Small Details You Missed In The Last Jedi

It was clear as soon as Luke Skywalker tossed away his old lightsaber that The Last Jedi was not going to be a movie about hidden secrets and clever Easter eggs. From that moment on, any speculation about the history of Supreme Leader Snoke or Rey's parentage—or most of the big Star Wars questions left lingering after The Force Awakens—was given a mighty "who cares?" by director Rian Johnson.

Still, The Last Jedi is a film that's filled to the brim with callbacks and nods to obscure aspects of Star Wars continuity. Here are just a few.

You may not have noticed them before, but Han's golden dice finally get their moment to shine. They first appeared in A New Hope, dangling in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, but were never really seen clearly through the rest of the trilogy. Nevertheless, they became so legendary that they even got their own trading card, mentions in a few Star Wars books, and even made the news when it came to properly rebuilding the Millennium Falcon in The Force Awakens. But because we've never actually seen these things up close, it's always just been assumed that they're, well, basic human dice. Turns out they're covered with alien symbols instead of pips. Sorry, Chewie—those expensive replicas you bought are now non-canon.

Luke Skywalker's love of milk is almost a central theme of the Star Wars saga. When he first appears on Tatooine as a lowly moisture farmer, he's all about the blue milk, which comes from Banthas, the hirsute mounts of the Tusken Raiders. Blue milk even makes an appearance in Attack of the Clones and Rogue One, so you can be sure that there are strong bones and teeth across that entire galaxy far, far away. This time around, however, on the secluded planet of Ahch-To, Luke's getting into the green stuff. In a weirdly gratuitous milking scene, Luke takes it upon himself to squeeze some green milk from a horrifically anatomically correct animal. Breakfast of champions, Luke.

There's a lot going on on the island that housed the first and last Jedi temple, and not a lot of it is actually addressed in the two-plus hours of The Last Jedi.

Luke made himself at home on Ahch-To after Kylo Ren went berserk and killed (or enlisted) all of Luke's Jedi trainees. Luke had no intention of leaving the planet, submerging his X-Wing off the coast of his small island home, similar to what happened to the ship on Dagobah during his own training with Yoda, and if his dedication to isolation wasn't clear enough, he even ripped off a part of his ship's wing so it could serve as a door for his rock hut.

And if there was any real question that Ahch-To was where Luke would end his journey, the answer was in what appear to be the planet's twin suns. In a powerful callback to the moment Luke began to realize his purpose in A New Hope, an aging Jedi Master Luke looks into a dual-sunned sky under the same swelling John Williams score. Everything comes full circle.

The Force Awakens didn't do much to explain the weirdos hanging out with Kylo Ren. They're seen once in a vision, hyped up in the press surrounding The Force Awakens... and never seen again. One might think that Kylo Ren would have his top dudes at his side while hunting down Rey and Luke, but he sticks to more military and spiritual options instead. But at least we kind of finally know who they are, or were, thanks to The Last Jedi. Kylo Ren's personal goth squad are the Jedi from Luke's training academy, or at least the ones who weren't killed by Kylo himself. Why did they join him? Why weren't they killed? Was it a resistance planned all along? Who knows? But at least we know where most of them came from now.

Star Wars has a well-documented love of chopping off body parts, and why shouldn't it? When you're swinging around laser swords that cut through metal and rock like butter, you're going to lose a few parts. And no villain lost their body parts more unceremoniously than Darth Maul, a guy poised to be a badass villain who was instead chopped in half and thrown down a hole after only a few lines of dialogue. Maul's lines, by the way, were originally going to be voiced by Benicio del Toro, who left The Phantom Menace after most of his dialogue was taken away—and who finally makes his triumphantly weird Star Wars debut in The Last Jedi as DJ.

But back to being bisected by lightsabers. Snoke's unexpected death after doing a lot of showboating brings back very clear memories of Maul. So let's all raise a glass to Supreme Leader Snoke: he was around, he kinda did stuff, he was ugly, and nobody really knows who he was. But hey, if Darth Maul can come back with a robot booty, anybody can.

It's not only humanoid body parts that get the switcheroo, it's also robot parts. You can pretty much track which Star Wars film you're watching based on C-3PO's appearance. Is he all wires and junk? Phantom Menace. Does he have an unexplained silver leg? The Original Trilogy. Does he have a similarly unexplained red arm that the film draws attention to and intentionally refuses to explain (but is explained in a later comic book)? The Force Awakens. And when that arm becomes gold again without any explanation because someone forgot to CGI it in? Well, that's The Force Awakens too, but also The Last Jedi. Sure, it'll be retconned in some visual dictionary or junior novelization eventually, but droids hot-swapping body parts in the middle of a galactic war? There are better things to do.

