For all the new faces on the screen, many of Solo's characters are old mainstays in
the Star Wars universe with their destinies already laid out.
We know Lando betrays Han on Cloud City.
We know Han eventually meets Leia, has a kid, and gets light-stabbed.
And we know Chewbacca hates Porgs.
But what about the other characters in Solo: A Star Wars Story?
True to form, the movie is a menagerie of aliens, droids, and rebel scum, and believe
it or not, a few of those characters come into play in other Star Wars stories.
Here are all the characters in Solo: A Star Wars Story with more meaning than you realized.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
L3-37
Ever since the beginning, the Millennium Falcon has seemed to have a mind of its own.
Way back in The Empire Strikes Back, C-3PO mentions that the Falcon has "the most peculiar
dialect" after trying to communicate with it.
And now we know why, thanks to a new character who's apparently been in all the main Star
Wars films: L3-37, Lando's activist droid.
By herself, she's a unique piece of work.
As Solo co-writer Jon Kasdan explained;
"She’s a self-modified droid.
The idea is that she’s sort of a mutt, if you will, of various parts of different kinds
of droids who has improved upon herself."
But when Han, Lando, Chewie, and Qi'ra are trying to navigate the Maelstrom, they have
no choice but to plug the defunct L3's database into the Falcon's computer.
And, as far as we can tell, they leave it there, giving the ship L3-37's thoughts and
sassiness.
Weazel
By now, most people know that Solo: A Star Wars Story features a surprise cameo by a
character from The Phantom Menace, and we'll get to that in a moment.
But what you may not have realized is that there were actually two Phantom characters
on-screen in Solo.
The character of Weazel, played by Star Wars mainstay Warwick Davis, is one of Enfys Nest's
marauders in Solo.
As it turns out, he's taken a long journey to end up as one of Nest's rebels.
In The Phantom Menace, Weazel - again played by Davis - appears as one of the spectators
of Anakin's pod race.
He even bets on Anakin to come in first.
The Official Guide to Solo: A Star Wars Story seems to confirm him as the same character,
saying that he was once a petty thief who worked for Jabba the Hutt.
What's he been up to in the meantime?
Probably regretting that bet he made on Anakin, since he turned out to be a Sith Lord and
all.
Cloud-Riders
One of the best additions to Solo was Enfys Nest and her band of Cloud-Riders, a pirate
gang that seemed to show up at every job Han pulled.
As it turns out, these guys hark back to the Marvel line of comics as well.
In Star Wars #9, Han is called out to a planet to stop the Cloud-Riders' raids on a local
village.
There, he goes blaster-to-blaster with the airborne marauders.
The story is obviously different from what happened in Solo, but co-writer Jon Kasdan
confirmed that the name for the Cloud-Riders came directly from that comic issue, along
with the design ideas for the gang's swoop bikes.
With this as a precedent, who knows what other non-canon expanded universe concepts could
still make it to the big screen?
Darth Maul
Solo had a big surprise waiting near the end in the form of Darth Maul, who you may remember
as the red-faced Sith got a free case of the halvsies courtesy of Obi-Wan in The Phantom
Menace.
"This was a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half."
So first of all...what?
How's that guy still around?
Well, Darth Maul is, if nothing else, a slippery sucker, and fans of the animated series The
Clone Wars may recall that Maul survived being cut in half and falling into that giant hole.
Later, he got himself a fancy new pair of robo-legs and became the leader of the criminal
organization called the Shadow Collective.
So how does all this fit into Solo?
Well, clearly Maul is connected to the Crimson Dawn, the criminal organization headed by
Dryden Vos in the film.
Whether Maul pulls all the strings for the Dawn or Vos simply reports to him is still
unclear, but Dryden Vos mentions that he can't steal the coaxium from Kessel because he has
an alliance with the Pyke Syndicate, who run the mine.
In Star Wars canon, the Pyke Syndicate are members of Maul's Shadow Collective, suggesting
that the Crimson Dawn is just another criminal organization working for Maul's bigger gangster
group.
Qi'ra
Similarly, the movie's ending makes it clear that we haven't seen the last of Qi'ra.
As one of Han's many betrayers, she certainly has her place in Solo, but as an ally of Maul…
well, things just got a lot more interesting.
One theory has her becoming a Sith, but probably that's not likely since Maul himself technically
isn't a Sith any more.
But he still has all the training, and if he took Qi'ra under his wing there are definitely
a few things he could teach her.
Combined with Qi'ra's knowledge of the Teras Kasi fighting style - the same style The Last
Jedi's Praetorian guard used - that could make her a formidable opponent in the future.
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