WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Beckett #1 by Gerry Duggan, Edgar Salazar, Will Sliney, Marc Laming, Jordan Boyd and VC's Travis Lanham, on sale now.


In the annals of Star Wars history, the Rebel Alliance has gone through numerous plans to topple the Empire and, most recently, the First Order. When it came to taking down the Death Star and the Starkiller base, they took a direct approach, using cruisers and X-Wing fighters to do the job.

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In the Solo: A Star Wars Story tie-in comic Star Wars: Beckett #1, which is set years before A New Hope, we find out how the rebels were planning to fight the Galactic Empire in the early days. And as it turns out, it's way more subtle than all-out war.

Ron Howards' anthology film showcased Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), his wife Val (Thandie Newton) and their pilot Rio Durant (Jon Favreau) as the sneakiest smugglers in the galaxy. Beckett would go on to recruit Alden Ehrenreich's Han Solo and Chewbacca -- and betray them in the end -- only to ultimately fail and die in a shootout with Han.

This prequel series, however, charts Beckett's earlier years, trying to sell stolen material to the villain from Solo, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) and his criminal syndicate, the Crimson Dawn. The issue opens on the planet Hovun IV with the trio robbing a bar. The reader quickly realizes that the main objective is to place a tracker on a scoundrel named Dvorad.

The crew track him down and a chase for some mysterious chips ensues. It's clear Beckett is willing to risk his life for the chips, as they're not your average score. He reveals they're blank I.D. chips, something that has become incredibly rare in the galaxy far, far away. The robbers eventually obtain their prize, thinking Dryden wants to buy them.

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Shockingly, it's not Dryden who shows up at the rendezvous point. It's actually Enfys Nest, a fellow bandit from Solo who hates Beckett. This turns out to be one of their earliest run-ins, with Enfys masking her communications and pretending to be Dryden, setting up Beckett's team. In Howard's movie, Enfys and her people were allies of the rebels, stealing and supplying them with precious coaxium fuel, as well as weapons. Here, she reveals the blank I.D. chips are for helping the rebels plot their biggest ruse yet.

They want to use the chips to gather new identities, not just to hide rebels who are on the run and scatter them throughout the galaxy, but also to begin seeding sleeper agents within the Empire itself. This is the same line of thinking Beckett had when he contemplated using the chips so that he and Val could start a new life together -- a plan they ultimately scrapped.

Nonetheless, Beckett doesn't care for the Empire or the rebels. A shootout ensues. During the skirmish, he decides that if he can't have the chips then no one can. He blows up his own ship with the chips still aboard. They barely escape with their lives, but send Enfys' crew retreating.

This sequence of events offers some insight into the minds of these smugglers who are out only for themselves, and also shows how desperate the rebels are. Credit must be given to their thinking though, as the Alliance knows it'll always be outnumbered and outgunned. Thus, its reliance on stealth and deception.

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This would eventually come full-circle in Rogue One, in which spies like Galen Erso were embedded in the Empire in key positions. As for the other agents and spies, well, if they went undercover using these chips, it wasn't due to Beckett's robberies.