Watch Star Wars director Rian Johnson slice open a 'terrifyingly realistic' porg cake

Rian Johnson isn’t afraid to kill his darlings.

If you’ve seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi, then you know that the writer-director has no problem bumping off a beloved (or not-so-beloved) character when necessary. Apparently, that extends to his own creation: porgs, the tiny, bug-eyed avians of Ahch-To.

Johnson posted a video on Instagram from a party celebrating The Last Jedi’s marketing team, including a “terrifyingly realistic” porg cake, complete with enormous round eyes and goofy, basset-hound-like mouth.

It was up to Johnson to slice the cake, and after a few hesitant first cuts, he got really into it. Poor porg.

Johnson himself came up with the idea for porgs after visiting Skellig Michael, the Irish island that stood in for Luke Skywalker’s isolated retreat.

“If you go to Skellig at the right time of year, it’s just covered in puffins, and they’re the most adorable things in the world,” Johnson previously told EW. “So when I was first scouting there, I saw these guys, and I was like, oh, these are part of the island. And so the porgs are in that realm.”

The director even got to bring one home: After The Last Jedi wrapped filming, Star Wars creature shop head Neal Scanlan gifted Johnson with an animatronic porg. “They hooked it up to little levers, so I can control its face and everything” he added. Here’s hoping that one fares better than the cake.

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