With the release of The Rise of Skywalker trailer, it’s been quite an exciting time for the Star Wars community. Now that Palpatine is almost assuredly back, things are looking more and more like Lucasfilm has not only had an overall plan from the start, but has been dropping detectable clues along the way through other media. One thread in particular casts the Millennium Falcon as the key to facing the dark side foe of the new film. Potential spoilers and speculation below.

As we’ve written here before, recent entries into Star Wars canon have strongly pointed at some type of immortality-related plot. It’s a theme that was touched upon in the prequels, and from a plotting standpoint this has always made the most sense to pick back up in the sequel trilogy. For the saga to feel like one story, there needs to be some kind of consistent antagonist present throughout, and as of The Last Jedi, The only two Emperor-like characters in the saga are dead. Someone’s gotta be coming back.

So now that we know the villain is (most likely) rising from the dead in some fashion, it’s time to move on to the next narrative puzzle to solve: How do you kill a villain that won’t die? More specifically, how do you defeat a villain that has already risen from the dead once, and convince your audience that he’s really dead this time, and the story is over?

As with many fantasy stories, the answer to this is usually revealed along the way– either stated explicitly at the beginning (“throw this ring in the fire to kill him”), or or hinted at as the story progresses (“Don’t you wonder why Harry could always talk to snakes?”).

Star Wars is a “Chosen One saga”, and the absolute easiest way out of this for the writers would (and should) be to make one of the characters (Kylo Ren, Rey, Anakin, Luke) be the Chosen One that can overpower Darth Sidious. It’s obvious, and there’s a very strong chance that’s going to happen. But we’ve had that story–a lot of them–and while it’s cool to watch two characters fight it out with a fancy Force-powered Dragon Ball Z battle, Star Wars is something special, and it deserves a little more original.

So this is why, in a search to find something better, I’ve stumbled upon a curious arrangement of characters and places that have been working their way into the story right under our noses, and I think it offers a strangely satisfying way to end this whole thing.

So let me start with a question:

What if there was a real, essential reason the Millennium Falcon was in the sequel trilogy?

The Maw

If we’re going by current canon, The Maw Cluster is a giant, planet sized gravity well. It was introduced in the Solo movie as a part of Han’s Kessel Run shortcut. The Millennium Falcon, loaded up with L3’s (uniquely superior) navi-computer, was able to navigate its way through it.

What a lot of people might not know is that the Maw has a fairly significant history in Star Wars Legends that makes it a curious addition to new canon.

Without getting into the weeds, the Maw was used by the Ones (Yes, those ones–The Father, Son, and Daughter from The Clone Wars) to imprison the dark side monster Abeloth. The story is strange and oddly dovetails new canon, but all you really need to know is that Abeloth used to be the mortal Mother, who helped keep the balance between the Son and Daughter. She drank from a forbidden pool so she could be immortal like her family, but transformed into a terrible dark side entity– one that can’t actually die.

To me, it’s a very interesting coincidence that one of the most powerful, immortal dark side entities in Legends (Abeloth) was imprisoned by something that Lucasfilm has just recently introduced to canon (the Maw), exactly one film before reintroducing the most powerful, immortal dark side entity in canon (Palpatine).

The Falcon

Not only has the Maw been reintroduced to canon, but as of Solo, the only entity in the galaxy that that knows how to get in and out of the Maw has been sitting in a dusty shipyard under a tarp on Jakku– the Millennium Falcon. Remember when Rey excitedly exclaims “This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs!”? It might be a fun fan service, but she’s also reminding audiences of exactly what this ship is known for.

Lucasfilm did two things in Solo. First, it’s introduced the Maw as a place the Falcon has gone. But second, they’ve transformed the Falcon from an object and place in the Star Wars universe, into a character– a character that also happens to have an unparalleled, one of a kind navi-computer.

This is an insane departure from what it used to be. The Falcon as we knew it in the original trilogy was an old beat up piece of junk that had been modified to be slightly better than it should be. Now, with the infusion of L3, they’ve essentially given it “magic powers”. Rey is now in possession of a magical ship that knows how to get in and out of the area surrounding a black hole that, in the story the writers borrowed it from, was used to imprison an un-killable dark side villain.

Woah.

If this wasn’t enough, Lucasfilm is also reintroducing the only living character in Star Wars to have survived the Maw: Lando. He’s also the only character in the film that actually knows L3. As it stands right now, Kylo Ren is no doubt aware of what happened to his father in the Maw, and Rey has a ship that can lead them there. Lando, in this case, might be able to act as the bridge that gives them the missing information they need to put two and two together. All this, while rekindling interest in Solo movie.

If Palpatine is indeed immortal and can’t be killed, then imprisoning him in the Maw may be the only chance our heroes have of defeating him. If that’s the case, the history of the Millennium Falcon seems to be a great story opportunity.

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