What Freedom Means

Choice in Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest Disney-era LucasFilms, bombed. Some people say it was a movie nobody asked for, or that it it was bad strategy from LucasFilm, or that Star Wars fatigue has been a swift and cruel mistress. And then there is the backlash to the backlash, quietly arguing that Solo was a great Star Wars film, and the fandom can’t see the forest for the trees.

For me, Solo was everything I want from Star Wars. It blends the adventure and melodrama from the original trilogy with the world-building arcana of the prequels and animated series. Solo let me revel in just enough fangirl nostalgia without shying away from expanding the mythology or bogging down the momentum of the narrative. Everything here feels interconnected, like we have been dropped down into the ongoing story mid-car chase, mid-conversation. I love Star Wars because it is a world I can visit that is both familiar and expansive.

It is a shame that most of the conversation around this film, even the praise of it, has been in the context of its commercial performance and not its narrative. Solo gives us some new mythology, but it also gives us some new themes. As I watched Solo what arose for me most of all was the consequences of the diverse characters’ experiences with and relationship to freedom.

We walk into this movie with expectations about whose story this is. This is Solo — so it is Han’s story. We expect and are excited to see Chewbacca and Lando. As other characters enter we put them in the context of telling Han’s story. Qi’ra we meet as well-worn archetype: a gritty damsel, ready to scrap and sacrifice, but generally relying on someone else for the planning (Han). She performs this archetype well, and also acts as a proto-Leia. Han clearly has a type, but in the end Han’s love needs a different kind of strength. In those first minutes of the movie we see Qi’ra and we believe we know everything we need to know about her.

Watch closely, though, Solo does something interesting. To Han’s thirst for freedom, Qi’ra’s offers a counterpoint about how the meaning of freedom flexes depending on your context, your history and your body.

In the beginning, Han and Qi’ra are Dickensian orphans on dystopian Corellia. Han plans a daring escape. But alas, it fails, they are seperated. Qi’ra tells Han to save himself. He flees, leaving her behind. He will return for her one day!

We see Han grow, follow his adventures. These are not adventures for adventure’s sake (not to say that he doesn’t find thrill in it). This is all to become a pilot, to get a ship, to one day return to Corellia and rescue sad and waiting Qi’ra. Qi’ra remains, to use Westworld’s parlance, his cornerstone. She is a fixed idea, a static memory. Because he cannot see her, because he is a young man full of his own adventure, she cannot change. She is not human.

Han Solo is the archetype of the unbound spirit, the id of rugged individualism. So essential is freedom to his personality, that even if he hadn’t been fated an orphan’s life on Corellia, we could imagine him bursting for freedom from even the most comfortable of upbringings. His is a thirst for freedom without conditions. He knows what he needs to get it: money and then a ship. He wants to free Qi’ra not out of any sense of obligation or guilt, but because this is what he wants. And everything else will work itself out. It is that Han Solo swagger we are all here for.

When we meet Chewbacca, after Han successfully liberates the wookiee from captivity in a way that he failed to with Qi’ra, we see how their freedom narrative’s diverge. As the two stand on the platform of a military transport stolen by their new crew, they recognize in each other their shared quest for freedom. And we begin to see what separates them. Han hungers for a boundless freedom. But for Chewbacca freedom means something different. His people are enslaved. To him, his own freedom is an opportunity create more freedom. Han does not have people. His isolation gives him access to a kind of freedom that Chewie cannot see for himself. United in their goal and understanding of their divergence, we see the groundwork for their lasting friendship. In Chewie, Han has found a partner gritty and tough like Qi’ra, with strength that comes from a vision of a more free future. Chewie may be here another proto-Leia, a partner from whom he learns the value of purpose beyond yourself, the lesson that freedom comes with responsibility.

Did we just become best friends?

