In Solo: A Star Wars Story, we get to see Han Solo's journey from being essentially a street urchin on Corellia to his start as a renowned intergalactic smuggler. We have seen a number of prequels in the Star Wars universe before, but with an entire film devoted almost entirely to one figure, there were even more areas where the filmmakers could work in familiar references. For instance, in the film we learn where Han gained his last name. We learned where he got his custom blaster. We learned how he met Chewbacca. Every other moment in the film was a major "Oh, so that's how that happened!" occasion.
In a situation like that, when every little reference has some sort of hidden meaning in relation to the future, it is very simple for the filmmakers to work Easter Eggs into the story, with references to not only past Star Wars movies, but also to other movies with connections to the film's screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote it with his son, Jon) and to the film's director, Ron Howard. With that in mind, here are 20 Easter Eggs that you might have missed in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
20 AMERICAN IDOLS
The great Lawrence Kasdan is well known to Star Wars fans as the co-writer of more Star Wars films than anyone not named George Lucas, as he is credited for Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens and now Solo: A Star Wars Story. However. He was also the screenwriter on another notable film that George Lucas was involved in: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film that introduced the world to archaeologist Indiana Jones. Jones, of course, was also played by Harrison Ford.
Director Ron Howard was convinced that the character of Han in Solo owed some sort of debt to Indy, as well, so he agreed to have an elaborate series of Easter Eggs in Dryden Vos' office in the film. Vos is very proud of the artifacts that he has collected over the years and sure enough, these include the most notable idols from each of the major Indiana Jones films. The fertility idol from the iconic Raiders of the Lost Ark opening, plus the Sankara Stones from Temple of Doom and the Holy Grail from The Last Crusade. You might find yourself asking, "But what about the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?" Well, read on!
19 KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL?
Sure enough, one of the most prominent idols on display in Vos' office is, indeed, a crystal skull, that seems to obviously be a reference to the final (so far) Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. However, it is not quite that easy. On the one hand, yes, paired with the other idols, it is definitely a Crystal Skull reference. At the same time, though, it is a reference to Han Solo's fictional past.
You see, according to the Solo visual guide, the crystal skull is specifically the "Mytag crystal masthead of Xim the Despot." Xim the Despot was a major character in the final novel in Brian Daley's The Han Solo Adventures trilogy of books. Xim was a mad tryant who lived thousands of years ago and became famous for his hidden treasure. In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, Han and Chewbacca head to a mysterious planet to try to find Xim's treasure but end up having the Millennium Falcon stolen out from under them! In any event, the cover of the very popular book featured, of course, a crystal skull on it! We are talking Easter Eggs within Easter Eggs here, people!
18 LET THE WOOKIEE WIN!
It is hard to call any one given scene in A New Hope an "iconic scene," as it seems like every other scene in that movie has become legendary. If you try rattling off instantly recognizable scenes from that film, you'd be here for an hour. So instead of "an iconic scene," let's just say that a really cool scene in A New Hope is when C-3PO is playing holographic chess against Chewbacca, and Chewy is clearly getting upset that he is losing. This leads to Han advising Threepio to "let the Wookiee win."
Well, in Solo, we see Chewbacca play the holographic chess game known as Dejarik for what might be his first time. Just like A New Hope, he does not take losing to Tobias Bennett well. He smashes at the board, leading to Beckett noting to him that he can't smash the pieces as they are holographic. However, Chewy's attempt to smash them actually did short out two of the figures on the board. Those figures, Bulbous and Scrimp, were designed by A New Hope animator Phil Tippett but were not used in the original film because there wasn't enough room on the board for them. Over 40 years later, they made their film debuts!
17 ZoMG!!!11! T3H PWNAGE!
One of the breakout characters in Solo is Lando's droid, L3-37, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She follows in the robo-footsteps on Alan Tudyk's K-2SO from 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as not just being a standout performance but also changing our attitudes about how droids can act in Star Wars films.
