Han Solo: 5 Things You May Not Know About the Star Wars Rogue

Now that production is underway for Han Solo: A Star Wars Story, the roguish smuggler of the Star Wars universe gets a second life, despite the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But before his origin gets told in canon on the big screen, there’s been plenty of other Star Wars stories told about Han Solo that you may not have taken in just yet.

There will be mild SPOILERS here for comics and novels in the Star Wars universe, but more “tease so you read it yourself” than “this will ruin your enjoyment” spoilers.

Read on to see what you may have missed so far, and get yourself 100% prepped for Han Solo: A Star Wars Story next year.

Han Solo: A Star Wars Story is filming now under directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller for a May 25, 2018 release. Alden Ehrenreich stars as a young Han Solo and Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca in the era before Star Wars: A New Hope, before they met Leia and Luke and embarked on a galaxy-saving adventure. Donald Glover also stars as Lando Calrissian, with Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Emilia Clarke in as-yet-unrevealed co-starring roles.

Won the Millennium Falcon from Lando with Golden Dice

It’s a scenario many know of but we’ve never actually gotten to see, and hope to in the Han Solo movie. Yes, Han Solo won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, and did so in a simple card game. According to the Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, they were playing a variation of the game called “Corellian Spike” – appropriate since both Han Solo and the Falcon are from Corellia. The variant mixed cards and dice, and Solo used golden dice for the win, which he then kept in the Falcon as a momentum.

Had A Wife Before Leia – Kind Of

Revealed in the pages of Marvel Comics flagship Star Wars comic, Han Solo kind of sort of had a wife long before Leia, a woman named Sana Starros. A fellow outlaw and sometimes smuggler, Starros and Solo were “married” in a fake ceremony as a cover to steal from a crime lord. They successfully pulled off the heist, but Solo left Sana behind – taking her share of the theft along with him. They met again after Han had joined the Rebel Alliance, and their reunion went about as well as you’d expect.

Many fans thought Sana would be in the Han Solo movie, but she’s a dark skinned black woman as depicted in the comics, so when Emilia Clarke was cast as the female lead, hopes for Sana were seemingly dashed like Rendar.

Once Actually Herded Nerfs

“Why you stuck up… half-witted… scruffy-looking… Nerf-herder!”

It’s one of the most memorable lines in a movie full of quotables, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, when Princess Leia says that in exasperation to Han Solo. The line was made into hilarity in the pages of Star Wars, when Han Solo and Luke Skywalker (between the events of A New Hope and Empire) took on a quick smuggling job. The job? Smuggling a literal herd of Nerfs, the Star Wars version of buffalo. So Leia wasn’t just being mean, she was being accurate and mean.

He Helped Free Kashyyyk from Imperial Rule

The novel Star Wars Aftermath: Life Debt centered considerably on the titular “Life Debt” between Chewbacca and Han Solo. Han showed just how much the war changed him in becoming a more noble individual, as he helped free the planet of Kashyyyk, the Wookiee homeworld, from the Empire’s control. It went down a few months after the Battle of Endor (the climax of Return of the Jedi), and like most things Han does, didn’t go according to plan. Chewie was captured and imprisoned, and a daring rescue had to take place before they could do anything about the planet. While they did eventually (mostly) free Kashyyyk, it wasn’t without heavy casualties; the Imperial remnants tried to firebomb the planet rather than letting it free.

Incidentally, Han left Chewie there for an undetermined amount of time so that Chewie could find his family, and he did indeed find his son, Lumpawaroo, in the final novel of the Aftermath trilogy.

He and Leia weren’t estranged until Ben turned to the Dark Side

The tragedy of Han and Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens may have made you think their relationship didn’t last very long after Jedi, but that’s not the case. Up until about 4 years before the events of The Force Awakens, Ben Solo was still training under Luke Skywalker to be a Jedi, and Han Solo and Leia were still husband and wife (they got married shortly after the Battle of Endor on the forest moon itself before leaving. Hopefully Wickett was the ring bearer #headcanon).

The pair did, however, spend a lot of time apart. Leia served as a Senator for the New Republic, while Han spent time traveling the galaxy on odd jobs and even becoming a racing team manager, after resigning his commission almost directly after Endor. Still, the couple had a loving and lasting relationship for over two and a half decades, as described in the novel Bloodlines. When it was publicly revealed that Leia was in fact the birth daughter of Darth Vader, sometime thereafter Ben turned to the dark side, thinking he was following in his grandfather’s footsteps, and that loss made Han leave for good, reteaming with Chewbacca as a smuggler.

There’s plenty more for us to learn about Han Solo, and many more adventures to be had, which we’ll see next year in the movie.