Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Mandalorian season 2, episode 2, "Chapter 10 - The Passenger." 

Giant white, ice spiders appear in The Mandalorian season 2, episode 2, and aside from being terrifying they're also based on original concept art and plans for The Empire Strikes Back. The Mandalorian season 2 episode "The Passenger" continues the story of Din Djarin and Baby Yoda, as the former attempts to find more Mandalorians who can help him reunite the latter with his kind. Having retrieved Boba Fett's armor from the Marshal, Cobb Vanth, Mando sets upon a new course, accompanied this time by an alien creature, known as Frog Lady.

Naturally, things go awry in the episode, which sees Din pursued by two New Republic X-wing pilots and having to make a sudden landing on an unknown ice planet. This world was the subject of intense speculation after it first appeared in The Mandalorian season 2's trailers, although theories of it being Ilum, the planet that becomes Starkiller Base, are seemingly laid to rest here. But more interesting than what the planet is, is what's living on it.

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A freezing Frog Lady takes herself off for a bath in some kind of thermal pool, which leads an apparently always hungry Baby Yoda to stumble across some eggs. He eats the contents of one, but then the others all begin to hatch, and hell (or rather, spiders, though there's not much difference in the episode) break loose. While many are smaller, there is one giant white spider, presumably the mother, who harks back to original plans for The Empire Strikes Back, and has influenced other parts of Star Wars media.

The White Spiders In The Empire Strikes Back Concept Art

The Empire Strikes Back Spiders Concept Art

When working on The Empire Strikes Back, concept art Ralph McQuarrie designed a wide-range of creatures who could be inhabitants of Dagobah. The swamp planet was a unique environment, especially at the time, so it makes sense that there'd be a great variety of possibilities for the world when it came to its fauna. That was part of the original idea, anyway, but the plan for what Dagobah would be inhabited by shifted when The Empire Strikes Back started production and the Dagobah set was built at Elstree Studios. Instead of the otherworldly creatures that McQuarrie had designed, Dagobah was populated with more recognizable animals, such as the vine snake, the sleen, and the nudj. That meant several of the monster-ish elements McQuarrie had drawn didn't end up being used in The Empire Strikes Back, including what was referred to as the "knobby white spider." The concept art showed Luke Skywalker next to the spider, suggesting that there might have been a horrifying encounter in store for the fledgling Jedi, though he faced plenty of other terrors on Dagobah.

The White Spiders In Star Wars Legends

Star Wars Legends Giant White Spider

As with many plans and ideas for Star Wars movies, the design for the giant white spider in The Empire Strikes back wasn't totally wasted after it failed to materialize in the movie itself. Instead, the Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends) fleshed it out, with the knobby white spider being more properly introduced in the 1995 novel Darksaber, by Kevin J. Anderson, part of a trilogy following the exploits of a character called Callista Ming. In Darksaber, Callista is aided by Luke Skywalker on a quest, which involves travelling to Dagobah, where the knobby white spider is mentioned.

Anderson would return to Dagobah and the idea of the knobby white spider in a later book, also published in 1995, called The Illustrated Star Wars universe, which included lots of unused and re-purposed Ralph McQuarrie concept art - including the spider from The Empire Strikes Back. Here, Anderson fleshed out the creature, giving it an even more surprising story than its already scary size and appearance would suggest. Rather than being an actual spider in and of itself, the knobby white spider was the root of a gnarltree. As the tree grew, the spider could detach itself, becoming a mobile root that then acted independently as a predator, using its giant stinger to help capture food. This was all part of the gnarltree cycle; once the spider had enough nutrients, it would bed back down and a fresh tree would grow from its legs, beginning the process anew, although this would leave it prone to attack from some of Dagobah's other predators.

