Forest Moon of Endor - Definition and Overview

In the fictional universe of Star Wars, the forest moon of Endor is a moon which is home to the Ewoks and above which the second Death Star was constructed in Return of the Jedi. Endor's moon is also the location of the two Ewok TV movies The Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, as well as the adventures of the cartoon series Ewoks. The moon is also home to deadly giant Goraxes, tall and timid Yuzzums, rodentlike Teeks, vicious condor dragons and a settlement of offplanet reptilian marauders.

Endor itself is not the moon, but instead the planet which the moon orbits (or orbited). The planet Endor is never visible in the film, a fact which the novelisation explains by asserting that it was destroyed some time earlier and that the moon now orbits its star in a planetary orbit of its own.

Some fans of the movie with some knowledge of physics have noted that if the destruction of the second Death Star actually occurred as depicted, the moon would have been rendered uninhabitable. This is known as the Endorian Holocaust. There is still a great deal of speculation on this point.

The Star Wars planet is named after J.R.R. Tolkien's Endor, probably an allusion to the similarity between Ewoks and Hobbits, or the moon's tall foliage and the mellyrn of Lothlórien.