In the second act, Han are Qi’ra are thrown together again. Rather than his romantic savior moment on Corellia, he essentially bumps into her at a bar. Qi’ra is working for Crimson Dawn. With the crime syndicate’s brand on her wrist, she is in deep. In this moment I was taken back to throwaway line during Han’s botched prison break. Qi’ra hesitates at the checkpoint and reminds Han that if they they leave they will no longer be protected by the White Worms, the gangsters who enslaved and housed them. Without this protection, there’s a chance that they might fall into an even worse situation. Her thoughts go to a different kind slavery then Han seems to understand.

Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra

For Qi’ra, freedom means something different than what it means for Han and Chewbacca. In her deeply female experience, freedom is rooted in safety. She cannot see a freedom without some kind of protection. For Han, safety is an outgrowth of heroism. He provides safety, does not seek it. Han’s confidence leaves the consequences of failure off his radar.

Much has changed for Qi’ra. She has a Mona Lisa smile and a thousand yard stare whe he sees her again. She looks upon Han with wistful fondness, the love of a distant memory. Han sees her as though nothing has changed. Han’s memories live in the present, but for Qi’ra they are remote and separate from what her life has become.

With their reunion, however, an adventure is ignited. Even though Han is blind to her reality, his joie de vivre is still something of a gift to her. She’s able to relive a past she’s left behind. This is the stuff of excitement. These are the exploits — the Kessel Run, the Millennium Falcon, droid rebellions — that have made Han Solo’s name. So much is the excitement that we begin to wonder if it might work out for them after all. Because, even if we know better, we all want to be free like Han Solo. Han Solo is an avatar for what can not be.

In the end, during the final showdown with Dryden Vos, the leader of Crimson Dawn and Qi’ra’s enslaver, Han’s romantic expectations are undermined a final time. Qi’ra kills Vos, saving Han, and then in a devinstating inversion she stays behind by choice. With Vos dead, she tells the fleeing Han that she will be right behind him, his wide eyes still seeing the Qi’ra of Corellia. But the door closes between them and he watches this new Qi’ra fly away, choosing to take Dryden Vos’ place as the new leader of Crimson Dawn. Qi’ra was dragged into this life against her will, due to circumstances beyond her control. At the end, she decided to stay, for both safety and freedom — it’s the first real choice we see her make.

Qi’ra is adaptive, moving quickly without a long-term plan. In this way, she is very similar to Han. But unlike Han, who is impulsive, Qi’ra is patient, deliberative. She waits for the right moment. Qi’ra didn’t have a plan to kill Dryden Vos. She didn’t use Han. But her instincts and foresight allow her to know the right move at every moment. As Beckett says, she is a survivor. This is how you survive in a lawless galaxy.

When Qi’ra kills Dryden Vos and takes his place rather than running off with Han, it is the culmination of her quest for security and power. In some ways, Qi’ra’s arc is similar to those that we have seen drawn to the darkside with the lure of power. What separates her story is her true vulnerability, her aloneness in the world. Anakin Skywalker fell for the dark side from an already powerful perch. He fell reaching for more. He fell for ambition. Qi’ra’s dark turn is not for aspiration, but for preservation. In that way her story is like Maul’s, groomed for strength and violence, and underestimated as sentient beings, seen as less than human. Freedom and power for Qi’ra means getting as close to the devil she knows. If she runs, she wouldn’t be able to see it.

Taken from one point of view, between Qi’ra and Han is a difference of bravery. Han is brave because he seeks freedom at all costs, while Qi’ra is less brave because she chooses the known quantity of a dark and brutal infrastructure. Han always chooses the unknown while Qi’ra chooses evil rather than face uncertainty. But this point of view is reductive because it overlooks the realities of physical safety and the access to power available to her. She is a woman that has come from the bottom rungs of society; enslaved, brutalized. Her framing is that of the slow plod of progress; “At least this is better than that.” Han is a man from a similar place but with a different set of tools that frame his experience around “This is a jam I can get out of.” Where he sees escape she sees history. He lives in the moment and she lives in the real world.

