederacy in an attempt to disrupt negotiations between Jabba and the Galactic Republic.

The intervening 30 years (and death of his father) have apparently been kind to Rotta: the trailer for the movie only gives us a brief, back-facing look at the Hutt as he roars before a screaming crowd in a combat arena, but he’s clearly trimmer and more muscularly defined compared to the typically presented Hutt body type.

Swole Hutts and Star Wars‘ History With Fatphobia

Grakkus the Hutt as he appeared in Star Wars #9 and Poe Dameron #4 © Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger, and Justin Ponsor/Phil Noto, Marvel Comics

The increased depiction of swole Hutts in Star Wars, especially to make them a contrasting design to the standard depictions of the species, does sit as part of a broader unfortunate Star Wars legacy: the franchise’s historical depiction of fat bodies, and typically how those portrayals play into shorthand for negative tropes.

Both the Expanded Universe and contemporary canon have played into this depiction of fatness as a reflection of negative traits when it comes to the Hutts. The idea of corpulence as a reflection of a Hutt’s power in criminal enterprise—the idea that as a Hutt acquires power, they are able to offload physical labor to associates, slaves, and mercenaries for hire—has long been a part of Hutt culture in both versions of canon, especially in light of their EU history as a martially driven species before turning to an economics-driven society.

Star Wars‘ depiction of Hutts in broad strokes spinning solely out of the original trilogy’s depiction of Jabba—leading to the general idea that most Hutts are criminals, and that in turn most Hutts are obese, and that these two facts are often associated—is just one aspect of many when it comes to the franchise typically depicting characters of size as amplifications, or as aspects, of their negative traits (another example would be The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett‘s depiction of Bib Fortuna, who was portrayed as having gained a significant amount of weight during his brief reign overseeing Jabba’s criminal empire after his death).

It’s also more nuanced than simply depicting characters of size as inherently villainous—there are overweight characters who are heroes, like X-Wing pilot Jek Porkins (unfortunate name aside) in A New Hope—but the idea of wanting to depict outwardly muscular Hutts as a specific contrast to the body norms usually associated with the species does at least speak to an element of wanting to move beyond cheap, lazy stereotyping. If anything, there probably should be plenty more muscular Hutts, given the strength required to move their large, gastropod frames in the first place.

Perhaps Rotta, Grakkus, and Bokku will simply be some of the first steps towards that kind of more nuanced depiction of Hutts. Well… maybe more of a first slither?

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