Star Wars fans blown away by Tatooine's 'tiny' population

Star Wars fans have been blown away after learning how small the entire population of Tatooine is.

Star Wars fans will be all too familiar with Tatooine, the arid desert planet that appears across multiple Star Wars films.

Considering the planet’s importance and peculiarity within the series’ canon, Tatooine is regularly the subject of many discussions and debates online.

One particular thing that Star Wars fans can’t believe is by how small the population of Tatooine appears to be.

According to the 2015 book Star Wars: Journey Through Space, Tatooine has an approximate population of only 200,000 people across the whole planet.

To put that into perspective, that’s 2% of the population of New York City, which has an estimated population of over 8.4 million people.

Presumably, Tatooine probably only has a handful of towns and cities where most of the population lives, like Mos Eisley and Mos Espa, with the rest living on moisture farms out in the dunes.

Then again, this number probably doesn’t count Tusken Raiders and Jawas too. If the Empire is out there conducting census surveys of every planet, these species probably aren’t in a hurry to sign up.

“200k seems absolutely tiny for a whole planet,” writes one Star Wars fan on Reddit.

“A lot of SW planets seem to have oddly low populations,” wrote another fan. “I wonder if it’s to justify us not constantly seeing planets steamrolled by billions-strong armies. That’s a guess though, I’m not fully up on the whole thing.”

“Considering Tatooine is a desert planet, maybe 300-500 million would sound realistic,” reads another comment. “Most of the planet is uninhabited desert wasteland and the population is centered in towns and small villages around the planet.”

It’s worth remembering that Star Wars is a fantasy series at the end of the day, rather than hard sci-fi. That means you’re not really meant to think about the numbers too much.

Pretty much anything in Star Wars will stop making sense the more you think about it.