WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7 episode "The Phantom Menace," streaming now on Disney+.
With this week's episode, the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars moves parallel to the events of 2005's Revenge of the Sith, as Anakin Skywalker kills Count Dooku, and the "mysterious" Darth Sidious prepares to execute the final step of his master plan. But even as the Siege of Mandalore unfolds around Ahsoka Tano, "The Phantom Menace" finds room to draw a connection to another movie, with a cameo by Dryden Vos, the primary antagonist of 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The moment comes almost halfway through the episode, after Sidious' former apprentice, Maul, flees his initial confrontation with Ahsoka and the clone troopers, brought to Mandalore by Bo-Katan Kryze. Although Maul had intended to draw Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin to the planet, he quickly finds his unexpected foe to be more than a match. As he prepares for a major battle against the Republic forces, Maul contacts the leaders of the crime syndicate, and urges them to go into hiding (presumably because Sidious is about to seize absolute control of the galaxy). One of the three leaders is, unmistakably, Dryden Vos, played in Solo by Paul Bettany.
If the pose doesn't give him away, then the striations on his face certainly do.
The public face of Crimson Dawn, the crime syndicate secretly run by Maul by the time of Solo, Vos sets the film's events into motion when the scoundrel Tobias Beckett -- Han Solo's mentor -- attempts to settle his debt to the gangster by stealing unrefined coaxium from the mines of Kessel. Vos was ultimately killed by his trusted lieutenant Q'ra to save Han's life.
The prominent role of Maul in the final stretch of The Clone Wars virtually guaranteed some nods to Solo, in which he was revealed in the final moment as the true leader of Crimson Dawn. However, with only two episodes remaining, it seems unlikely the beloved animated series will be able to fill in too many gaps between Maul's time on Mandalore and his rise a leader of Crimson Dawn.
Streaming on Disney+, the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars stars Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker, Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Dee Bradley Baker as Captain Rex and the clone troopers, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan and Sam Witwer as Maul. A new episode arrives each Friday.