With new revelations about other galaxies coming in the Ahsoka series, an old Steven Spielberg Star Wars Easter egg from Star Wars: Episode – The Phantom Menace is back in the spotlight. Spielberg and George Lucas have been friends since their film-school days, and they famously created the Indiana Jones series together. This has led to a long list of Easter eggs hidden in each filmmaker’s projects referencing each other’s work. From hidden R2-D2 and C-3PO hieroglyphs in Raiders of the Lost Ark to that same Ark appearing in an episode of The Clone Wars, nods to the famous archeologist are everywhere.
But another one of Spielberg’s most famous works is more in the vein of Star Wars, and is famously referenced in The Phantom Menace. During a Galactic Senate sequence, a group of aliens perfectly resembling the character E.T. from Spielberg’s film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial appear in a senate pod. These senate pods represent systems and worlds in the Star Wars galaxy, and are how each species is represented in the government. The implication is that the E.T. species exists within the Star Wars galaxy – but the lore goes deeper than that.
Star Wars’ Steven Spielberg & E.T. Easter Egg Explained
E.T.’s appearance in The Phantom Menace was a long time coming. Lucas actually included the characters to make good on a promise he made to Spielberg after Yoda and several Star Wars action figures were featured in E.T. Numerous Expanded Universe sources have expanded on this species in the following years, though this means these details are strictly non-canon as of 2014. They are known in Star Wars as Asogians, and they hail from the planet Brodo Asogi. The group seen in The Phantom Menace is the Brodo Asogi delegation, and the senator is named Grebleips, or, Spielberg spelled backwards.
In an interesting bit of lore added on the deep-cut HoloNet News website from 2002, senator Grebleips was actually funding extra-galactic expeditions. These voyages are a small one-sentence gag, which is intended to reference the fact that E.T. himself arrived on Earth on a seemingly scientific trip. Many fans in the years since have added the fact that E.T. seems to recognize a child dressed as Yoda as confirmation that he is indeed an Asogian from Star Wars, because for members of the galactic community, Yoda would be a recognizable figure. This has led to a popular fan theory about E.T. possibly being a Jedi.
Ahsoka Made Extragalactic Travel A Lot More Important
The concept of extra-galactic exploration is what makes the Grebleips and E.T. lore significant. Ahsoka has shown, for the first time on screen, a separate canon Star Wars galaxy. Characters in that series travel the Pathway to Peridea in order to find the lost Grand Admiral Thrawn, who was taken there by the mystical space-whales called the purrgil. The Purrgil have the ability to travel to other galaxies, and this brings into question what other groups in Star Wars‘ main galaxy have a secret history with any other galaxy. The Asogians, which are canon because of their The Phantom Menace appearance, may indeed have a history with exploring other galaxies. All of this calls into question just how far away the known galaxy is if E.T., an Asogian from the Star Wars galaxy, was able to visit Earth.
