The Star Wars universe is so big these days that we’re still uncovering things we never knew anything about before. Today, that’s space dragons. And we don’t mean krayt dragons, like the one we saw a skeleton of in the series’ first ever movie. We mean massive, fire-breathing things that can travel through the vacuum of space.
Star Dragons, more properly known as Duinuogwuin, are among the most mysterious Star Wars species. But they’re also among the coolest Star Wars characters we’ve ever come across. They live for up to 6,000 years and can survive in the vacuum of space for months while traveling. So they’re just like the Purrgil we met in Ahsoka, right? Well sort of, except some of them even had atomic breath like Godzilla. As if they weren’t already brilliant.
The creatures were first mentioned as part of the Star Wars Legends continuity, but they became part of the official canon when they were mentioned in the 2021 novel The High Republic: The Rising Storm. So that raises the prospect of future Star Wars movies and Star Wars series including these fiery beasties.
In their Legends incarnation, the Star Dragons attacked Coruscant as part of an enormous conflict triggered when scouts from the Galactic Republic were terrified to discover them and hastily fled back to the Republic capital.
Eventually, though, the destruction gave way to peace talks. Borz’Mat’oh of the Star Dragons made a deal with the Republic’s supreme chancellor, Fillorean, to bring an end to the violence. Ultimately, Borz’Mat’oh and Fillorean founded the University of Coruscant together.
Yup, that’s right. These are space dragons with atomic breath who also have the intelligence to found institutions of academic excellence. Why haven’t we seen these guys in any of the new Star Wars movies yet?
In fact, the only remnants of the Duinuogwuin in Lucasfilm’s universe are the krayt dragons. These creatures, which popped up in The Mandalorian as well as the skeleton in A New Hope, are believed to be the descendants of a less intelligent group of Duinuogwuin, which settled on Tatooine.
When we saw a krayt dragon in The Mandalorian, it looked more like the sort of sandworms we’ve seen in Dune – and will see again when the Dune 2 release date finally comes around – than the more “traditional” dragons represented by the Duinuogwuin.
We’ll continue to hold out hope that we’ll get our fire-breathing, nuclear-powered, flying badasses in new movies at some point in the future. In the meantime, we’ll just have to make do with watching the Star Wars movies in order yet again. They never get old, even without dragons.
For further reading, you can find out more about the Star Wars cast with us as we explain how John Wayne was actually in Star Wars and reveal why we think the new Star Wars movie needs John Boyega. And if all of this has made you just really keen on flying fire-breathers, check out our guide to House of the Dragon season 2.