One of the most exciting new bits of Star Wars information has also been one of the strangest: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the duo’s upcoming spinoff movie, will also star The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as the voice of Rotta the Hutt. Rotta is a familiar face for hardcore fans; back in 2008, when Star Wars: The Clone Wars hit theaters as a movie-length pilot for the animated series, the film featured Anakin and his new padawan Ahsoka Tano rescuing Jabba the Hutt’s son Rotta from kidnappers.
Rotta has since grown out of the “Stinky” Huttlet form we met him in all those years ago. Now, he’s “buff,” and that comes with a big change for Hutts as a whole.
The Mandalorian and Grogu trailer revealed that Rotta is, in fact, muscular. He’s apparently made a name for himself as a gladiator, as we see him in an arena from behind. However, we haven’t seen him in action yet, and if this Hutt moves at the same slug-like speed as his dad, he wouldn’t be a very effective fighter.
Jeremy Allen White set the record straight during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. “He’s just a bit broader, but still like a Hutt,” he said. “It’s kinda like him and The Mandalorian running around for a lot of the movie together.”
When Norton asked if that means Rotta is capable of running — a fair question about a character without legs — White had a simple answer. “Rotta can move quickly, yes.”
We’ve never seen a Hutt move quickly in Star Wars canon. Usually, they’re shown lurching forward at about a human’s walking speed, and recently, we’ve seen Hutts that don’t move at all, like the The Book of Boba Fett’s Hutt twins, who traveled by litter. Even outside of modern canon, Hutts couldn’t move quickly. In Clone Wars, they’re shown getting tripped up by small obstacles like carpets.
There is one exception to this rule: Grakkus, a Hutt seen in the VR game Star Wars: Beyond Victory, and who gives chase to Luke Skywalker in the 2015 comic book Star Wars #9. However, Grakkus has a bit of an advantage, in that he uses 12 cybernetic legs to get around, and it doesn’t look like Rotta has any sort of bionics involved. It seems like this movie is set to change the canon of Hutt physiology, which raises a question... are all the other Hutts just lazy?
