It turns out, the plethora of Porgs seen in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” weren’t just created by Disney to sell a ton of merchandise.
That’s according to Jake Lunt, “creator concept designer” on Episode VIII, who said the cute new character was created to digitally cover the many puffins on the island where Luke Skywalker had been hanging out all these years. He filled in StarWars.com on the genesis of the Porgs, saying the puffins were a “source of inspiration” for director Rian Johnson:
“From what I gathered, Rian [Johnson] had gone to shoot this sequence on Skellig Michael, which is the real island location that stands in for Ahch-To, and that island is covered in puffins.