Qi’ra proves as an interesting contrast to the women of Star Wars, many of whom are conventionally brave and tellingly come from places of privilege. Princess Leia comes from royalty and has access to the highest levers of the government — both imperial and rebel. Not to mention her force wielding lineage.

Daisy Ridley as Rey

Rey, like Qi’ra, comes from abject poverty, but she too has been given great supernatural abilities. She struggles with her confidence, tries to find her place in the story — she worries that she is a nobody. But discovering that she is an instrument of the force, her struggle shifts to how she should choose to use her great powers and privilege. She is a nobody in the Skywalker story, but she has a great gift on which to build a new legacy. Qi’ra is a nobody with nothing. The universe is indifferent to her, and an indifferent universe is cruel.

Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso

Jyn Erso is an interesting contrast, too. When we first meet Jyn in Rogue One she has lost her way. She is mired in the same lawless universe that Qi’ra knows. But Rogue One is ultimately a story of Jyn reclaiming her birthright, of righting the wrongs of her father. Jyn doesn’t not have the force, but she is not nobody. She comes from the tradition of rebellion, her father and the man who raised her. Despite her life at the margins of society, she still has the language of an empowering social framework.

Anakin and Ahsoka in Clone Wars

Finally, there is my favorite, my hero, Ahsoka Tano. Anakin’s brave and scrappy padawan in the animated series, Clone Wars and Rebels, who becomes an early hero of the Rebel Alliance. There is no question to her bravery: we see her prove it again and again. We see her trained for it. In her perhaps bravest and most heartbreaking act, we see her walk away from the Jedi order, an organization that’s lost its way and her trust. Unlike other Jedi who have left Order, Ahsoka hasn’t fallen to the darkside. She has found herself and realized that what she believes falls outside of the Jedi dogma. The Jedi operate in a two party system, for them it is a choice between one dogmatic institution doing good or a dogmatic institution standing for evil. Ahsoka chooses a third way: freedom, independence. Why does Ahsoka have access to this determination? Why is she able to choose the uncertainty of freedom over a system that has failed her? Of course, it is part of who she is. But another large part of it is that she, like Leia and Rey, has the great privilege of being a forcewielder, and also that she was part of a flawed but deeply caring mentorship and an institution that built her up. While we don’t see it on screen in Solo, it is hard to imagine that Dryden Vos gave Qi’ra the support and meaningful opportunity that Anakin gave Ahsoka. Ahsoka is empowered by the access she has had to both mental and physical training. Empowered women are more likely to make empowered choices.

Qi’ra stands in contrast among the other great women of Star Wars. They are each the result of different experiences, different backgrounds in different contexts. Often when we talk about women (on screen and in our regular lives), we use the word ‘priorities’. We might say these women have different priorities, and that’s not wholly accurate, but the tone of it does not capture the weight of autonomy wrapped up in these kinds of decisions. When someone prioritizes family over work or vice versa, we talk about it like it is a preference, as though it’s an aesthetic choice without taking into consideration need and experience. When a woman prioritizes safety over freedom, as Qi’ra does and others haven’t, it is not necessarily because she is less brave or faces faces more risk — but built on her needs which are an outgrowth of her cruel experiences of her life. Freedom without fear is like a foreign language to her; it’s inaccessible.

Qi’ra is not without self-determination. While in the end she chooses leadership within the crime syndicate that enslaved her over freedom with Han — this in choice, the first real choice we see her make. I get great joy from that fact that neither the film nor Han seem to condemn her for this. A different kind of film, more conventional film, would be quick to condemn a women who fails to follow the hero. Han watches her make a choice, an option he has always had and assumed of others. He watches her ship fly away with resignation and we watch something in him change. We realize that this origin story is not about the Kessel Run. It is not about the game for chance that won him the Falcon or the providence of the dice. It is the origin of the fortress he’s built around his heart, the cementing of the facade that is the scruffy-looking nerf herder. He has regret because he loves her. But he finally sees her as a full human being — because he finally understands that the challenge of his adventure has been nothing compared to her fight for survival.