Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without a few adorable aliens who look like critters you’d want to buy at a pet shop. And The Acolyte is no different. In episode four, we meet the latest “soon to be a cute toy on your shelf” alien. This is Bazil, a Tynnan tracker. The Jedi utilize Bazil’s tracking skills to find the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca on the planet Kohfar. In the grand Star Wars tradition of old, Bazil is an actual performer in a suit. Hassan Taj, who operated R2-D2 in The Rise of Skywalker, is inside the costume. It’s a suit brought to life by ILM’s creature and droid FX creative supervisor Neal Scanlan.
Tynnans are one of the earliest non-George Lucas-created Star Wars alien races. The Tynnan species are anthropomorphic otter/beaver-like beings. They first appeared in the 1979 Legends novel Han Solo’s Revenge by Brian Daley. Lucasfilm officially canonized them in the 2016 novel Catalyst, tying into the events of Rogue One. And no, Han Solo did not punch a Tynnan in that infamous piece of artwork from the ’90s. That was an Selonian queen from the Han Solo novel Assault on Selonia. Totally different otter-like aliens. It’s a big galaxy out there, lots of weird and wonderful creatures inhabit it.
When designing Bazil, Neal Scanlan made sure he had a more prominent snout to sniff out clues with. Bazil also wears a visor and helmet, all adding to the sensory deprivation he requires to focus on the investigation and block out the noise of the outside world. Scanlan told the official Star Wars site, “Bazil was very sensory, so he would obviously smell and hear things probably better than using his eyesight. The idea of having goggles was that he would then sort of go inwardly and become the tracker.”
Although Tynnans are more like beavers and otters, they definitely have a mouse-like quality too. Since he’s a tracker, which is another way of saying detective, we have to wonder if Bazil drew inspiration from Basil, the titular lead of the animated Disney classic The Great Mouse Detective. For the record, there actually is a mouse-like alien race in Star Wars. In A New Hope, we see a member of the rodent species Chadra-Fan in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Although, that Chadra-Fan ordering drinks was decidedly less cute than Bazil. All we know is Bazil is an adorable new addition to the galaxy, and we must protect him at all costs.