A Smuggler's Regress
In A New Hope, Leia Organa tells the “mercenary” Han Solo, “If money is all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive.” She doubts “if he really cares about … anybody.” On the contrary, what Han loves more than money is relationship. He comes back to help Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star because “he really cares about” his friends: Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca, who acts as his conscience, prodding him to return. Han may even be inspired by Obi-Wan (“Ben”) Kenobi, who sacrificed his life for his friends.
But why does Han live for money if what he really wants is relationship? It’s because relationships are risky. Loving others hurts. As Han’s characterization develops across future films, it turns out his pursuit of money is a coping mechanism that kicks in whenever the pursuit of relationship leads to heartbreak.
In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han only joins Tobias Beckett’s band of thieves so that he can make enough money to free his girlfriend Qi’ra from her slavery to Lady Proxima. But when Qi’ra abandons him – revealing she loves power more than she loves him back – Han concludes he may as well continue smuggling. Although at the film’s start Han escapes from Lady Proxima in hope of a free life with Qi’ra, by the film’s end he reverts to what he knows: he is on his way to work for the gangster Jabba the Hutt, who will be as cruel a master as Lady Proxima.
It is Leia’s love for Han that frees him from Jabba in Return of the Jedi, and it is Han’s love for Leia that leads him to give up smuggling and start a family with her. But when their son Ben turns to the Dark Side, becoming Kylo Ren, Han’s desire for relationship again founders on the reality that loving others is difficult. He doesn’t know how to handle his son’s rejection and doesn’t know how to console Leia in her loss, so he regresses, again, to living for the thrill of quick scores. When he is reintroduced in The Force Awakens, Han is smuggling Rathtars and trapped in his obligations to the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiclub, just as he was once trapped in his obligations to Jabba. As he says to Leia, “There's nothing more we could have done” about their son – that is, Han saw no way to keep loving Ben. To “deal with it,” Han admits, “I went back to the only thing I was ever any good at.”
But Han sells himself short in that last statement. The last act of his life is to offer forgiveness to his son – a gesture that will haunt Ben until The Rise of Skywalker and lead to his own self-sacrifice out of love for another. The daring con and the quick getaway aren’t the only things Han is good at. His greatest asset is his loyalty to those he loves.
EXPLORE FURTHER…
Characters: Chewbacca / Han Solo / Jabba the Hutt / Kylo Ren / Lady Proxima / Leia Organa / Obi-Wan Kenobi / Qi’ra
Films: Solo: A Star Wars Story / Episode IV: A New Hope / Episode VI: Return of the Jedi / Episode VII: The Force Awakens / Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
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