L3 points out the unfair treatment of her fellow droids and actually almost derails their mission on Kessel by freeing the droids there and causing a droid uprising that swelled to become a full-fledged slave revolt. For a droid that is so in tune with her fellow computerized beings, it makes perfect sense, then, that her name is a reference to Leetspeak, where people on the internet use ASCII characters to replace the Roman alphabet. So instead of "Leet" (which stands for "elite"), you would write L337, which is precisely her character name. Of course, not only is her name a reference to Leetspeak, but do note that the beginning of her droid name actually follows the letter and numeral of K-2 from Rogue One. That could just be a coincidence, but if so, it's a pretty darn cool coincidence. Or should we say, a "kewl" coincidence?
16 THE FALCON'S ODD DIALECT
One of the most moving moments in Solo is when Lando's droid, L3, loses her life in the battle on Kessel. The sight of Lando trying to pick up her broken down pieces and carry her to the ship while lasers were blasting away around him was wonderfully handled. He keeps trying to reassure her that they can fix her, but her light goes out and she "dies" while still trying to process what happened to her. That seems like the end of the character, but later on, Han needs L3's navigational guidance system (the best in the galaxy) to help him plot a course out of maelstrom.
So they plug her directly into the Millennium Falcon's computer system and therefore, she effectively lives on as a part of the Falcon. This, then, pays off on a funny bit from Empire Strikes Back. When C-3PO is trying to interface with the Millennium Falcon's computer, he remarks to the others that the Falcon's computer has an odd dialect. Well, we know now precisely why it is so odd -- she's L3! It also gives it a whole new meaning those times that Lando referred to the ship as "girl" or "baby."
15 YOU KNOW NOTHING, HAN SOLO
There is an urban legend that Harrison Ford improvised his famous line at the end of Empire Strikes Back where Leia tells Han, right before he is dipped into the Carbonite, that she loves him and he replies, "I know." That is not true, but it is true that Ford changed the line from what it was originally written as in the screenplay. For instance, the original lines followed a kiss between Han and Leia where Leia says, “I love you. I couldn’t tell you before, but it’s true," to which Han replies, “Just remember that, ‘cause I’ll be back.”
The problem with that line as written is that while the filmmakers wanted to give the fans some hope that Han would be back for the next film, there was no way that Han, the character, would be quite that hopeful about his situation. So director Irwin Kershner and Ford got together and came up with the "I know" line. Of course, they did so while Carrie Fisher was off set and so when she showed up to find out that they had dramatically altered the scene without her input, she was naturally upset. In any event, the scene became a classic and Solo pays homage to it when Han runs into Lando again at the end of the film and Lando tells him that he hates him and Han replies, "I know." There's a thin line between love and hate and Han knows them both very well.
14 EVERY DAY I WRITE THE BOOK...
A facet of Lando's personality that Donald Glover got across beautifully in Solo is the way that Lando is almost a fictional character who lives a separate life than the actual Lando. In other words, there are the actual things that happen to Lando every day and then there is the version of events that he spins to gullible people the next night at the Sabacc table. This is made particularly evident when Lando sits down in the Falcon and begins to dictate the Lando Calrissian Chronicles, a memoir about an adventure involving a woman named Sharu.
This, of course, is a reference to L. Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, the fist of the Calrissian Chronciles trilogy. It is that novel that actually introduced the game of sabacc into the Star Wars universe. Little else has been kept canon from that book, but sabacc alone is a significant addition to Star Wars canon. The fact that his "memoir" differs a lot from the published book suggests that Lando embellished the truth as much as he could and thus the finished novel is non-canon because it was made up by Lando himself! That's a very multi-layered Easter Egg there.
13 DAYS OF LANDO FUTURE PAST
Another interesting aspect of Glover's performance as Lando is how much it seems like every scene he is in informs a future piece of Lando's personality or status quo. For instance, there is a great moment where the film establishes that Lando pronounces Han's name differently from everyone else just to mess with Han's head, so show him that he pays so little attention to him that he can't even remember how to pronounce his name. This, of course, is a reference to the fact that Billy Dee Williams, for whatever reason, pronounced Han's name differently from everyone else in Empire Strikes Back.
One more notable nod to the future happened when the gang approaches the mining planet of Kessel. It is certainly not a glamorous sight by any stretch of the imagination and Lando remarks that he really hates mining colonies. This also is a reference to the future of Lando as when we meet him for the first time in Empire Strikes Back, he is the Baron Administrator of the Tibanna gas mining colony Cloud City on Bespin. So much of Lando's dialogue included nods to the future that we are somewhat surprised that he never said, "Oh man, I hope that I never have to attack the Death Star with the Millennium Falcon. Huh, how odd, I don't even know what a Death Star is."
