Could Disneyland end up with rival Star Wars cantinas?

Oga’s Cantina was one of the hardest places to get into before Disneyland’s coronavirus closure, but the hive of scum and villainy wasn’t the only watering hole envisioned for Black Spire Outpost, according to the ever-expanding backstory created for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Oga’s Cantina was the victor in a one-sided rivalry with Seezelslak’s Cantina that ended before Galaxy’s Edge debuted at the Anaheim theme park, according to a new virtual reality game from Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB and Walt Disney Imagineering.

The new “Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge” VR experience introduces new locations and characters in Black Spire Outpost on the Star Wars planet of Batuu, the setting for the 14-acre lands at Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

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Disneyland remains closed until further notice amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida — home to Batuu East — reopened in July.

ILMxLAB Director Jose Perez III discussed the new VR game and its cross tie-ins with the two Disney theme parks during a virtual online interview.

Seezelslak’s Cantina is at the center of the elaborate story unfolding in the new VR game set in the twin Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park lands.

“His ship is also his cantina and he has actually flown and landed it literally on top of Oga’s,” Perez said. “While he’s there there’s definitely a rivalry that’s going on.”

The rivalry ended — at least for the time being — when Seezelslak fled Black Spire Outpost before Galaxy’s Edge opened at Disneyland in May 2019.

“We don’t say how long he actually landed there,” Perez said. “We do know that when you go to the park, something has happened and Seezelslak has left.”

Could Seezelslak’s Cantina return to Galaxy’s Edge and resume the rivalry with Oga’s Cantina?

“Will you see Seezelslak in the parks?” Perez said. “I don’t know yet. I would love for that to happen. How rad would that be?”

The fine line between reality and fantasy has always been tricky to gauge when it comes to Disneyland. Disney theme parks deploy a theatrical storytelling conceit where fictional places and characters are presented as real and not make believe. That line gets even fuzzier when you combine a VR game backstory with what passes for reality in a theme park.

But what is clear is that Walt Disney Imagineering has purposely sought to blur that line with the twin Galaxy’s Edge themed lands in Anaheim and Florida. Imagineering’s goal is to integrate the Star Wars theme park lands into movies, books, comics and video games spawned by the film franchise and vice versa. The hope is to have the theme park lands influence future Star Wars stories as much as those galactic tales influence the parks.

“Questions do come up like, ‘What do cast members say if they start talking about Seezelslak?’” Perez said. “So it’s really fun when we start to scratch the surface of that and I think we’ll see a lot more of that stuff in the future.”

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Seezelslak, voiced in the VR experience by “Saturday Night Live” alumni Bobby Moynihan, was created for the VR experience because the game creators needed a big, boisterous storyteller to propel the action.

“Seezelslak is the antithesis of Oga,” Perez said.

Seezelslak is a bit rough around the edges and a little kooky. The bar owner is a six-eyed Azumel just like the alien who played sabacc with Han Solo and Lando Calrissian in the 2018 “Solo” film.

Oga Garra is a no-nonsense local crime boss who controls the underworld in Black Spire Outpost and has a stake in every shady deal that goes down in her cantina. Her reservations-only Star Wars cantina did gangbusters business slinging pricey space cocktails when Disneyland was open. The Galaxy’s Edge cantina has been a cash machine for Disney as Star Wars fans pay $18 for alien cocktails, $45 for souvenir mugs and $85 for collectible beer flights.

“Even though you don’t see Oga in part one, she’s talked about a little bit,” Perez said about the first of what is expected to be a series of VR experiences. “Seezelslak obviously has a not great relationship with that situation because she clearly has a cantina that is doing pretty well. His cantina, not so much. There’s some fun back and forth stories there.”

Seezelslak’s Cantina is an unpopular dive bar in the VR game with a jukebox that plays a few songs also heard in Oga’s Cantina in the theme parks.

“Oga’s is really hard to get into. You need to get a reservation. People are lining up at eight in the morning to get into that place,” Perez said. “Oga’s is a place where, if you’re maybe a little shady, it’s probably a little easier to get spotted there.”

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The shared goal for ILMxLAB and Imagineering is to tell stories in the VR experience that fit seamlessly within the Star Wars lands created for the theme parks.

“The stories that we’re telling are important to the stories in the park right now. The more that our stories reflect that, the more the stories also loop back,” Perez said. “The opportunity for that is there and we’re definitely doing everything we can to take advantage of it and to do that because who doesn’t want to also be impacting Disneyland?”

Both in the VR game and the theme park lands, Black Spire Outpost is designed to reveal itself the more you explore and dive deeper into the backstory of the Star Wars outer rim village.

“There’s all of these stories that are being hinted at that haven’t fully been told yet.” Perez said. “We had a sit down with the franchise team and the Lucasfilm Story Group and really did a deep dive on all of the cool stories that are going on that are talked about now, hinted about, things that are not talked about yet and where they’re going in the future.”

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