It’s been a few years since Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out, and we’ve all had time to put some things into perspective. Maybe it wasn’t the Star Wars we were expecting, but it did a lot of stuff right. For starters, it wasn’t Rise of Skywalker.
In the one and only scene in the whole third trilogy featuring both Leia and Luke, we see our boy, Luke Skywalker, making a handoff with his twin sister. He regifts her a pair of shining gold dice on a chain, first seen very briefly hanging in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, and then never again for more than 30 years.
There are in-universe and out-of-universe explanations for this keepsake. In-universe, the pair of Corellian Spike dice originally belonged to Han’s father, Ovan, a construction worker. Young Han inherited the dice and kept them with him, only parting with them when he passed them along to his beloved Qi’ra during the first act of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Qi’ra carried them with her for three years while she was separated from Han, returning them when the two were reunited ahead of an ill-fated robbery. The story goes that Han would later use the dice in a game of Corellian Spike against Lando Calrissian, winning himself one lightly-used Millennium Falcon.
Years passed. Han kept the dice hanging from his control console, then he didn’t. Then the sequel trilogy started building up steam and, somehow hurting for merchandisable iconography from the Star Wars franchise, Disney decided to really zero in on the accessory that Solo had briefly kept in his cockpit – that’s that out-of-universe explanation we mentioned earlier. The dice were recreated for The Force Awakens, then redesigned and heavily featured in The Last Jedi when Luke returned to the Falcon, giving the monastic amputee something to stare at sadly while he thought about his friend’s death.
Out of respect for the love shared between his sister and Solo, Luke returned the dice to Leia on his way outside to fight Kylo Ren on the barren salts of Crait. It’s a heartbreaking moment between two people who’ve said everything there is to say.
Only — psych, it turns out that it wasn’t really Luke, it was a Force projection of him, created for the sole purpose of messing with his nephew. The dice were also a Force projection, so they faded from existence around the same time that Luke did. As brotherly goodbyes go, handing your sister her dead ex’s old tchotchkes and then dying before she can realize it’s a prank is premium bullying.
