Most of these otherworldly critters are nothing like the adorably marketable races that we’re more familiar with. (I’m looking at you Ewoks and Gungans! But I get it. Cute species work well to sell merchandise, and Jar-Jar Binks brings in the dough.) But nothing piques an audience’s interest like dangerous bad guys whose attitudes and capabilities aren’t fully defined. From extra-galactic nomadic marauders to giant self-replicating space spiders, there are plenty you’ve missed if you’ve only seen the movies. These races and species don’t exist to sell toys; they exist to sell a great story. And of all the fantastical alien entities across the Star Wars universe, only a few can be considered the coolest of the cool. Let’s dive into the coolest Star Wars alien races and species to see what makes them so much cooler than the rest.
4. Teezls
Teezls are one of the most unique creatures in the Star Wars universe. They look like luminous blue masses, they lack any sort of sentience, and they only obey orders received from their masters. But they have a useful ability: they can take electronic inputs and broadcast them to any receptor in the galaxy, making it possible to communicate instantaneously across vast distances of space. Teezls are also excellent signal jammers. They’re capable of creating “psychic shrieks” that block all communication channels except for the wavelengths that the “screamer” is ordered to not disrupt. Thought to be extinct, one Teezl was found by the Galactic Empire after the Battle of Hoth, and a large armada was assigned to protect it on its journey from the Valtha Divide to Coruscant. When the Alliance discovered that the Empire possessed one of these powerful beings, they made the ethically questionable decision to send in Rogue Squadron to infiltrate the Imperial fleet and destroy it.
3. Assemblers
Assemblers are three-meter-tall sentient arachnids with vacuum-resistant exoskeletons. Unlike most other insectoid species in Star Wars, they’re able to speak the Galactic Basic Standard language. Very few in the galaxy know much else about them. Assemblers have four legs with two claws each (that act as hands and feet), plus strange furry appendages that grow out of their backs (that are most likely used for absorbing food). Assemblers build giant tubular webs constructed from space dust and debris, and these webs contain “nodes” (arachnoid drones). Assemblers and nodes are connected to the web by neurofibers, allowing them to communicate with each other. Each node performs a specific function and only has enough intelligence to do its one job. When a node isn’t kept in check by an Assembler, it can evolve to the point where it’s able to revolt against its creator and usurp the role of the Assembler. When killed, an Assembler can be resurrected with a large amount of power applied to certain parts of the web that reactivate memory.
2. Celestials
Not much is known about the near-mythical prehistoric species known as the Celestials (or Architects). The little that’s known about this ancient race comes from what they’ve (allegedly) constructed. The Celestials are theorized to have created entire star systems, such as the Corellian system, the Vultar system, the Hapes Cluster, the Maw Cluster, and the Kathol Rift. They’re also said to have left behind anomalous planetary formations, hyperspace anomalies, large mechanized artifacts like Centerpoint Station, and multiple species placements across the galaxy. Pre-Republic specialist Doctor Insmot Bowen contended the possibility of the entire universe being a Celestial construct. Both the Jedi and the Sith theorized that the Celestials may even have merged into the Force and now guide the balance between the Light and Dark sides. The ultimate fate of the Celestials is unclear:
Maybe their domain was usurped by the rebelling Rakatan slave race.Maybe their decline was due to battling the scourge of a powerful apocalyptic creature known as Abeloth, the Bringer of Chaos.Maybe they were trapped by a galactic barrier of their own creation.Maybe they escaped this dimension completely, as suggested by Doctor Insmot Bowen himself.
Nobody really knows. The only thing we know for sure? By the year 30,000 BBY (“Before the Battle of Yavin”), the Celestials had disappeared and the Rakatan Empire ruled the galaxy.
1. Yuuzhan Vong
Twenty-five years after the Battle of Yavin, a species known as the Yuuzhan Vong left their ancestral galaxy to invade the Star Wars galaxy (also called the “Galaxy Far Far Away”). The Yuuzhan Vong (also known as “Children of Yun-Yuuzhan,” “Chosen Race,” and “Far Outsiders”) are a war-like nomadic sentient species. They almost destroyed the New Republic, killing up to 300 trillion of the galaxy’s inhabitants during their invasion. They have sparse hair that’s usually black and worn long, and they have short stubby noses that give them skull-like faces. Instead of using facial expressions to convey emotion, the Yuuzhan Vong have blue eye-sacks that expand and contract by their moods. Very little is known about the early history of the Yuuzhan Vong. It’s believed that they escaped their ancestral galaxy after being swept into a conflict between two sentient droid species (known as the Silentium and the Abominor). Their eventual victory in this conflict led them to believe that they were the divinely chosen masters of their galaxy. They also developed a hatred of mechanical technology and a xenophobic attitude toward other sentient lifeforms. The Yuuzhan Vong became religious zealots and viewed technology as an affront to their gods. They developed ways to mass produce organic engineering, constructed out of living yorik coral. These creations included a fleet of living worldships that could penetrate the hyperspatial disturbance that isolated their galaxy. After a civil war devastated their home galaxy and rendered it uninhabitable, the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the Star Wars galaxy. In the end, the Galactic Alliance prevailed and the Yuuzhan Vong surrendered. One of the terms of surrender was to rebuild what they had destroyed, most notably the city-planet of Coruscant that was to serve as the capital of the Galactic Alliance. The remaining Yuuzhan Vong population disappeared into the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, where they would attempt to live in peace by abolishing the rigid caste system that they recognized as the main cause of conflict amongst themselves. Read next: These Star Wars planets are cooler than you think