We know that pretty much everyone who appeared in Rogue One is dead, hero and villain alike, and that includes Admiral Raddus, the Mon Calamari officer of The Profundity, a ship used in the battle to get the Death Star's plans to the rebels. Yes, seeing a squid-headed alien at the helm of a powerful ship was an obvious callback (or forward) to Admiral Ackbar's days of shouting "It's a trap!" on the bridge of his own rebel ship, but The Last Jedi took it just a little bit deeper.

The cumbersomely-named Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary reveals that one of the major ships in the battle scene in The Last Jedi is called the Raddus, named so at the behest of Ackbar himself in honor of the hero that came before him.

When you're building a universe of made-up languages, it's pretty easy to come up with words that aren't homophones ... except if you're Star Wars. Krayt dragons have been canonical to the saga since A New Hope, when we see the enormous skeleton of one as Threepio is wandering the Tatooine desert. Obi-Wan Kenobi makes a Krayt dragon noise to scare off a bunch of filthy Tusken Raiders. Even skeletonized, they're probably one of the coolest alien creatures in Star Wars, right after Max Rebo.

So when the rebels decide to hole up in an old base on a salt planet called Crait, which has absolutely nothing to do with the dragons of the same-sounding name, it's a sure indication that the entire galaxy has just run out of new words. But with names like Doda Bodonawieedo, Yarna d'al' Gargan, and Eeth Koth, that may have been apparent decades ago.

Last but not least are the things that can possibly, maybe be considered Easter eggs: celebrity cameos. And just like in The Force Awakens, there are a few to watch out for.

Justin Theroux barely makes an appearance as the unnamed, gambling Master Codebreaker. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards makes an appearance as a resistance fighter, and the massive army of bad guys includes Game of Thrones' Ralph Ineson as a bridge officer and Tom Hardy as a Stormtrooper, alongside musician Gary Barlow and Princes Harry and William. Also rumored to be hidden in the film somewhere are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Edgar Wright. And no Star Wars film would be complete without a Warwick Davis appearance, this time as Wodibin, a gambler on Canto Bight.

There was a lot going on during the Canto Bight scenes, so you'd be forgiven for missing one particular cameo–Carrie Fisher's dog, Gary. Well, even if you saw the alien dog onscreen, you may not have recognized it as anything special, because for one, it was just a dog, and for two, who knows what Carrie Fisher's dog looks like? Regardless, he was there. Director Rian Johnson confirmed that one of the aliens in the casino was holding a dog based on Fisher's own canine. Did it mean anything to the story? Nope! But it was a nice nod to the late Star Wars legend and a cool source of inspiration, if nothing else.

In Return of the Jedi, Luke got smacked by a blaster bolt while he was trying to escape Jabba's boat over the sarlacc pit. It happened right about here. But it didn't hurt him! Luckily, that laser bullet landed on Luke's fake hand, and Luke went right back to almost kicking the bad guys right into the sand.

In The Last Jedi, old, grumpy Luke is still one hand down, but if you look closely, especially at the part where Rey hands him his old lightsaber, you can see faint scorch marks on the back of his hand, a callback/reminder to young Skywalker's glory days in the original trilogy.

Speaking of Luke's fake hand, director Rian Johnson himself pointed out an inconsistency that may reveal more for the future of the franchise. After Force-projecting himself to Crait to deal with Kylo Ren, Luke vanishes from his rock, by all accounts becoming one with the Force. However, there was one detail missing from that scene. Or, rather, one sound. As Johnson put it, "We were in the other room saying, 'A steel hand should clunk to the ground.'"

Since Luke's prosthetic hand wasn't actually a part of him, it should have been left behind, just like his Jedi robe. Does that mean there's more to Luke's story? Probably not, but you can bet it'll spark a new round of theories before the next movie.

One of the Big Moments in The Last Jedi came when Yoda Force-called a lightning bolt down to scorch the sacred tree holding all those ancient Jedi books. Although Luke wanted to do it himself, he held back at the last moment out of fear of entirely erasing the ancient knowledge of the Jedi. Well, Yoda really did have the last laugh, as it turns out.

