You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? The Kessel Run? It’s very much ingrained in the DNA that makes up Han Solo, Lucasfilm’s cocksure smuggler who is now known as the best damn space pirate in the history of Star Wars.
But on May 25th, Ron Howard and his creative team plan to roll back the years, thrust Alden Ehrenreich into the driving seat, and deliver Solo: A Star Wars Story, the second of Lucasfilm’s anthology flicks that takes place long before the events of A New Hope.
In doing so, they’ve rustled up the closest thing to a Han Solo biopic as we’re likely to get, and previous trailers have revealed the ways in which Howard has tailored his standalone adventure to match the old-school beats that make Star Wars so special.
One of those traits is, of course, the Kessel Run, which appears to feature quite prominently in Solo. That being said, new intel uncovered by Reddit appears to suggest that Han may have been guilty of a little exaggeration when he says that he completed the interstellar shortcut in only 12 parsecs.
We never saw Han set foot on this Outer Rim planet, whose spice mines were so infamous that the mere thought of being sent there as punishment sent C-3PO into a tizzy. But it’s synonymous with the scoundrel’s legend. The Kessel Run, a hyperspace heavy route designed to allow spice smugglers to evade Imperial (and other) pursuits, was meant to take 18 parsecs. Han, harnessing the power of the Falcon, could do it in just 12. Or so he claimed.
It’s a stretch, mind you, as this tiny morsel of information was pulled from the pages of Empire’s latest issue, which recently crowned Solo: A Star Wars Story as its newfound cover star.
Only on May 25th will we have a better understanding of Han’s route into the criminal underworld, and we can hardly wait. In related news, Episode IX just appointed Victoria Mahoney as second unit director.