12 WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?
Three decades ago, Ron Howard first took a stab at doing a Star Wars-esque film, with Willow, which was created and produced by George Lucas himself. It was about a Nelwyn dwarf named Willow who wishes to be a sorcerer. His family encounters a human baby, who is destined to oppose the evil Queen Bavmorda, who rules over the land with an iron fist. Willow tries to bring the baby back to the humans but ends up caught up in the quest to bring Bavmorda down, with a motley crew of heroes like the erstwhile swordsman, Madmartigan.
One of Bavmorda's greatest strengths was her ability to send our her deadly Death Dogs to find threats and then eliminate them for her. The nursemaid who managed to hide the baby was killed by one of these Death Dogs. Interestingly, Solo screenwriter Jon Kasdan came up with the idea of using the Corellian hounds in the beginning of Solo as an homage to the Willow Death Dogs before he ever knew that Willow director Ron Howard would end up directing Solo, as well. Kasdan tweeted, "In a bizarre TWIST OF FATE, these #CorellianHounds, which were in the script from the very first draft, were 100% a loving homage to the DEATH DOGS in @RealRonHoward's WILLOW, which terrified me as a kid, particularly when they mauled that poor nursemaid."
11 POP GOES THE WEAZEL
Willow was also the source of another Easter Egg, although it ended up being one of the more complicated Easter Eggs that you could find in a film. You see, the star of Willow was Warwick Davis, who got his big break in Return of the Jedi when he played the lead Ewok, Wicket. Davis actually had to step into the role at the last minute when the original actor who was going to play Wicket, Kenny Baker, took ill. Davis was only 13 at the time and had initially just been hired to be an Ewok background actor. So it was a Willow reunion between Davis and director Howard.
However, Davis' character in Solo is actually a rare double Easter Egg. It is not only a reference to Davis' famed early role in the Star Wars trilogy, but he is specifically playing a character that he played in the first prequel, The Phantom Menace. Davis was seen in the famous podrace scene, where he bets on young Anakin Skywalker to win the race, winning a substantial sum of money in the process. Apparently along the way in his journey through life, he joined up with Enfys Nest and her rebellious Cloud-Raiders.
10 THOSE MANDALORIANS ARE EVERYWHERE
Boba Fett has always been one of the most fascinating Star Wars characters because so much of his fame is seriously derived from his awesome-looking suit of armor. That would have to be the reason why he is so popular, because he doesn't really do anything else in the original Star Wars trilogy. He essentially shows up and looks cool in Empire Strikes Back and then he fails miserably and dies when trying to fight in Return of the Jedi. Despite that being all he had to show for himself, he still became extremely popular and it appears that it is all down to him looking good while failing.
The extended Star Wars universe has been sure to follow that pattern, by using as many Mandalorian suits of armors as they can in their stories. Solo is no exception, as we see that Dryden Vos has a Mandalorian suit of armor in the background of his office. In addition, his Crimson Dawn criminal organization is working under Darth Maul, who actually conquered Mandalore at one point and later worked with some Mandalorian mercenaries. In addition, Tobias Beckett references killing Aurra Sing, a background character from Phantom Menace who was later revealed to be Boba Fett's mentor in the Clone Wars cartoon. Everything ties back to Boba Fett!
9 MASTERS OF DISGUISE
In a typical National Football League game, a team will run between 75-100 pass plays and 15-20 run plays. However, in the Star Wars universe, there is only one play that everyone runs -- pretend to be captured so that the bad guys allow you to access to their base. That is precisely the play that the gang ran in Solo to get access to the inside of the Kessel base of operations. Q'ira and Beckett pretended to be an Trade Federation official and her head of security while Han and Chewbacca were slaves that they were there to sell.
Beckett's outfit as her head of security should look very familiar to Star Wars fans as it is precisely the same disguise that Lando later used in Return of the Jedi when they tried to rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt. Speaking of calling weird plays, you rarely get weirder than the plan that everyone came up with in Return of Jedi which involved, apparently, all of them getting captured at one point or another? Also, perhaps the disguise is not really a disguise. Maybe gondar tusks on the helmet is just a normal uniform for a security guard in the Star Wars universe. We don't know their customs!