At the end of the film, as Finn is fishing around for a blanket to put over Rose, he opens a drawer holding all the Jedi texts that from the sacred tree. It gives a lot more meaning to Yoda's final line to Luke: "That library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess." It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but rest assured that the Jedi wisdom is safe and secure for a new generation of Force users.

Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo was certainly a short-lived addition to the Star Wars films even though, as we've noted, she's been lurking around the universe for quite awhile now. Although her choice of hair dye drew most of the audience's attention, the production actually put an insane amount of detail into her costume. Particularly her jewelry.

Quick history lesson: Holdo hails from the world of Gatalenta, a posh, upper-class planet that's never been in a movie before and was most likely made up simply to give Holdo a backstory. Be that as it may, Holdo never lost sight of her upbringing, and everything from her hair to her clothing harks back to her Gatalentian youth. Her bracelets, for example, are a map of the constellations seen from her homeworld. It's a crazy little detail that nobody would ever notice, just another small piece that adds to the overall texture of the universe.

When Rose and Finn are on Canto Bight, there's a quick moment where Rose flashes a Resistance symbol on her ring to convince a stable boy that they're good guys. Later in the movie, you see that the kid still has the ring, and he's also a mini stable Jedi who can Force sweep those space-horse stables all the livelong day, if he wants.

So where did a shy pipe cleaner get such nifty finger decor? As it turns out, it's an antique left over from the Galactic Civil War, which is basically everything that was happening during the original trilogy. Rings like that–with a secret switch that would reveal their Rebel ties–were worn by Senators who would flash the secret symbol to other Rebels to prove their allegiance.

One detail in The Last Jedi you probably missed was the necklace hanging around Poe's neck. The guy's basically hanging out with explosions most of the movie, so it's understandable if you missed that tiny detail. But it's there, and as usual, it has a backstory of its own. According to the visual dictionary for the film, there's a ring hanging from that chain–specifically, the wedding ring of Poe's mother, who went the way of the Jedi (so to speak) a few years after the battle of Endor. According to the book, Poe keeps the ring around so he can use it to propose to a pretty lady if he ever finds one.

Since that's an extremely random detail to just throw out there, and since Rey and Poe were all smiles with each other at the end of the movie, there's a good chance that old Mrs. Dameron's ring will find its way onto Rey's finger eventually. That, or she'll get cut in half with a lightsaber halfway through the next movie. Anything's possible these days, really.

Supreme Leader Snoke has come and gone, with nary a clue to his origins. Well, except for one...which, honestly, kind of lends some credence to all those "Snoke is Darth Plagueis" theories. For those who don't know, Darth Plagueis was the master of Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine, who eventually killed Plagueis during his rise to power.

You could only see it clearly in two or three shots, but Snoke was wearing a pretty weird-looking ring—located on his left hand, it had a gold base with a black stone rising out of it. According to The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary, the gold section is inscribed with "glyphs of the Dwartii." Dwartii is a planet that was home to the Sages of Dwartii, four mysterious philosophers who were apparently revered by the Sith, judging by the statues of them in Palpatine's office in Attack of the Clones. The novel Darth Plagueis also suggests that one of the statues belonged to Plagueis before Sidious killed him.

It isn't exactly a strong connection to Snoke, but the markings on Snoke's ring are literally one of the handful of times Dwartii have shown up in Star Wars. While it's doubtful that Snoke really is Darth Plagueis, the ring suggests there may still be some connection between the two.

Like a lot of other characters in The Last Jedi, Snoke's personal bodyguards, the Praetorian Guard, were introduced, then killed off without much explanation. Fortunately, these faceless red warriors made the most of their time onscreen and gave audiences one of the best fights of the franchise.

Amidst all the action, you may have missed a peculiar detail about the Praetorian Guards–although there are eight of them, they're organized into four pairs, with each pair dressed and armed with identical weapons. According to the Visual Dictionary, this was done to emphasize the symmetry of the First Order philosophy: "What is past is future."

It's long been known that Joseph Gordon-Levitt had a cameo in The Last Jedi, but if you missed it, you aren't alone–nobody ever said his character's name during the movie. In short, he voiced the alien on Canto Bight who narced on Finn and Rose because they left their shuttle on the beach, and his name was Slowen-Lo.

