The newly-released first trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story re-introduced us to three iconic characters from the original trilogy. Chewbacca, Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian and, of course, Alden Ehrenreich’s new take on Han Solo. But what other familiar faces might turn up? Could Han’s old enemy Jabba the Hutt put in an appearance, perhaps? We can’t say for sure just yet, but evidence is beginning to mount that points to it happening.
Just this weekend a photo of a toy set suggested as much and now, hidden within the frenetic teaser is a shot featuring a villainous goon involved in a blaster battle. As noted by Reddit user Regimas, he’s dressed very similar to the guards at Jabba’s palace, as featured in Return of the Jedi.
Take a look for yourself in the comparison below:
Sure, this could potentially just be a coincidence, but we’re leaning on the side that this was a very deliberate design choice here. After all, Jabba is one of the most obvious characters to show up in the prequel. The criminal kingpin and Solo go way back and as such, it would be within this film’s remit to explain just how their rivalry started.
This also isn’t the first time the Hutt has been connected with Solo. It was reported last year that the villain could have a major role in the movie, and as mentioned above, a more recent leak of a toy set appeared to depict Jabba’s palace. All of this can’t just be based on nothing, right?
What’s more is we know that there’s talk at Lucasfilm of bringing Jabba back. Apparently, an entire spinoff film based on the character was being entertained by the studio and back in 2015, acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro even said he would love to do a Godfather-esque movie about Jabba’s rise to power. We’re not sure how the general audience would react to a pic about a giant evil slug, but we’d definitely pay good money to watch that.
Solo: A Star Wars Story flies into cinemas on May 25th, at which point we’ll surely know whether or not Jabba will be making an appearance.