Slowly but surely, we're gaining some details about what will be going on in the Young Han Solo film. While any information regarding the story is tightly under wraps, a new casting rumor now has our minds racing. The word on the streets, of Mos Eisley we suppose, is that the Young Han Solo film has their eye on as many four different women to play the female lead. The interesting thing is that none of them are white. While the Star Wars franchise has been doing a lot to become a more diverse film franchise recently, the number of characters of color are still somewhat limited; but if this is a character we know, it could very possibly be Han Solo's "wife" Sana.
To start out, let's make it clear that this entire concept begins with a rumor and ends with speculation, so this is more of a thought exercise than a real theory. Still, it's an interesting one. The whole thing starts with Jeff Sneider at Mashable who lets us in on the current casting rumor.
Since our natural reaction when looking at potential casting for the Young Han Solo film is to look for characters we know, we must look back at the history of Han Solo. Within the currently established and approved Disney version of the Extended Universe, and we do find a very obvious non-white woman in Han Solo's past. Slashfilm puts forth the idea that could be a relatively recent introduction from the Star Wars comics. Earlier this summer, the Star Wars comics introduced us to the character of Sana Starros, a woman that Han Solo had previously pretended to marry in order for the pair to pull off a scam together. While the marriage was just a front, Sana shows up years later looking for her "husband," so she obviously took things a bit more seriously.
Could this be the charter in question? Sure, it could be, just as it could be an infinite number of characters that are entirely new to the Star Wars universe. At the same time, it would be crazy to not at least consider the possibility. Ever since we learned that Forest Whitaker would be portraying Saw Gerrera in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, we've had to really consider characters from outside the main films as real options. If a character from the animated Clone Wars can make appearances in films, then so can those from the comics. If it were Sana that Lucasfilm is trying to cast, it could give us a potential direction for what the movie will be about as well.
While Sana should be part of the conversation, there are certainly other directions this character could go. We learned recently that a young Lando Calrissian will be making an appearance in the film as well. Maybe Lando's got a sister that we've never met who will also be in the film. It could also be any new character of literally any race that isn't white. Additionally, there's no reason that the character in question even has to be a person of color. It could be that the actresses who made the final cut just happened to not be white, not that they needed to be.
In the end, this is simply good news that the Star Wars universe is looking to continue to expand the types of people involved in the films. In a universe that has a literal galaxy of diversity, we're excited to see more of our own diversity represented on screen.
