The Coolest Star Wars Planets And Locations

Featured in Rogue One, Scarif is the location of the Death Star plans, which was more important to the Rebel Alliance than the lovely beaches, blue ocean, and gorgeous palm trees. Few Star Wars planets are shown to be tropical, making Scarif stand out among the Hoths and Tattooines of the galaxy. The gorgeous setting is soon overshadowed by the last stand of Jinn and Andor‘s crew, and if it is ever re-visited in later films….it’ll look a little different.

The fiery lava planet Mustafar from Revenge of the Sith has been everything from an industrial hub to a crime syndicate’s home base, but most memorably, it was the location for the climatic battle between Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin (Hayden Christensen). With lava flows and a dark and cracked surface, the planet is one of Star War’s most visually striking, making it perfect for a duel between good and evil. Most importantly, Mustafar contains high ground.

Jakku is a desert planet similar to Tattooine, but the big difference is actually something unnatural; as shown in The Force Awakens, the planet is a haven for scavengers due to the amount of crashed starships. Rey (Daisy Ridley) is shown as a scavenger, with the crashed Star Destroyer making the planet stand out immediately compared to those of the original trilogy. A Star Wars planet with the defining feature as something unnatural is unique, and as the first return to the franchise following the prequels, Jakku made an immediate and lasting impact, making it the only one of the new trilogy to make the list.

Featured briefly in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Kamino is the hidden ocean world that houses the laboratories responsible for creating the Clone Army, and Boba Fett out of Jango Fett’s genetic material. With few features poking up above the storm-wracked oceans, Kamino is a mystery to the Jedi and the viewers. What lurks beneath the surface of the water, is there a native species with an underground empire like the Gungans, or is it home to massive leviathans?

Even in The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch animated series, which return to Kamino, we get glimpses of secret underwater labs and massive sea dragons, but the planet is filled with the potential for so much more, making it the most intriguing planet in the Star Wars galaxy.

Technically, the forest moon of Endor is the new setting shown in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and not Endor itself, which was the first of many appearances of the Ewok’s home planet. Featured again in the Ewok movies and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, it’s one of the most thoroughly explored locations in the galaxy, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to visit. Covered with enormous trees and a seemingly endless forest, Endor’s dense foliage makes it teeming with life, and a drastically different way of living than any other planet in the galaxy.

First appearing in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Naboo is home to the aquatic Gungans, and the Mediterranean influenced Naboo people on the surface, with throwback architecture that makes it look like an ideal vacation spot. There’s always the fear of a bigger fish when swimming under the water, but stay dry, and Naboo has peerless greenery, bustling cities, and everything a tourist could possibly want. All that and their starfighters have some of the coolest designs of anything in the franchise.

Cloud City, located on the gas giant Bespin, gives residents of the Star Wars universe a chance to live like the Jetsons. High up in the sky above a lucrative mining operation, Cloud City is one of the most futuristic locations in the sci-fi classic. The setting for the best scenes of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and the introduction of Lando Calrissian, there’s not much to see on the planet’s gaseous surface, but the mile-high structures, which provide some of the most striking visuals in the franchise, deserve to be re-visited.

The opening of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sci-fi battles in history, with the Battle of Hoth putting the ragtag Rebel Alliance up against the full mechanized might of The Empire. A planet covered in snow gives a great visual backdrop to the towering AT-ATs, which then give us one of cinema’s coolest moments with the tow-cable takedown. For that scene alone, Hoth is one of the coolest planets in sci-fi, even if there’s not a lot of story potential to be found in exploring its frozen wastelands.

The most visited planet in the movies, Tatooine is the iconic Star Wars setting, with gorgeous landscapes and a binary sun making it feel slightly alien, just enough to invoke a sense of wonder. From moisture farms to gigantic Sandscrawlers and the most infamous bar in sci-fi history, Mos Eisley’s cantina, Tatooine, has one-of-a-kind visuals and settings in every direction. Though it’s been thoroughly explored, especially in The Book of Boba Fett, it says a lot about George Lucas’s creative vision that the planet still has the potential for even more stories in the future.

When it comes to visual variety, potential stories, and how fun it would be to return in future series or movies, Coruscant, the home of the Empire, is one of the greatest locations in Star Wars. At one point, the canceled game Star Wars: 1313 was going to dig deep into the criminal underground of Coruscant, while Andor shows the massive city at the height of the Empire. Covered by a city, no other planet can portray as many alien species, designs, and spaceships as the bustling trade hub.