While his character isn't particularly important, his name is, only because it's part of an ongoing joke from the filmmakers to give certain Abednedo characters names that come from Beastie Boys songs. For example, you've got Ello Asty ("Hello Nasty"), Roodown ("Root Down"), and Brasmon Kee ("Brass Monkey") from The Force Awakens; Sowa Chuan ("So What'cha Want") from the Poe Dameron comics; and now Slowen-Lo ("Slow and Low") in The Last Jedi.

Have the Star Wars writers finally run out of ideas for names? Not even close–that happened way back whenever Salacious B. Crumb showed up.

If you've ever wondered who the first Jedi was, you're not alone. Googling it awards you with a million pounds of nonsense, and Wookiepedia doesn't exactly offer any shovels to dig your way out with. But The Last Jedi may have an answer. On the floor of the Jedi temple on Luke's island of Ahch-To is a mosaic of the Prime Jedi, the first guy to be part of the Jedi Order. It shows up in several scenes during the movie, most clearly when Luke is telling Rey his first abridged version of the "We Need to Talk About Kylo" story.

So who is the Prime Jedi? Does he have a name? Unfortunately, the movie doesn't have any explanations there, but at least now we can safely say he existed, and he probably wasn't human.

Benicio del Toro's character, D.J., is definitely an enigma. He showed up, got Finn and Rose onto Snoke's ship, then sold out the Resistance and skipped out all the richer for it. But for those paying close attention, his moral ambiguity was front and center the whole time. In fact, it was practically written on his forehead.

You may have caught the metal plate on the right side of D.J.'s headgear, but unless you paused the movie in the theaters, you probably missed the inscription on it: Don't Join. Yup, that's what he told Finn, and it's D.J.'s whole philosophy, up to and including his name–D.J., a.k.a. Don't Join. This guy has no sides, and he doesn't want any.

Just before Chewie knocks in Luke's door on Ahch-To near the beginning of the film, the camera moves through Luke's hut and rests on a few of his belongings. Some fans were quick to notice that a necklace hanging in the hut seemed to contain a red kyber crystal–the crystal used to power lightsabers. Turns out, that's exactly what it is, but the story actually doesn't end there. Going back to the film's visual dictionary, it's described as a fragmented Sith lightsaber crystal, but the necklace itself is a Jedi Crusader pendant.

That's significant. When Disney purchased Star Wars, the head honchos purged most of the Extended Universe from the official canon, including fan favorite video games like Knights of the Old Republic. Although there have been hints that KotOR specifically was creeping its way back into canon, this may be the biggest indicator of that yet. See, the Jedi Crusaders were a Jedi faction introduced in Knights—they were also known as the Revanchist, named after their leader Revan, a Jedi who eventually succumbed to the dark side and became Darth Revan.

Does this tiny detail in The Last Jedi reinstate Revan as a canonical character? Fans can only hope.

From the porgs to those milk-producing alien seals, Ahch-To is filled with weird critters, and one of the most mysterious species on the island has to be the Caretakers—those alien maids who take care of the old Jedi village. Officially known as the Lanais, the Caretakers have watched over the island for thousands of years.

There's also a clue to the Lanais' history in an unexpected place: their feet. Aside from the coloring and the lack of webbing, the Lanais have nearly the exact same bird-like feet as the porgs, because they actually share a common ancestor. According to The Visual Dictionary for the film, "They evolved from the same evolutionary stock of seabirds that produced the unintelligent porgs."

In the realm of Star Wars one-liners, the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this" ranks right up there with "May the Force be with you" and "I hate sand." The line popped up twice in A New Hope, and it's since appeared in some form in every single Star Wars movie.

So the line's apparent omission in The Last Jedi came as a surprise, but rest assured, it was in there—it just wasn't said by a human. Rian Johnson confirmed that the line was spoken by BB-8 during the scene when Poe Dameron attacks the First Order Dreadnought, to which Dameron replies, "Happy beeps here, buddy. Come on."

Speaking of BB-8, The Last Jedi snuck in another reference by way of the crafty little droid, this time during the sequence in which Finn and Rose infiltrate Snoke's ship dressed as First Order officers. BB-8 disguises himself by rolling around under an upturned trash can, which makes him look like any of the other countless maintenance droids scuttling around the Destroyer's halls.

Except his disguise isn't meant to be just any other droid—it's an MSE-6 repair droid, otherwise known as a mouse droid (or a toaster droid, depending on who you ask). Those droids first appeared on Imperial ships in A New Hope, and BB-8 even tries to mimic the beeping noises made by those specific units.

