When Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters in just over a month (!!!), more than 30 years will have passed since the events of Return of the Jedi. That’s a lot of time, with room for a great deal of growing, maturing, and even mastering new skills. We’ll get to catch up with our favorite characters from the saga, but still, when the seventh Star Wars opens, there are some things that Han Solo will suck at. For instance, he’s apparently not very good at being a responsible adult.
Harrison Ford and his iconic character are the subjects of an extensive new piece from EW. The former smuggler has obviously changed a great deal over the decades, but at least in some ways he’s still the reckless Han Solo we all know and love. Ford said:
We spend a lot more time [in the movie] on his failure to master basic skills, like accounting. And accounting for his own behavior. There’s a lot of the rogue still left in Solo. Some things don’t change.
This isn’t a huge surprise. Even as much as his character evolves over the first three films — from a shoot-first scoundrel out for number one to a leader, a general, and the hero of a revolution — he maintains that devil-may-care attitude that made us all fall in love with him in the first place.
We want to see him grow and change, but not to the point where he is unrecognizable. After all, Han Solo without the swagger just wouldn’t be Han Solo, and it sounds like he’ll still have plenty of that. Sure, he may be older and wiser, but you still shouldn’t expect this version of the character to become and Obi-Wan style mentor or anything like that.
While know that Han will still be Han is a bit of a relief (though I don’t think most of us expected to see him completely abandon his ways), it begs the question of how his mischievous proclivities will manifest in The Force Awakens. One thing we’ve been curious to see is how his relationship with Princess Leia worked out, and there’s been a lot of speculation on that front. We’ve seen them embrace in the trailers, but it doesn’t look like an entirely happy situation. There have been rumors that they’re not together, and some that indicate that the villainous Kylo Ren could even be their son. That would be a strain.
So we’re left to wonder whether or not they stayed together. Did they settle down, get married, and have kids? That doesn’t seem to jibe with Han’s personality, and between that and Leia’s role as one of the power players of the Rebellion, we’re super intrigued to find out what became of them as a couple.
There are also hints that Han may not have completely given up his outlaw ways, or at least that he still has underworld contacts. Lupita Nyong’o’s character, the CGI Maz Kanata, is said to be a pirate, and we’ve seen images of her lair full of nefarious types. Many suspect that brightly colored manor that Han, Rey, and Finn arrive at in the latest trailers, the one with all the banners and the cool looking robot, may be the exterior. Perhaps he needs a favor that only such a scallywag can fulfill.
Like most unanswered questions we have about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we won’t know the truth about these until December 18, but we sure as hell can’t wait to find out.