8 WHO'S THE BOSSK?
The first major heist in the film occurs on Vandor, where Han and Chewbacca are given their first chance to buy a little of their freedom back by stealing a large shipment of hyperfuel coaxium. The other members of the crew besides Beckett are Beckett's wife, Val, and their pilot, a four-armed Ardennian named Rio Durant. The heist goes wrong when the Cloud-Riders show up and steal the score from the criminals. At the time we think that the Cloud-Riders are just rival criminals instead of freedom fighters looking to sell the coaxium to fund a rebelllion against the Empire.
When the heist goes wrong, both Val and Rio are killed. Han and Chewbacca, though, show their mettle and almost pull the job off even after losing most of the rest of their crew. What's interesting, of course, is that before the heist began, Val questioned the inclusion of the amateurs on the mission. Val suggested that they hire better assassins, like Bossk. Bossk, of course, is one of the other mercenaries that Darth Vader hires in Empire Strikes Back to try to track down Luke and the rebels. Clone Wars revealed that Bossk was also a bit of a mentor to Boba Fett when Fett was young. It's interesting that Val would suggest Bossk, though, as Bossk was friends with Aurra Sing, who Beckett apparently murdered.
7 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
Once the mission went horribly wrong and all of the stolen hyperfuel coaxium resulted in a huge chunk of a mountain being destroyed, Beckett let the other shoe drop on Han and Chewbacca by explaining that their failed mission was not just for them, but that they were doing the job as part of a deal with the criminal organization known as Crimson Dawn. Beckett actually offered Han and Chewbacca the chance to back out of the deal, which is interesting considering that Beckett betrayed them later on in the film.
When they meet up with Dryden Vos, the head of the Crimson Dawn, he gives them a chance to make up for their failure or else he will have to kill them. They offer to replace the score with a new one. The problem, though, is that there are not many places in the galaxy where you can find refined hyperfuel coaxium. This is what led to Han suggesting that they instead try to steal unrefined hyperfuel coaxium and then refine it themselves. However, before he came up with that idea, they first rattled off different places where you could possibly find coaxium. One of the places they suggested was Scarif. That was rejected because it was impossible to get in and out of. Sure enough, Scarif is where the Rogue One team breaks into to steal the files on the Death Star in Rogue One and, yeah, they did not make it out alive.
6 A RETURN TO THE BEGINNING
Perhaps the most visually striking thing about Solo: A Star Wars Story was the fact that the Millennium Falcon looks a whole lot different than it did in the original Star Wars trilogy. What is especially strange is that we actually got to see the Millennium Falcon in one of the prequels and it did not look like this, so that was confusing. However, the movie made sure to throw in some dialogue to explain the discrepancy. As it turned out, Lando re-modeled the Falcon and it is he who added the escape pod at the front of the ship that now gives the Falcon that unfamiliar-looking tapered nose instead of the forked look from the original trilogy.
However, the behind-the-scenes reason for the change is a nice little Easter Egg. You see, the late, great Ralph McQuarrie did almost all of the design work for the original Star Wars film and McQuarrie originally designed the Millennium Falcon to look roughly as it did in Solo. So the different design was an homage to the iconic designer. As for an in-story reason, Jon Kasdan noted, “One of the things Larry [Kasdan, his co-writer and father] and I had talked about was the Falcon should always reflect the personality of its captain."
5 DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD!
Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed seeing a servant in Solo that seemed very familiar to fans of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That is because both films featured servants known as the "Decraniated." These are people who have had their craniums illegally operated on and basically removed from their bodies. This turns them into essentially mindless slaves. These characters were originally designed to be in The Force Awakens during the big cantina sequence but ultimately the idea was deemed to be a little too disturbing for The Force Awakens, which was marketed to a slightly more kid-friendly market than Rogue One and Solo.
A "Decraniated" showed up in Rogue One and one of Dryden Vos' servants in Solo was a "Decraniated." What's fascinating is that the doctor behind these experiments was Cornelius Evazan. He gets away with his crimes now, but don't worry, years later he was in a cantina in Mos Eisley and started some trouble with a young man who appeared to be out of his element. That young man was Luke Skywalker and after Evazan refused to back down, Luke's traveling companion, Obi-Wan Kenobi sliced Evazan's chest with a lightsaber and chopped off Evanzan's friend's arm!
