A Long Time Ago. . .
Did you know that Han Solo completed the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?
This post contains spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Another year, another Star Wars movie, another basket of Easter eggs. Like most of the franchise installments that precede it, Solo: A Star Wars Story comes packed with references to other Star Wars movies—many that will be extremely obvious to fans, and some that are a little more obscure. Though no one could accuse the film of lifting entire plotlines from the original trilogy—an accusation some critics leveled against The Force Awakens—Solo does manage to incorporate some fascinating parallels to the original trilogy as well. It’s worth repeating, though: if you haven’t seen Solo yet and want to remain unspoiled, now is definitely the time to bookmark the page (you know, if you want), leave, and buy a ticket. For the rest of you, here are some Easter eggs, references, and parallels you might have missed.
A familiar meeting
As Vanity Fair’s own K. Austin Collins noted in his review, Solo’s chief mission is to answer as many questions as possible about how Han Solo became Han Solo. At times, the film tries a little too hard in that capacity. (You know how Han Solo got his last name? He was traveling solo!) But in other moments, it deploys parallels that inspire us to reevaluate things we already knew about the Star Wars universe. There’s perhaps no better example than the moment Han and Chewie meet—which doubles as a reference to Return of the Jedi.
It begins when Han is thrown into a pit by two Imperial officers as punishment for being a deserter—just as Luke Skywalker is thrown into the Rancor pit beneath Jabba the Hutt’s throne in George Lucas’s third Star Wars film. (Several shots in Solo seem cannily similar to shots from that film, too.) The monster within the pit, the officers tell Han, hadn’t eaten in a couple days—so he’ll be extra ferocious. Lucky for Han, it’s not a Rancor that awaits him, but a very muddy imprisoned Wookiee.
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Seeing Han and Chewie’s escape, however, gives us some extra cause to think about that Rancor—where it might have come from, what its story was, just how long Jabba may have kept it imprisoned and in isolation. It’s just one of many times Solo recasts this world’s beings in another light; throughout the film, for instance, Lando’s defiant droid, L3-37, points out the horrendous civil rights violations droids in the Star Wars universe face on a daily basis.
On a lighter note: Han and Chewie’s introduction is not the only moment that seems to draw inspiration from previous films. At another point in Solo, the two fake being captured and handcuffed while attempting to steal unrefined coaxium from Kessel. Han, Chewie, and Luke try a variation on the same gambit in A New Hope: the two humans dress as Stormtroopers, walking a handcuffed Chewie into the detention center as they set off to rescue Leia.
Han’s gold dice first appeared in A New Hope—though they were clearly visible in only one scene. They reemerged in The Last Jedi last year, becoming a far more prominent part of Han, Luke, and Leia’s story. And in Solo, viewers find out that the dice were originally a good luck charm handed back and forth between Han and his love interest, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), at various junctures during the…
