Star Wars fans recognize Lando Calrissian as the ultimate archetype of the swashbuckling hero, but George Lucas originally had a different backstory in mind.
According to the man himself, Lando initially served as the missing piece of the puzzle in the Clone Wars enigma present in the Original Trilogy. If you take a trip down memory lane, you’ll realize that we didn’t know much about the Clone Wars back then, other than the fact that it preceded the rise of the Empire. Commander Calrissian would serve as someone who looks like a human but isn’t one in truth, hailing from a system of planets consisting of at least 700 countries inhabited by clones.
And apparently, Lucas intended to feature Lando’s ruling class as the ones responsible for the Clone Wars. Of course, the filmmaker must have quickly disregarded that idea since what we now know as the war between the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic is something entirely different. In fact, the Prequel Trilogy made it perfectly clear that Palpatine aka Darth Sidious was the one who orchestrated the Clone Wars to take over the Galactic Senate and subsequently, the galaxy. The very creation of the Clone Army on Kamino was just an elaborate coincidence, whereas in Lucas’ original version, some of these clones would be directly responsible for kickstarting the war.
Ultimately, Lucas decided to scrap those ideas in favor of turning Lando into the charismatic con man we’ve come to know and love. What’s more, it’s clear that this version of Lando resonated better with Han, which made it easy to draw similarities between the two friends.
Tell us, though, what do you make of this version of Landonis Balthazhar Calrissian in Star Wars, and would he have made a more compelling character? As usual, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