4 WHO'S THAT WOOKIEE?
A particularly dramatic moment in Solo was during the heist on Kessel. Han and Chewbacca were on their way to find the unrefined hyperfuel coaxium when they discovered that among the many different alien races who were forced into slavery in the mines of Kessel, there was a group of Wookiees. When Han first teamed up with Chewbacca, Chewy explained that he was involved in this criminal lifestyle so that he could find his family and so he had to break free from the mission to help the other Wookiees. Han ultimately couldn't argue with his decision and continued on the mission by himself.
However, after Chewbacca freed the other Wookiees, he came back to help Han complete the mission and they escaped together, with Chewbacca explaining to his fellow Wookiees that, for now at least, his place was with Han. Great sequence, but what makes it an Easter Egg is who played one of the Wookiees. You see, in the history of the Star Wars franchise, only one actor has managed to appear in every one of the movies made so far and that is Anthony Daniels. Best known for playing C-3PO, he donned a Wookiee outfit in this film.
3 OH, THAT OLD TRICK?
If ever there was a moment that proved that Han and Leia were soulmates it was the sequence at the start of Solo when Han and Q'ira were corralled by the goons who worked for Lady Proxima, the white worm creature who runs the street urchins known as the "scumrats." Han and Q'ira are two of her most prized pupils, but after a deal went wrong, she insisted on her goons beating up Han a bit, but that was too much for Han. He produced a rock and made a clicking sound with his mouth. He then told everyone that he had a thermal detonator in his hands and that he had just armed it. No one believed him, but his gambit bought him the time to throw the rock through a nearby blocked off window, which let enough sun in to send Lady Proxima screaming back to her mud pit and allowing Han and Q'ira a distraction for them to make their escape.
Han must have told Leia this story, because in Return of the Jedi, when Leia tries to rescue Han while disguised as a bounty hunter with Chewbacca as a prisoner (what did we tell you about how every plan they have is "pretend to take one of their own prisoner"), she tried the stunt as well with an unarmed thermal detonator. It did not work as well for her, as she was captured and became Jabba's prisoner.
2 WHAT'S FOR DINNER?
In Empire Strikes Back, a key part of the film required the majority of the cast to be taken off the board for a little bit while Luke went off on his journey of discovery on Dagobah with Jedi Master Yoda. So the solution that screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan settled on was having the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive be damaged, forcing Han Solo to land the ship in a cavern on an asteroid while he repaired the ship. While on the asteroid, which turned out to house a giant space creature, Han had to clear off a bunch of mynocks from the Falcon. Mynocks were parasitic creatures who chewed on ship's power cords and have been known to drain the entire energy systems of star ships. Luckily, Han was able to get rid of them before they did any real damage.
In Solo: A Star Wars Story, when the various criminals are going about their banter, the Ardennian pilot known as Rio Durant bragged about how good the Mynock roasts are on Ardennia. It had already been revealed that Mynocks could be eaten, but they are so gross that it is still funny to see a character brag about having a Mynock roast.
1 BROTHERLY LOVE
In 1960, when Ron Howard was just six years old, his life was forever changed when he was cast as Opie Taylor, the son of Sheriff Andy Taylor on the hit television sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show. When he was nine, he was gifted a 9mm camera by Griffith and the show's producer, Aaron Ruben, and that sent Howard on a long career as a director that is still ongoing today. When Howard began on The Andy Griffith Show, his younger brother, Clint, was only a year old. When he was a toddler, Clint began to make appearances on the series as well and he soon became an acclaimed television child actor just like his big brother, with his most prominent role being on the sitcom, Gentle Ben, about a boy and his tamed bear.
When Ron began directing motion pictures, he made sure to bring his brother along for the ride. They have made almost 20 motion pictures together. Some of Clint's prominent roles in Ron's films include John Dexter in Cocoon, Lou in Parenthood, N.A.S.A. flight controller Seymour Liebergot in Apollo 13 and Whobris in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Sure enough, Clint makes an appearance in Solo, as well. He plays the head of the droid fighting ring who almost gets his head crushed by L3-37.