Wampa

The wampa, standing between 2.5 and 3 meters tall and weighing approximately 150 kilograms, held a position as one of the primary meat-eating predators of Hoth. However, they were also preyed upon by creatures like the fire-breathing Dragon Slugs. These mammals had a pair of small horns located on their heads and typically lived in caves. Wampas also exhibited notable intelligence and displayed strong concern for their families. A related species, the Mogu, shared a similar appearance but inhabited the warmer environment of Koboh.

The primary food source for wampas was the tauntaun. Despite this, tauntauns, with all fifteen of their subspecies, were quick and nimble, capable of reaching speeds of up to 90 kilometers per hour, which often allowed them to escape wampas. Furthermore, tauntauns could use their horns to defend themselves against predators. To get close to their targets, wampas relied on their white fur for camouflage, enabling them to ambush prey before using their sharp fangs and claws to stun or kill. These predators would then use their strong arms to carry their helpless prey to a cave, where it would be hung upside down, waiting to be consumed later on at a later time. Wampas also hunted other creatures, such as rayboo, and were willing to hunt sentient beings like humans, Sullustans, or Mon Calamari.

The establishment of Echo Base caused the displacement of a wampa clan that had been living in the caves that would become the base. Aggressive wampas would sometimes infiltrate the base during the night, leading to the closure of certain passageways. On one occasion, Leia Organa, a member of the Rebel Alliance, along with the Wookiee Chewbacca, and the astromech droid R2-D2, found themselves involved in one of these incidents.

Not long before the Battle of Hoth, Luke Skywalker, another member of the Rebel Alliance, was attacked by the wampa patriarch of the displaced clan while he was scouting the icy plains of Hoth with his tauntaun. After hanging Luke upside down in its cave, the wampa began to feast on the tauntaun. Using the Force, Luke managed to retrieve his lightsaber from the snow and used it to free himself. The wampa attempted to stop him, but Luke severed one of its arms.

During the Battle of Hoth, a wampa killed several cold weather assault stormtroopers after they opened a door with a clear warning sign, having been lured there by the droid C-3PO. After a few days, the wampa that had lost its arm to Skywalker had recovered enough to hunt again, despite the challenge of doing so with only one arm. Once it had regained enough strength, the wampa returned to Echo Base, only to discover that it had been abandoned due to the recent Battle of Hoth. As a result, the wampa reclaimed the caves as its home and hoped to reunite with its clan.

Throughout galactic history, Trandoshan hunters, such as those belonging to Garnac's hunting guild, often kept trophies like wampa hides at their lodges, including the one on Wasskah. During the [High Republic Era](/article/high_republic_era], a living wampa was once devoured by a Drengir.

During her childhood, Jyn Erso possessed a doll that resembled a wampa. The TIE fighter pilot with the callsign Black Eleven was given the nickname "Wampa."

Grakkus the Hutt kept a wampa in his palace, among other creatures.

An entry about wampas was featured in "Species From A to Z," a survival guide distributed by Carson Teva during the New Republic Era.

By 34 ABY, a wampa hide could be found for sale in Dok-Ondar's Den of Antiquities on the planet Batuu.

The wampa ice creature was initially conceived for George Lucas's film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. It made its debut in Donald F. Glut's novelization of the movie, just prior to its release in theaters.

The creature's design may have been inspired by the cryptozoological phenomenon of the "Yeti," also known as the "Abominable Snowman," a mythical humanoid creature believed to inhabit the Himalayas. Early concept meetings suggest that the wampa, like the Yeti, may have been intended to possess supernatural abilities. In initial story discussions, the wampa was described as a fish-like creature capable of swimming through snow. The creatures were originally planned to be inside the base where the Rebels were hiding, causing chaos as Darth Vader approached to attack the base.

In the winter of 1977, Mark Hamill was involved in a serious car accident that necessitated reconstructive facial surgery. It is widely believed that the wampa attack on Luke Skywalker was incorporated into the film to account for Hamill's remaining scars and slightly altered facial features.

Some of the earliest production drawings of Echo Base's interior from May 1978 include notations indicating where a "Yuzzem" was intended to break through the ice walls of the base, as documented in The Art of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The concept of the now non-canon Yuzzem creature was first introduced into Star Wars in Alan Dean Foster's Legends novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, published on March 1, 1978, before the production drawings were created. This suggests that the creature that later became known as the wampa was initially referred to as a "Yuzzem," until Foster adapted the name for his story.

To create the wampa's roar, sound-effects artist Randy Thom recorded the sounds made by an elephant at the Oakland Zoo. Sound designer Ben Burtt and the film's sound team then recorded the calls of a sea lion at Marineland of the Pacific public oceanarium and combined it with the elephant recording to produce the final sound effect.

Initially, the wampa was to be played by actor Des Webb wearing a large suit made of sheepskins on location in Norway, where the Hoth scenes were filmed. However, the costume, which required the actor to stand on stilts, proved too difficult to manage, as well as being too heavy and hot, leading to Webb suffering from heat exhaustion. As a result, all of the shots featuring the life-size wampa were removed from the film. Creature designer Phil Tippett later created a small wampa hand puppet, which can be seen briefly in a close-up shot as the creature attacks Luke Skywalker.

For the Special Edition release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1997, George Lucas decided to expand the wampa scenes. To achieve this, Industrial Light & Magic artist Howie Weed created a more mobile version of the costume, without the stilts, which he wore in the film. The new shots were filmed inside a scaled-down replica of a cave to give the impression that the wampa was much larger than a normal Human.

Wampas were originally intended to have a more significant role in earlier versions of The Empire Strikes Back. In the treatment and the first draft, wampas attack Echo Base shortly before the arrival of the Empire. In the original shooting script, a tauntaun was killed when a wampa stormed into Echo Base. Shots of a wampa breaking through one of the walls of the complex and attacking Rebel soldiers were filmed but ultimately cut from the final version of the movie. In addition, the wall did not crumble properly and the shot was never successfully achieved. Final versions of the script depicted a mass-coordinated wampa attack on Echo Base. Several scenes were shot for the film that showed this incident, as well as a sequence involving C-3PO tearing a warning sign off the door of a wampa pen, followed by a group of snowtroopers entering the pen only to be attacked by the wampas inside. However, these scenes were later deleted and did not make the final version of the film.

The 2015 reference book Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know somewhat brought back the deleted scenes involving the wampa attack on Echo Base, stating that various wampas would attack Echo Base at night, and that several Imperial cold weather assault stormtroopers foolishly entered a room with wampas only to be slain, despite a clearly marked warning sign.

The animated short, "Beasts of Echo Base" from the animated micro-series Star Wars Forces of Destiny later expounded on the reason for why the wampas were found within the room in Echo Base, showing Leia, R2-D2, and Chewbacca working together to lock the wampa in the room, thus setting the stage for the scene. The short's events was later referenced in the reference book Star Wars: On the Front Lines and the in-universe book Star Wars: The Rebel Files the latter of which saw Leia reference the events explicitly.

The story Tales of Villainy: Invasion of Echo Base from the comic Star Wars Adventures (2020) 1 brought into canon other elements of the deleted scenes. These included the sign being torn off from the door shortly before the Troopers reach it as they're tailing C-3PO as well as Vader's prompt arrival immediately after one of the Troopers is snatched by the Wampa inside the door.