Why The Hutts Love Using Rancors So Much

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett episode 3!

While rancors have always been associated with Jabba the Hutt, The Book of Boba Fett season 1, episode 3, “Chapter 3” emphasized that all Hutts seem to love the reptilian beasts. Rancors are carnivores from the planet Dathomir. In contrast to their threatening appearance, rancors are usually peaceful and can even be domesticated as pets. However, many of their owners, such as Jabba, instead train them to become violent and breed them for fighting.

Until The Book of Boba Fett episode 3, the most well-known rancor in the Star Wars franchise was Pateesa, Jabba’s male rancor in Return of the Jedi. Jabba kept Pateesa in a dungeon beneath his throne room, where he could watch as it ate his enemies. However, when Jabba tried to feed Luke Skywalker to Pateesa, Luke managed to kill the rancor. Additionally, Clone Force 99 rescued Muchi, an adolescent female rancor, from slave traders in Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 1, episode 5, “Rampage.” Muchi was also owned by Jabba and returned to him through his majordomo, Bib Fortuna, after her rescue.

The Book of Boba Fett episode 3 introduced a new rancor to Star Wars canon. In the latest episode, two Hutts, simply referred to as “The Twins,” apologized to Fett for sending a Wookiee assassin to kill him by gifting a rancor. After placing the rancor in the same cell that Jabba had used, Fett immediately began bonding with it, even telling the rancor’s keeper that he wanted to learn to ride it. Given both Jabba’s and The Twins’ behavior toward rancors, this raises the question of why the Hutts love rancors so much. Possible reasons include not only rancors’ usefulness as tools of fear but their role as status symbols.

One of the main reasons the Hutts historically use rancors was due to the fear they caused in others. In Return of the Jedi, most of those who fell into Pateesa’s cell were instantly terrified, including both a Twi’lek dancer and a Gamorrean guard. In The Book of Boba Fett season 1, episode 2, Fennec Shand dropped an assassin into the dungeon. Not knowing that the rancor cage was empty, the assassin revealed information simply at the mention of the beast. In this way, rancors serve as a way for the Hutts to instill fear and maintain control over their enemies.

In addition, owning a rancor seems to be a status symbol among the Hutts. In the comic, High Republic Adventures #6, a Jedi and his pilot were attacked by a blue rancor, which was the pet of Skarabda the Hutt. Marvel Comics’ High Republic series also featured a Hutt who owned two rancors she had trained for battle. This suggests that the Hutts used rancors to show their power, which is supported by Jabba owning at least two rancors throughout the Star Wars timeline – Pateesa and Muchi. Due to this, The Twins giving Fett a rancor was their way of recognizing his status as the new crime lord in charge of Jabba’s territory. Although Fett hopes to develop a bond with his rancor, The Book of Boba Fett demonstrated that the Hutts use rancors only to instill fear and display their power.

New episodes of The Book of Boba Fett release Wednesdays on Disney+.

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