Ahch-To

"Do you know what happened to him?''" "''There're a lot of rumors. Stories. The people who knew him the best think he went looking for the first Jedi temple."

- Finn and Han Solo, on the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker

Ahch-To was a planet mostly covered in water, with numerous rocky islands blanketed with green trees. Three decades after the Galactic Civil War, it served as the home of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker who went into exile seeking the first Jedi temple after his Jedi students were killed by Kylo Ren. After the Resistance pieced together two map fragments to reveal Skywalker's location, Rey traveled to Ahch-To in the Millennium Falcon accompanied by R2-D2 and Chewbacca, in search of him.

Description
From space, Ahch-To appeared to be a world of nothing but deep blue oceans orbiting twin stars. Dotting the oceans, however, were rocky island archipelagos covered with green trees and grass, where birds such as Porgs would congregate. The first Jedi temple was built on one such island, known as temple island. By the time of the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance, temple island was dotted with ruins.

The planet was the homeworld of a large variety of creatures, such as the small porgs, the mysterious Lanais and the large thala-sirens.

History
"The map! It is complete!''" "''Luke..."

- C-3PO and Leia Organa

Ahch-To was where the Jedi Order was founded. Before the Jedi Purge and the Age of the Empire, Jedi scholars made a case for Ahch-To as the location of the Order's first temple alongside other candidate worlds, such as Tython, Coruscant, Jedha, and Ossus. Despite this, however, the location of the first Jedi temple was a mystery by the time the Galactic Civil War came to a close. After Jedi Master Luke Skywalker tried to rebuild the Jedi Order, his efforts were destroyed by his nephew, Ben Solo, who turned to the dark side of the Force and became Kylo Ren, a master of the Knights of Ren. In his sorrow, Skywalker vanished and went in search of the first Jedi temple. He entered into a self-imposed exile on Ahch-To, residing on an island with stone ruins.

As the Resistance began its fight against the First Order, General Leia Organa, Skywalker's sister, hoped to find her brother and bring him back into the fight against the dark side. She sent Commander Poe Dameron to Jakku, where he retrieved a partial map held by Lor San Tekka that gave part of the direction to Ahch-To. Later, after the partial map was given to the Resistance, Skywalker's astromech droid R2-D2, who had been in low power mode since Skywalker's exile, returned to full power and provided the rest of the map to Ahch-To. R2 unknowingly had the map in his databanks for many years, having found it in the network of the Galactic Empire aboard the Death Star during the Galactic Civil War. Rey, a young Force-sensitive scavenger, took the map and traveled to Ahch-To, where she found Skywalker in his exile.

Behind the scenes
The planet Ahch-To first appeared in the final moments of the 2015 film Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens. The name of the planet was not uttered in the film, and instead was revealed in the script. Ahch-To, where Rey meets Luke, was filmed on site at the 6th century monastic settlement of UNESCO site Skellig Michael, an island located off the southern coast of Ireland. Ahch-To was featured once again in Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi, which released on December 15, 2017. This time, however, due to logistical difficulties that arose during filming on Skellig Michael, LucasFilm built a replica of the monastic 'beehive' huts atop the Ceann Sibéal headland in the nearby village of Ballyferriter, Co Kerry, Ireland.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens
 * Star Wars: The Force Awakens novelization
 * Star Wars: The Force Awakens: A Junior Novel
 * The Force Awakens: Rey's Story
 * The Force Awakens Golden Book
 * The Force Awakens Read-Along Storybook and CD
 * Star Wars: The Force Awakens Graphic Novel Adaptation
 * The Force Awakens, Part VI
 * Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi
 * Chewie and the Porgs
 * Rey's Journey

Non-canon appearances

 * LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens