If “Fuel for the Fire”, the most recent episode of Star Wars Resistance, felt oddly familiar, that’s completely natural. It contained an intriguing connection to Solo: A Star Wars Story.
First of all, the episode featured Elijah Wood’s debut in the Star Wars saga as Rucklin, a mysterious pilot on the Colossus who, at one point, goes racing after a ring — which, as we’ve pointed out, is a delightful and almost certainly not coincidental wink at The Lord of the Rings.
Then there was the focus of the episode, the aforementioned “fuel for the fire”: Corellian hyperfuel. That, too, should ring a bell, because it’s also the crux of Solo.
There it’s called both “hyperfuel” and “Coaxium”, and here they refer to it as “hyperfuel” and “hot sauce”. And we have confirmed that the substance is indeed a strain of coaxium very similar to the one used in Solo.
Knowing that, it gives the entire episode a whole other level of drama. Fans who have seen Solo: A Star Wars Story know the value of hyperfuel. It’s worth risking your life for, and even killing for. And it’s the reason Han Solo gets off his home planet.
This is powerful, important stuff. A few small drops can shoot the Millennium Falcon out of trouble in an instant. A few canisters can bring down an entire mountain.
None of that is explained in Resistance, of course. Here it’s just fuel that makes things go faster. But knowing the lengths people are willing to go for hyperfuel in the larger Star Wars context makes a) the fact that Yeager has it very intriguing; b) the act of Rucklin stealing it even more scandalous; and c) the fact Rucklin was about to go into a race with a petrol tank full of it completely insane.
Tell me for a second you didn’t think “Star Wars is gonna kill Elijah Wood!” And if you did, you probably were thinking about some of what we learned not just on Resistance, but in Solo too.
The episode ended up with Yeager (and the audience) realising Kaz may not be a great mechanic, but he has it where it counts, in his heart. However, it also made us even more curious about Yeager.
We saw that he was in the Battle of Jakku (which was cool to finally see in full glory outside of a video game) and that he has a family on a planet some fans hypothesised could be Batuu — which is currently being built at Disneyland.
What more is there to this character? How did he get such expensive fuel? Why did he need it? I can’t wait to find out.