He only appeared for one second in The Empire Strikes Back, but Willrow Hood became a Star Wars icon. Not for any reason in particular, however. Just because he looked kind of funny running across Cloud City with what Star Wars fans have long since settled on is an ‘ice cream maker’.
Well, Gizmodo can exclusively reveal that’s no ice cream maker. In fact, it’s a safe.
A camtono, actually. The word briefly made it out into the world at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year when, in an extended clip from The Mandalorian that never made it online, Werner Herzog’s character shows the titular bounty hunter a piece of beskar, an ancient, valuable, Mandalorian alloy, and tells him he’ll give him a camtono of it when he completes the mission.
‘Camtono’ also happens to be a word for ‘ice cream’ made up by Baby Delta who went viral with her chatter in 2017.
We don’t know what the mission is yet and we don’t know the name of Herzog’s character. What we do know, thanks to a source close to the production, is that a camtono is like a safe or a lock box, Herzog’s character has one full of beskar, and it’s the same item Willrow Hood is running around with in The Empire Strikes Back.
You may remember, Mandalorian executive producer Jon Favreau even teased the connection late last year.
A Star Wars safe makes so much more sense than an ice cream maker, doesn’t it? Ice cream is great. But if you’re trying to escape your home from an imminent Imperial take over, what do you grab? The thing that makes ice cream, or the secure container that holds your valuables?
How, or if, The Mandalorian makes this connection between Hood’s camtono and Herzog’s camtono, we do not know. Are they the same one? Doubtful.
But we do know they’re the same general thing, so you can now cross that long-running Star Wars mystery off your list. We’ve reached out to Lucasfilm for comment and will update if we hear back.
The Mandalorian will debut on Disney+ November 12 in the U.S. (and hopefully soon after for Australia).