This Wild New Planet In 'The Last Jedi' Is Basically A Giant Casino & You're Gonna Be Obsessed

The Star Wars franchise has been taking fans across a galaxy far far away for 40 years, and every new film expands the galaxy even further with the addition of new creatures and planets. The Last Jedi is no exception, introducing a band new planet. The planet has been teased as crucial to the new trilogy, but what is the casino planet in The Last Jedi, really? The never-before-seen world is just one of the handful of major new additions to the Star Wars universe in The Last Jedi — according to production designer Rick Heinrichs, director Rian Johnson's original script had 160 sets in it. the casino is, however, one of the most important new places introduced to the franchise.

The Last Jedi casino was first teased when Vanity Fair debuted the first official photos from the set of the film in the summer of 2017. And it has captured the imagination of fans ever since. Now that The Last Jedi is finally in theaters, we know a lot more about the mysterious place. Firstly, the casino is called Canto Bight, and it's a swanky, upscale place created to allow the rich an escape from the war and the doom and gloom of the First Order. The official Star Wars database describes Canto Bight as "a place of both opportunity and high stakes, filled with casinos, racetracks, and other expensive distractions." Or, as Johnson described it to Vanity Fair, "a playground for rich assholes." In other words, Canto Bight is not exactly the kind of place where Rey, Finn, or Poe would fit in.

Canto Bight is, in many ways, the height of luxury in the Star Wars universe, but it's actuall not located on an exceptionally rich planet. It's actually located on the desert planet of Cantonica, which doesn't seem to be home to much else. Though Canto Bight has been described at length in a series of short stories leading up to The Last Jedi's release, it's unclear what else is on Cantonica other than the casino and the artificial sea created there to draw visitors. Exteriors for the Cantonica sequence were filmed in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a Mediterranian hotspot for tourists — not exactly a desert location, suggesting that fans won't get to see much of Cantonica outside of the casino.

The fact that fans don't really see Cantonica highlights the injustice of places like Canto Bight. The casino signifies an intense disparity between classes, where those rich enough can escape from the horrors of the war, while those like Rey live under oppression and poverty thanks to the First Order. "What we're going to see in The Last Jedi are some people who have managed to carve out a life for themselves where they can live apart from the galactic struggle," Pablo Hidalgo, Lucasfilm Story Group creative executive, told Vanity Fair. "There's a class of wealthy that have helped build all sorts of loopholes in society that will ensure that they'll survive or even thrive no matter what else is happening out there." Cantonica introduces an entire new class dynamic to the Star Wars universe, and one can imagine that not everything on the planet is as glamorous as Canto Bight.

Fans could see more of Cantonica in the future, as the planet plays a big role in The Last Jedi. It's where Rose and Finn go on a mission for the Resistance, and is depicted as a place that facilitates lucrative underground deals for those in the right tax bracket. Think of it as a high-scale version of the famous Star Wars cantinas. It certainly does not seem out of the question to think that maybe the Resistance fighters will have a reason to return to Canto Bight sometime down the line. Or maybe the First Order will destroy it before that can happen.