The first real creature seen in a Star Wars movie, the dianoga is a slimy, tentacled menace that reminds audiences of their I-think-I-saw-something fears of things that slither (“Something just moved past my leg!”). While not very visible in the scene in which it attacks Luke Skywalker in the Death Star’s trash compactor, that only adds to what makes the dianoga so scary: it’s lurking underneath, watching you with its singular eyestalk, waiting to drag you down. Historically, the dianoga illustrated that the Star Wars universe is a dangerous and often random place, filled with unseen terrors.
