Han's Coffins
In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo is frozen in carbonite so that Darth Vader can test carbon-freezing as a means to capture Luke Skywalker. If Vader’s plan is successful, he will deliver Luke to his master, Emperor Palpatine, who intends to either turn Luke to the Dark Side or have Vader kill him. As for Han, he knows that the carbon-freezing process could kill him instantly – and if he survives, he will be delivered to his enemy Jabba the Hutt and be as good as dead, anyway. It’s appropriate, then, that the rectangular container within which Han is encased resembles a coffin.
But Han does not resist when he is forced to walk toward his almost-certain death. When his best friend, Chewbacca, tries to foil Vader’s test, Han intervenes by shifting Chewie’s attention away from losing one friend to saving another: “The Princess! You have to take care of her!” Han accepts his own death and urges Chewie to accept it, too, because his priority is not self-preservation but love for another.
In a parallel scene in The Last Jedi, Rey climbs into the escape pod of Han’s old ship, the Millennium Falcon, so that she can go confront Kylo Ren and try to turn him to the Light Side. Once the escape pod is captured by Ren, he will deliver Rey to his master, Supreme Leader Snoke, who intends to either turn Rey to the Dark Side or have Ren kill her. (The parallel between the scenes is underscored by how Ren’s face appears behind smoke when the pod is captured, just as Han’s face disappears behind smoke when he is frozen.) Rey knows that, once the Falcon ejects the escape pod, she could be as good as dead, so it’s appropriate that this rectangular container also resembles a coffin.
Moreover, it is fitting that the coffin-like escape pod once belonged to Han, and that Chewbacca is the one to help Rey climb into it. In The Force Awakens, Rey and Chewie watched together as Han sacrificed his life to confront his son and try to bring him back into the light. Now Rey willingly follows in Han’s footsteps, and Chewie does not try to prevent Rey’s death as he once tried to prevent Han’s. Instead, Chewie willingly lets her go.
In what could be their final moment together, Rey does for Chewie what Han did: she shifts his attention away from the person he may lose to another person he can still care for. Just as Han asked Chewie to protect Leia, Rey asks him to deliver a message to her best friend, Finn, “if you see [him] before I do.” In both scenes, love for others enables characters to face death, whether their own or another’s.
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Films: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back / Episode VII: The Force Awakens / Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
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Concepts: friendship / grief and loss / life and death / love / sacrifice
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In the commentary for The Last Jedi, writer-director Rian Johnson says he got the idea for the design of the escape pod from C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. He said there was a character who flew around in something like a coffin. I have never read those books, so I don't know exactly.