Han Solo Deserves the Right to Die

Han Solo at the end of his journey.

The pop culture brouhaha recently circles almost entirely around the latest Lucasfilm extravaganza, Solo: a Star Wars Story. The debate largely moves around fans who gush enthusiastically about how awesome it is, versus industry critics casting blame for its lackluster take and slow momentum. Is Solo a statement about where we currently exist as a society? Or a numbing admission that we’ve reached Star Wars exhaustion? I can’t help wondering if there’s an Option C.

I shouldn’t have to say “Spoiler Alert,” but look away: Han Solo dies in The Force Awakens. They finally gave Harrison Ford a heroic death fighting the good fight, which he wanted thirty years ago. But having given Solo the valiant end his character earned, Lucasfilm, owned by that ultimate profit machine, Disney, cannot stomach letting the cash cow die, so they begin filling in details from before. They’ve created the opportunity to keep him alive forever.

Characters like Han Solo exist within a psychological arc for their audiences, a process of discovery. While Luke Skywalker fights to discover his inheritance with the Force, Han Solo, who has no parents or inheritance, fights to discover his identity. He struggled to connect with something. The first time we meet him, he boasts of his fast ship and superior smuggling skills. He tells Luke “Don’t get cocky,” tacitly admitting the ship can’t handle two egos.

Han Solo at the beginning of his journey

Because George Lucas didn’t know whether he’d ever get to make The Empire Strikes Back, he gave Han Solo what could’ve been a satisfying ending, when Solo helps destroy the Death Star. But by the next movie, he’s back to fretting over his debt. He’s also trying to annoy Princess Leia into loving him, which, in 1977, probably looked charming. However, in the #MeToo context and my burnout on the Leonard Hofstadter model of courtship, he looks, frankly, creepy.

But again, Solo chooses the self-sacrificing path when he helps the Princess escape certain death on Hoth. Throughout the remaining footage, he survives torture before being frozen, helps overthrow a gangster, and accepts a military commission to help destroy the Empire. Because he’s chosen an identity, a cause he’s willing to embrace. He’s stopped living for the next adrenaline rush and accepted that life is worth living, because something’s worth dying for.

Which explains why I felt disappointed, in The Force Awakens, to discover he’d returned to smuggling. He’d returned to his life of thrill-chasing, basically, because the production house wanted to rebuild the dynamic from Episode IV. We had the young Jedi idealist (Rey/Luke) and the escapee from Imperial dominion (Finn/Leia); we needed the arrogant pilot to complete the triumvirate. No wonder Poe Dameron spent the movie mostly offscreen.

But his time was over. He wasn’t free-flying and giddy anymore; as a father with a grown son and a grizzled beard, he couldn’t be the lawless man-child we once loved. He had to mentor the new protagonists. So when the protagonists graduated his tutelage, he needed, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, to die. No, not retire, die. Not only did the story need to assure he wouldn’t suddenly return, but he’d earned the right to sleep.

Be serious here: can you imagine Han Solo dying quietly in bed, surrounded by his grandchildren? Of course not. Han Solo isn’t the kind of character who retires from the story. If he can’t die standing up, it compromises his entire identity. He’s learned, across his narrative arc, that life matters because it could end, so he needs to fight. The culmination of such a journey must be dying while fighting to make life worth living.

Han Solo at the... wait.
What the hell is this?

So yeah, I had problems with Solo returning to his beginning, but he received the end he deserved. The end we, his audience, deserved. We watched him develop from an overgrown teenager, addicted to adrenaline in lieu of human connection, to someone who stood for something, and who ultimately died standing up. Finally, his journey was complete. And then… Walt’s people brought him back! Arrgh! Why? Because he had more to learn? Of course not.

In fifth grade, I remember mourning because Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain ended. I wanted the story to continue forever. Yet it took only a little while to realize: that character fought so much, so hard, so long. He’d earned the right to be done. Now I needed to commence my journey, not substitute his. Likewise, Han Solo’s story has definition because it has a beginning, middle, and end. But Walt’s people can’t accept that.