At ten movies and counting—and more spinoffs in any other medium you can name—the Star Wars universe is loaded with opportunities for references, allusions, and easter eggs. And that’s especially true for a prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story, which builds on the audience’s knowledge of Han Solo, and lays the groundwork for some of the events of the original trilogy.
Solo is packed with this stuff, so let’s do our best to unpack it. This list is far from comprehensive—after all, I’ve only seen the movie once—but if you’re looking for all of the easter eggs hidden in Solo: A Star Wars Story, this is a good place to start:
Though you can barely spot them in the original Star Wars, Han Solo’s lucky dice—which hang in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon—have become a fan-favorite prop with a surprisingly convoluted backstory. Solo establishes that Han had them long before he had the Falcon (and if you’ve seen The Last Jedi, you also know where they end up after Han is gone).
In an unsuccessful attempt to scare Lady Proxima, Han pretends he’s holding a thermal detonator—the Star Wars equivalent of a grenade. Decades later, in Return of the Jedi, Leia—disguised as a bounty hunter named Boussh—would pull the same trick with Jabba the Hutt while attempting to rescue Han, with similarly unsuccessful results.
As they discuss an upcoming job, Han’s new allies make a quick reference to Bossk. It’s a name that should sound familiar to Star Wars nerds. Bossk was originally introduced as one of the bounty hunters assembled by Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. (He’s the one that looks like a lizard.) Bossk has gone on to have a fairly robust role outside of the movies, with appearances in novels, video games, and the TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
It’s a tiny cameo, so if you don’t want to miss these guys, don’t blink—but back in October, Ron Howard confirmed that the minor Star Wars characters Tag and Bink would appear in the movie, played by screenwriter Jon Kasdan and assistant director Toby Hefferman. Tag and Bink were introduced in a series of comics as the Star Wars equivalent of Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—two goofy minor characters fumbling around in the background of the biggest moments of the Star Wars universe.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
When Tobias Beckett breaks down a rifle into its component parts, he hands Han the gun’s stripped-down version, which looks remarkably similar to the trusty blaster Han swore by in the original trilogy. ("Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.")
One of the weirdest things about The Empire Strikes Back is the way Lando Calrissian—allegedly Han’s old buddy—repeatedly pronounces Han’s name wrong. Billy Dee Williams says the name "Han" with a long A (as if it rhymes with "fan"), and not how everybody else pronounces it (as if it rhymes with "con"). It’s pretty clearly just a mistake in the original movie, but Solo finds a clever way to retcon it: Lando deliberately mispronounces Han’s name as a way to irritate him, and ignores Han’s feeble attempt to correct him.
Tobias Beckett and Chewbecca spend a little free time playing dejarik—a kind of holographic chess game with weird little monsters for pieces. The habit clearly sticks with Chewbacca, who plays a game against C-3PO and R2-D2 in the original Star Wars (and eventually receive the memorable advice "Let the Wookiee win" from Han).
Here’s a cut so deep you wouldn’t know it unless you read the Solo screenplay. In an interview with UPROXX’s Mike Ryan, screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan revealed that a human slave briefly glimpsed in the Kessel mines is played by Anthony Daniels, who has appeared as C-3PO in every other Star Wars movie to date. Daniels’s Solo character is named Tak in honor of the celebrated cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, who also worked on the original Star Wars.
In one fight scene, Qi’ra reveals herself to be a master of a fictional martial art called Teras Kasi. The name "Teras Kasi" hearkens back to a truly awful Star Wars-themed fighting game on the PlayStation, called Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, which pitted characters like Han and Boba Fett against each other in one-on-one combat.
In the midst of his record-setting, absurdly dangerous Kessel run, Han grins and exclaims, "I have a really good feeling about this!" It’s a winking inversion of one of Star Wars’ most frequently quoted lines—”I’ve got a bad feeling about this”—which has turned up in some form in every Star Wars movie to date.
When Enfys Nest and her gang takes off their masks, one face looks a little more familiar than the others. That’s Warwick Davis, who made his Star Wars debut playing Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi. But In Solo, Davis is actually reprising a small role he played in The Phantom Menace: Weazel, who was last seen betting against Watto in the pod race.
The Empire Strikes Back establishes that the Millennium Falcon belonged to Lando until Han won it from him in a game of sabacc. In Solo, we see how that went down, with Lando cheating via a special device that allowed him to pull cards from his sleeve. At the end of the movie, Han manages to thwart Lando’s device and win the ship—giving new meaning to the line "you lost her to me, fair and square" from The Empire Strikes Back.