The planet Crait isn't a snow world, but it bears some similarities to the galaxy's frozen planets, specifically in the blinding white salt layer that covers its surface. And if you pay attention to the stormtroopers marching into the Resistance base, it's apparent that the First Order didn't neglect to notice those similarities. Instead of sending regular stormtroopers after the fleeing rebels, they deployed snowtroopers, who have helmets designed to reduce glare.

The first snowtroopers were seen on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, although it was only later that they were referred to by that name.

There was a lot going on during the assault on the First Order Dreadnought at the beginning of The Last Jedi, and between all the lasers and space explosions you probably missed one super tiny detail: Some of the bombs the Resistance was trying to drop on the Dreadnought had handwritten messages on them.

Even if you did see them, the chances of deciphering those messages in the theater were next to nil, since they were written in Aurebesh, the squiggly writing system that shows up in the Star Wars franchise. But in the off chance that you brushed up on your Aurebesh before sitting down to watch The Last Jedi, you were probably one of the few people on the planet to catch the phrase "Han says hi" written on one of the bombs.

The addition of an upgraded model of AT-AT walkers on Crait was a nice detail for fans of the old movies. These new walkers are AT-M6s, and as you can see, they've had a few design upgrades in the 30 years or so since the events of The Empire Strikes Back.

One of the most important? Extra armor on the legs. Design supervisor Kevin Jenkins explained that the AT-M6 walkers were upgraded for the exact reason you'd expect: to prevent speeders from tripping them up with tow lines, like the Rebels learned to do on Hoth. As Jenkins told StarWars.com, "You can't take these down with a snow speeder."

There were a ton of artifacts in Luke's hut on Ahch-To, and like the Crusader pendant, many of them were Jedi relics that Luke picked up in his travels before settling down on the island. One of these was a silver compass, which was visible for a few frames in the hut. It doesn't look like much, but fans of the Battlefront games may have recognized it as the same compass Luke took from an underground vault during one of the missions in Battlefront II.

The game's story has Luke travel to the planet Pillio, where he makes his way into a cave that holds a trove of Force-sensitive relics stockpiled by the Emperor. Even though most of it looks like junk, Luke singles out the compass and takes it with him. Presumably, the compass is what ultimately led Luke to the first Jedi Temple on Ahch-To, which is where we finally see it laid to rest among Luke's possessions.

After an epic (if abrupt) sendoff, Captain Phasma has departed for shinier pastures without offering any hints to her backstory, as so many fans wished for. If you want to learn more about Phasma's origin, you'll have to go through the trouble of reading about it, in a book, like a total drain on society. Even Luke hates reading, so we know we're in good company.

That said, Phasma does have a past, and The Last Jedi shows us some of the fruits of that past life, even if it never explicitly explains any of it. Specifically, Phasma's chromium armor comes from her early days in the fledgling First Order, when Hux took command of a chrome-plated Imperial yacht that had once been used by Emperor Palpatine. Phasma later used parts from the ship's chromium hull to craft her own unique armor, both to set her apart from the other stormtroopers and to link the First Order with the Empire by giving Palpatine's personal ship a new purpose.

Fans are split right down the middle about Leia's use of the Force to fly through space in The Last Jedi. You know what else was split right down the middle? Snoke's ship, the Supremacy. And believe it or not, those two scenes have a secret link that most audiences completely missed.

When Leia soars back onto the bridge of the Raddus after getting blasted into space, her body passes through a hologram of the Supremacy. As she does, the damaged hologram glitches and distorts—on the exact same lines that the real ship would later in the film, when Holdo sends her ship hyperspeeding into the First Order flagship. It's a subtle bit of foreshadowing that's practically impossible to pick out without a second viewing.

One of the core plot devices in The Last Jedi is the First Order's ability to track ships through hyperspace, an ability that most of the characters (and audience) believed to be impossible. There's a brief mention of the technology coming from research done by the Empire, but other than that, it feels like a new trick introduced purely for The Last Jedi.

Well, it turns out that the tech needed to track a vessel across hyperspace has been mentioned before, but to find that reference, you need to turn to a different movie altogether: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Released a year before The Last Jedi, Rogue One features a brief scene in which Jyn Erso is trying to hunt down the plans for the Death Star. She shuffles through a bunch of unrelated projects, reading them out as she goes. One of them is a plan for hyperspace tracking.

At the time of Rogue One's release, nobody batted an eye, but now that it's become a major plot point in Episode VIII, it makes for a crazy Easter egg spanning multiple films.