The Star Wars canon continuity is rolling back on its reimagining of the planet Dathomir. Dathomir was introduced in the Legends continuity during the Star Wars franchise’s renaissance of Legends material in the 1990s, but the world was significantly changed in canon’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars, resulting in a far more uniform and far less interesting version of the Force-rich planet. The Clone Wars’ reimagined depiction of Dathomir was featured in Jedi: Fallen Order as well, but recent canon material, such as The Book of Boba Fett, appears to be gradually bringing Dathomir and its population of witches back to its Legends-era depiction.
The Star Wars franchise has two major timelines: canon and Legends. The latter was previously called the Expanded Universe, and its rebranding as the alternate Legends timeline came in 2014, in preparation for the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Legends is overall more in tune with the characterizations and storylines of the original and prequel trilogies than canon and has far fewer continuity issues, but 2008’s The Clone Wars (not to be confused with the 2003 micro series) created numerous contradictions in the Legends timeline, despite being a deservedly beloved TV series. Since Legends comprehensively depicted the Clone Wars-era before the 2008 series, many fans consider the newer Clone Wars series to only be part of the post-2014 canon timeline.
In The Book of Boba Fett “Chapter 3: The Secrets of Mos Espa,” Boba Fett is gifted a rancor by Jabba the Hutt’s cousins, The Twins. As he bonds with his new adoptee, the rancor’s keeper references Dathomir and its witches with Legends-era terminology, which, when combined with a recent canon short story collection, indicates that those working on the canon timeline wish to change Dathomir back to its original incarnation, but this might not be possible, given how extensive the changes are. The terrain, population, and culture of Dathomir were significantly altered for the canon timeline by The Clone Wars, but perhaps there are ways the canon can tweak the world to be closer to Legends.
Dathomir In Star Wars Legends Explained
Debuting in the 1994 novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, Dathomir is an obscure Outer Rim world of varying terrains, but it’s best known for its vast forests. Despite its beauty and variety of biomes, Dathomir was the homeworld of extremely dangerous predators, such as the gaping spider and Star Wars' infamous rancor. Although Dathomir was also home to the sapient Kwa species, the planet was best-known for its clans of human witches who were as varied as the planet’s terrain. The Witches of Dathomir descended from a Jedi Knight named Allya who was exiled to Dathomir during a time when the planet was a penal colony. Originally known as the “Daughters of Allya,” the Witches of Dathomir formed numerous clans throughout Dathomir, and while most used the Force, following Allya’s mantra of “Never concede to evil,” some clans used the dark side of the Force.
Dark side users were exiled from their clans, thus forming groups of their own, such as the Nightsisters and the Spiderclan. Like their Force-using counterparts, the dark side clans consisted of human women (descendants of Allya and Dathomir’s non-Force-sensitive human male population) who referred to their Force powers as “spells.” The Witches of Dathomir had a close bond with the planet’s rancor population (and, in the Spiderclan’s case, gaping spiders), empathizing with them through the Force or its dark side and riding them through the forests and into battle in many cases. Following the Battle of Endor and the Galactic Empire’s descent into warlordism, Dathomir was part of Warlord Zsinj’s contingent of the Empire, though he and his Nightsister allies were defeated in battle against the New Republic and Singing Mountain Clan, which freed Dathomir from Imperial rule and resulted in Zsinj’s death.
How The Clone Wars Changed Dathomir In Star Wars Canon
Season 3 of The Clone Wars reimagined Dathomir, its witches, its native species, and two unrelated dark side users. Following her betrayal by her Sith Master, Dooku, Asajj Ventress fled to Dathomir for safety. The world was no longer depicted as a varied world of forests, mountains, and oceans, but rather a uniformly red world of misty swamplands and rocky ruins. Rather than a wide variety of witch clans, Dathomir’s population was exclusively the dark side-using Nightsisters. Rather than being the homeworld Kwa and humans descended from prisoners, Dathomir’s sapient species was the “Dathomirian,” whose males looked similar to Iridonia’s Zabraks and whose females resembled pale humans. Dathomirians were generally Force-sensitive, with males joining a group called the “Nightbrothers.” The Rattataki Asajj Ventress was retconned into being a Nightsister, while the Iridonian Zabrak Darth Maul was made into a Nightbrother, and both were retroactively made Dathomirians.
How Star Wars Canon Is Fixing The Clone Wars' Dathomir Mistake
The Clone Wars’ depiction of Dathomir remained the norm in canon and was featured prominently in Jedi: Fallen Order. The 2020 anthology book The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark, however, challenged this in the short story “Bug.” The story described Dathomir similarly to Legends, mentioning the world’s forests, savannahs, and valleys, as well as other clans of witches, such as the Blue Coral Divers Clan and the Singing Mountain Clan, both of which originated in Legends. The rancor keeper in The Book of Boba Fett specifically mentions the Witches of Dathomir, rather than calling them Nightsisters, and describes them as riding rancor through forests as they did in Legends. These recent canon materials harken back to Dathomir’s original and far more interesting depiction, perhaps unintentionally acknowledging that the reimagining in The Clone Wars did a disservice to the world.
Despite this apparent return to Dathomir’s Legends-era depiction in Star Wars, it’s difficult to imagine how the Legends version of the planet can coincide with its reimaged iteration shown in The Clone Wars and Jedi: Fallen Order. Establishing views of Dathomir show a uniform biome of the world’s signature red swamplands, and the Dathomirian species not only removes the planet’s history as a penal colony and the human witches but irreversibly changed the original Rattataki and Iridonian Zabrak origins of Asajj Ventress and Darth Maul, respectively. Perhaps in future Star Wars canon properties, Dathomir’s depiction will blend its Clone Wars reimagining with its original Legends incarnation, and the Witches of Dathomir will have a variety of clans, populated by canon’s Dathomirian species.