Star Wars' Sarlacc Pit Gets A Heartbreaking Plot Twist (That Might Make You Cry)

There could be more to a disturbing "Star Wars" creature than we once suspected. As summarized by Comic Book Movie, "The Mouth That Never Closes," a story from the anthology "From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi" reveals that the Sarlacc Pit of Tattooine inadvertently found itself nestled on the desert planet after years of floating through space. Eventually, it drifted to the place where Jabba the Hutt found it and used it for his own sadistic purposes.

Though the "Star Wars" franchise is filled with memorable death scenes, few stick out as much as Boba Fett's (Jeremy Bulloch) in "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi." When his jetpack takes laser fire during a confrontation on Tattooine, it blasts the bounty hunter into the worst place imaginable: the Sarlacc Pit, where he is slowly digested alive.

At least, that was thought to be the case until "The Book of Boba Fett" confirmed that the fan-favorite character, played here by Temuera Morrison, actually survived this grim fate. Sadly, however, his escape leads to the incineration of the Sarlacc Pit itself. While this might not seem tragic to many viewers, Charlie Jane Anders' canon take on the mysterious creature reveals that it has no ill intentions for anyone.

Instead, Sarlaccs are revealed to be akin to dandelion seeds, drifting through the cosmos until they find a suitable spot to take root. While there has been some debate as to whether this makes the Sarlacc Pit an animal or a plant, it is shown to have a consciousness in the story.

Sarlaccs are also surprisingly long-lived. While the infamous 1,000-year digestion tale Jabba tells suggests that they can grow to be old already, the creatures don't even fully mature until they're 30,000 years old.  As the story reveals, Tatooine was once a more fertile planet long before the events of "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi." During these times, the Sarlacc fed more plentifully, but as the climate changed, food became more scarce.

As for the Sarlacc Pit itself, however, it is a sentient creature that has thoughts and feels emotions. Though it does eat those that fall into its gaping maw, it doesn't attack anyone of its own volition but just waits for food to come its way instead. Though the hardy creature survived the incineration, it was later bombed by Fennec Shand with a seismic charge from Boba Fett's new ship, which took it out for good.

While this might all seem like a larger, intergalactic version of our own kill-or-be-killed ecosystem of predators and prey, it does give fans a bit of sympathy for what might be one of the grossest and strangest "Star Wars" aliens. Either way, this creature is consigned to the realm of fiction at the very least, a fact that ought to be somewhat reassuring to viewers whose nightmares it has helped to inspire for decades.