Before we get into this, I'm not going to say this is a good idea, or even anything that's likely to happen, but it is entirely possible for Han Solo to return in Star Wars Episode IX.
Speculation about the possible resurrection of Solo began this week when Celebrity Star Wars Fan Kevin Smith tweeted about the news that Billy Dee Williams is going to reprise his role as Lando Calrissian.
Some fans took his Star Wars fantasy seriously and began debating the likelihood of Han returning in Episode IX. The odds that this will actually happen are, well, not good. But as Nerdist points out, Star Wars canon makes it theoretically possible for time travel to save Han.
This is thanks to the Starkiller Base, the Death Star 2.0 space station where Solo died in The Force Awakens. Though it's not explained in Episode VII, the Starkiller Base is powered by mysterious technology that could make for a little bit of time travel. As writer Donna Dickens explains:
Starkiller Base did not originally drain the sun, it was powered by dark matter. One of the few head scratchers in “The Force Awakens” was how the Starkiller base actually worked. Was it draining one sun after another and then moving on? How did it shoot a beam across the galaxy in real time? Why did it turn INTO a sun at the end (other than the visual metaphor of the light triumphing over the dark?) Turns out, it was never supposed to be powered by the sun. Situated in one place, messing with science they didn't understand, the First Order was harvesting dark matter to power their weapon. As the matter congealed to be sucked into the core, the light was supposed to dim. Then, using more science they barely understood, they beamed the concentrated dark matter THROUGH the galaxy instead of across it. Basically they were ripping holes in time/space. Oh! And the target didn’t explode originally. It turned into a tiny sun.
As we've learned from Star Wars, simply seeing someone fall into a pit or even cut in half, doesn't mean they're dead. Just look at Boba Fett and Darth Maul. So, assuming Han fell into the bowels of the Starkiller Base, where and when did his body end up?
Again, I'm not saying this should happen, but it's something to think about for the next year and a half...
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
