Fantes Mer'darro hailed from Balosar, the original planet of the eponymous species. This homeworld produced Mer'darro, a light-skinned male Balosar characterized by his dark hair. By the year 3 ABY, Mer'darro had enlisted in the Bespin Wing Guard, which served as the primary security force for Cloud City located on the planet Bespin. While serving with the Wing Guard, Mer'darro donned their regulation uniform, and his antennapalps, concealed beneath his cap, aided him in detecting suspicious individuals throughout Cloud City's numerous casinos.
During 3 ABY, the Galactic Empire occupied Bespin with the goal of capturing the Rebel Alliance's light freighter, the Millennium Falcon. When the Millennium Falcon made its landing on Platform 327 of Cloud City, Mer'darro, along with other Wing Guard troopers, were present with Lando Calrissian, the city's Baron Administrator, and his leading administrative aide, Lobot, to greet the freighter's occupants. Following Lobot's instruction, the Wing Guard troopers departed, leaving Calrissian and his aide alone with the Falcon's passengers, who did not know that Calrissian was actually leading them into an Imperial ambush.
The character of Fantes Mer'darro was conceived for the 1980 original trilogy movie, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, which premiered on May 21 of that year. Before the film's debut, he made his initial appearance concurrently in The Empire Strikes Back Storybook by Shep Steneman and the film's novelization, penned by Donald F. Glut. Both of these publications were made available on April 12 of the same year. The filming of Mer'darro's scene occurred between April 5 and April 12, 1979, at stage 2 of Elstree Studios.
Mer'darro's name was first established on March 11, 2014, through the article "Rogues Gallery: The Cloud City Wing Guards," featured in the 148th issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine. Kevin Beentjes, Sander de Lange, and Tim Veekhoven, the writers of the article, noted that almost all Wing Guard members described were "good guys" who stood against the corruption under Cloud City's former Baron Administrator, Dominic Raynor—except for those previously identified as corrupt. They also mentioned naming Mer'darro in honor of fellow Star Wars enthusiast Stefan Pfister, and making him a Balosar "to break to mold of having only human characters."