She might not look like much when we see her in A New Hope, but the junky, tattered exterior of the Millennium Falcon was always meant to be a hint at a long life for the freighter. So, seeing it shiny and with a fresh coat of paint in Solo: A Star Wars Story should be what it looks like in its prime, right? Actually, no.
Turns out, the sleek Falcon we’re going to see in Solo – piloted by Lando Calrissian and his trusty droid friend L3-37 — has but the latest coat of paint applied to the Falcon, which has had many lives and modifications over an operative span of decades before the events of the film. This is according to a new interview with Solo co-writer Jon Kasdan over at Entertainment Weekly:
Remember, when the Falcon enters our movie, it’s already had a long life. Decades of existence. And it’s been modified even from its original design. What we tried to do with the whole movie was take things that we take for granted and love and turn them on their ear.
Aside from the slick paint job, according to Kasdan, one of the many modifications added to the Falcon by Lando includes “a little more space to entertain,” which makes perfect sense for the galaxy’s suavest gentlemen. Come on, you’ve seen the raised eyebrow on that action figure. You know he’s a party man.
But the idea of the Falcon having been around for many iterations before even Lando got ahold of it is an interesting one. We already knew that it was at least in operation since the latter days of the Republic thanks to the ship’s fleeting cameo appearance in Revenge of the Sith (looking suspiciously like it does under Han’s ownership rather than Lando’s… but hey, that’s the peril of trying to make prequels made years after the fact canonically align), but even then, it’s still operating under the auspices of Rey and Chewie 50 years after that. That’s one hell of a lifetime for what a ship like the Falcon has gone through, and it’s apparently got a life that stretches well before even that?
This all raises the question of just how much more there is to the Falcon’s history that we don’t know, and likely won’t know even after Solo: A Star Wars Story hits theatres May 25. But at least we know that, no matter how old she turns out to be, the Falcon’s always got it where it counts.