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The knobby white spider made a few further appearance in Star Wars Legends, although not quite so detailed. Although much smaller in size, spiders similar in design to the knobby white spider appeared in the video game Star Wars: Rogue Squadrons III: Rebel Strike, during the Trials of the Jedi part of Luke Skywalker's campaign. Further re-inforcing the idea that Luke may have had to face a spider on Dagobah, it sees him training with Yoda on the swamp planet, fighting off several of the creatures, who have some resemblance to the smaller spiders seen in The Mandalorian season 2, episode 2.

How Star Wars Canon Has Referenced Empire Strikes Back's Spiders

Star Wars Rebels Giant White Spider Krykna

Much like the old EU, Star Wars canon has found use for many of Ralph McQuarrie's unused designs. In particular, the entire animation design of Star Wars Rebels is heavily influenced by the style McQuarrie used when developing concept art for the original Star Wars trilogy. The character of Zeb, a member of the Lasat species, is based on an early drawing of Chewbacca, Rebels' lightsabers are thinner because of McQuarrie's designs, and even the original plan for Luke Skywalker - as an old general - was featured in the show. It's not too much of a surprise, then, that before The Mandalorian season 2 did it, Star Wars Rebels made use of the knobby white spider from The Empire Strikes Back, turning it into a creature known as the krykna.

Similar in shape and size, although a little more refined, the krykna first appeared in Star Wars Rebels season 2, episode 12, "The Mystery of Chopper Base," where the Ghost crew encounter them on their native planet of Atollan. Unlike the white spiders in The Mandalorian, the krykna were largely resistant to blaster fire, unless hit in one of their many eyes (which is just what Sabine Wren does), though they were sensitive to sensor beacons. The krykna would make a few more appearances in Rebels - including with the Force-sensitive Bendu, who lived in a nest of them. The krykna were difficult to control with the Force, although Bendu himself was able to manage it, likely because of his sense of balance; both Kanan and Ezra were shown to struggle with and fear the krykna, who fed off those feelings.

Star Wars canon has also introduced another fearsome, large spider creature that feels as though it owes some debt to the knobby white spider of The Empire Strikes Back: the Wyyyschokk, a spider that lives on the planet Kashyyyk and is encountered by Cal Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Though not quite as big in size as either the knobby white spider or the krykna, the creature, which originated in the EU, is nonetheless a powerful, dangerous beast that again feels in keeping with what McQuarrie had planned.

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How The Mandalorian Re-purposes The Empire Strikes Back's White Spiders

The Mandalorian Season 2 Giant Ice Spider

Much like Star Wars Rebels, The Mandalorian (which also counts Dave Filoni, Rebels' creator, among its creative team) has already made use of Ralph McQuarrie's Star Wars concept art before now, with graffiti in season 2 referencing the original white design of Boba Fett. That was a great Easter egg for fans, but the white spiders are much more prominent. Where The Empire Strikes Back had them on Dagobah, this transplants them to a very different arena: an unknown ice planet. Nonetheless, the create does have a strong resemblance to both the knobby white spider and the krykna. Indeed, the design of its head, with the longer, protruding mouth and teeth, means the live-action version is even closer to that of The Empire Strikes Back than the animated one.

It has been confirmed that they are different to the krykna by Lucasfilm's creative art manager Phil Szostak on Twitter, who noted that "They are new," but similarly inspired by the same original design of Ralph McQuarrie. Not a lot is known about the species, but they obviously lay a lot of eggs at one time, which the parent remains close by, and they're already a reasonable size when they hatch. As noted, the key difference with these white spiders is that they're easily killed by blaster bolts, which is good news for Mando, and they're also shown to be weak against fire as well. Still, it takes a lot to put the biggest of them down, once again making the sider into a terrifying and worthy opponent.

Aside from referencing The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Rebels, the sequence evokes memories of Aragog in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and of Shelob in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. The fact they're spiders on an ice planet also means The Mandalorian season 2 delivers something Game of Thrones failed to do - ice spiders as big as (well, even bigger than) hounds - meaning there's a lot of fantasy basis for the creatures.

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