Star Wars Black Series Mos Eisley Cantina

The Mos Eisley Cantina is where Star Wars introduces the wider galaxy. Everything before it in A New Hope — Tatooine, the Lars homestead, the droids — is the edge of civilisation. The cantina is the universe beyond that edge: dozens of alien species, a band playing jazz, a Wookiee sitting next to a human mercenary, criminals and pilots and people of ambiguous allegiance all occupying the same room on the assumption that everyone has enough reasons to mind their own business. It’s a scene that runs for minutes and has been generating expanded universe material for nearly fifty years.

The Scene in Star Wars

Obi-Wan Kenobi brings Luke to the Mos Eisley Cantina to find a pilot who can take them off Tatooine without asking questions. The cantina is the right place for that — it’s where the galaxy’s edges meet, where the kind of person who flies illegal cargo and accepts payment without asking about it goes to drink and wait for work.

The scene is structured around information and transaction. Obi-Wan knows the cantina. He knows how to navigate it. Luke doesn’t, and his education begins immediately: the bartender refuses to serve droids, two patrons pick a fight with him and lose an arm for it, and somewhere in the crowd is the person they’re looking for. The cantina is a place with rules, but not Imperial rules — its own rules, enforced by the people who frequent it.

Han Solo and Chewbacca are at a corner booth. The meeting that changes the galaxy happens here: Obi-Wan negotiates a charter to Alderaan, Han agrees for the money, and Greedo arrives to complicate the transaction. The specific question of whether Han shoots first or Greedo shoots first is one of the franchise’s most persistently debated moments, revised between theatrical and special edition cuts in a way that changed the meaning of who Han Solo is at his introduction. The 1977 version leaves no ambiguity: Han shoots a bounty hunter who is about to collect him, pays his bar tab, and leaves. The character this establishes is the one that carries through the original trilogy.

The cantina’s alien population was created under severe time and budget pressure, with ILM producing dozens of creature designs that appear for seconds and have been named, storied, and expanded in every medium since. Ponda Baba and Doctor Evazan are the most plot-relevant. Greedo is the most debated. But Momaw Nadon — the Ithorian botanist whose two-mouthed head gives him his nickname of Hammerhead — has become one of the cantina’s most recognisable faces despite having no function in the scene beyond sitting there. Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes play Cantina Band, which is one of the most recognisable pieces of music in film history.

The Galaxy Collection ANH Wave

The 2021-2024 A New Hope Galaxy Collection wave is where the Mos Eisley Cantina display finally received the figures it deserved. Prior to the ANH sub-line, the cantina was represented mainly by the 2013 Orange Wave Greedo — a single figure from the line’s first wave, pre-Photo Real, standing alone in a scene that the films populate with dozens of characters.

The ANH sub-line’s commitment to the cantina is notable: Ponda Baba, Doctor Evazan, Figrin D’an, Nalan Cheel, and Momaw Nadon were all produced across 2021-2024, covering both the confrontation side of the cantina and the ambient alien population that gives the scene its texture. The Figrin D’an and Nalan Cheel releases specifically acknowledge that the band matters — not just as background music but as characters, with the specific Bith design that became one of the franchise’s most reproduced alien types.

Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes

Figrin D’an is the Modal Nodes’ lead musician and one of A New Hope’s most visually specific aliens — the bulbous-headed Bith whose design inspired one of the most famous pieces of science fiction music ever recorded. John Williams’ Cantina Band theme, played diegetically in the scene by these in-universe jazz musicians, is the piece of Star Wars music most people who have never seen the films would recognise.

His Black Series figure captures the Bith design with the Kloo horn that is the character’s specific instrument. Nalan Cheel — the band’s bandfill player — comes as a Hasbro Pulse Deluxe, and together the two figures represent the Modal Nodes in plastic for the first time in the Black Series. For collectors building the cantina’s ambient atmosphere as much as its dramatic incidents, the band is the centrepiece.

Momaw Nadon

Momaw Nadon’s Deluxe release from 2024 is one of the more unexpected additions to the Mos Eisley display — an Ithorian botanist whose cantina appearance lasts seconds and whose expanded universe biography runs to thousands of words across decades of publications. The Ithorian two-mouthed design is one of the original trilogy’s most distinctive alien creations, and Momaw Nadon specifically is the canonical name for the Hammerhead figure that Kenner produced in 1978 as one of the original Star Wars action figures.

The Deluxe release with accessories reflects the character’s botanical expertise in ways the basic figure format couldn’t accommodate, and it’s the kind of production decision that signals how seriously the ANH sub-line took the cantina’s secondary characters.

Mos Eisley and the Cantina Confrontation

The Mos Eisley display covers the cantina’s full population — the band, the ambient aliens, the criminals. The Cantina Confrontation scene covers the specific incident: Ponda Baba, Doctor Evazan, and the altercation that costs someone an arm. The two displays overlap and complement each other, and building both gives the most complete version of what the cantina is.

All Figures for This Display

Check off the figures you own with the Black Series Checklist.

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Part of Star Wars The Black Series | Scenes. Related: Cantina Confrontation | Tatooine Desert | Death Star Corridors | Collector Guide.