Star Wars: Is This the Official Story of Han Solo's Golden Dice?

CBR

By Jon Arvedon

Published May 25, 2017

The backstory of the mysteriously disappearing, and then reappearing, golden dice in the Millennium Falcon cockpit may be explained.

With the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi looming on the horizon like one of Tatooine's twin suns, a number of questions continue to rack the brains of fans. Why does Luke want the Jedi order to end? Who are Rey's parents? What species is Supreme Leader Snoke? However, one mystery that's managed to elude the franchise faithful for 40 years may have finally been solved: What's the story behind the golden dice in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon?

While speaking with Vanity Fair, Lucasfilm Story Group creative executive Pablo Hidalgo offered up his two cents regarding the canonical origin of the dice. "The story that you would hear if you traveled to cantinas or watering holes around the Star Wars galaxy," Hidalgo explained, "is that those dice were involved in a game of Corellian Spike — a dice-using version of a card game called sabacc. Rumor has it Han won the Millennium Falcon [from Lando Calrissian] with those dice. Whether or not that’s just bar talk, I can’t say."

Unfortunately, when pressed whether those events will be retold in the upcoming Han Solo anthology film, Hidalgo remained tight-lipped. "That’s in the future," he said. "Ask me a movie from now."

The dice, which first appeared in the cockpit of the Falcon in A New Hope, are perhaps only as intriguing as they are to Star Wars fans because of their inexplicable disappearance in The Empire Strikes Back. They didn't return to the cockpit until J.J. Abrams' eagle-eyed crew recreated the iconic ship, with dice intact, for 2015's The Force Awakens (you can see the dice dangling in the upper-left of the 2015 Vanity Fair cover, above). According to Hidalgo, the absence of the dice in Episodes V and VI could have been nothing more than a simple oversight by the production team.

In any case, this revelation will likely be enough to cause even the less detail-oriented fans to take a second look at the Falcon's cockpit to make sure the dice are still there when the ship returns in The Last Jedi.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi features returning cast members Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma and Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, joined by franchise newcomers Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, and Benicio del Toro as DJ and Laura Dern as Amilyn Holdo. The film opens on Dec. 15.