Sarlaccs are also surprisingly long-lived. While the infamous 1,000-year digestion tale Jabba tells suggests that they can grow to be old already, the creatures don’t even fully mature until they’re 30,000 years old. As the story reveals, Tatooine was once a more fertile planet long before the events of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.” During these times, the Sarlacc fed more plentifully, but as the climate changed, food became more scarce.
As for the Sarlacc Pit itself, however, it is a sentient creature that has thoughts and feels emotions. Though it does eat those that fall into its gaping maw, it doesn’t attack anyone of its own volition but just waits for food to come its way instead. Though the hardy creature survived the incineration, it was later bombed by Fennec Shand with a seismic charge from Boba Fett’s new ship, which took it out for good.
While this might all seem like a larger, intergalactic version of our own kill-or-be-killed ecosystem of predators and prey, it does give fans a bit of sympathy for what might be one of the grossest and strangest “Star Wars” aliens. Either way, this creature is consigned to the realm of fiction at the very least, a fact that ought to be somewhat reassuring to viewers whose nightmares it has helped to inspire for decades.