Every Star Wars fan knows how Finn gets his name. In The Force Awakens, after he turns against the First Order and helps Poe Dameron escape, his new pilot pal creates the name “Finn” from his Stormtrooper designation – FN-2187. It might have passed you by, however, that there’s a greater significance to that number, which actually creates a neat link back to where it all began in A New Hope.
This weekend, to mark the Easter period, the various Twitter accounts for Disney-owned franchises have come together to point out easter eggs hidden in your favorite Disney, Marvel and Star Wars movies that you might not have noticed before. For instance, that one shot in Avengers: Endgame which references Tony Stark’s arc reactor. Another one from the SW account though revealed that FN-2187 is so named as a nod to the number of Leia’s cell in ANH.
Finn’s stormtrooper number was FN-2187. The # is a homage to cell 2187 located in detention block AA-23 on the Death Star, the cell of Princess Leia in A New Hope. Cell 2187 from ANH is a ref. to “21-87” a National Film Board of Canada short that inspired a young George Lucas. pic.twitter.com/dBdY0kZ7nW
— Star Wars (@starwars) April 10, 2020
Lucas experts may be familiar with the filmmaker’s love of this number. Like the tweet above says, it comes from the title of Arthur Lipsett’s abstract, experimental short film which was made up of discarded footage from other works. The short had a profound impact on Lucas, with it believed that the concept of the Force was even inspired by 21-87. There’s actually a third time it’s referenced in the Star Wars saga, as well. Order 66 gets its name from the answer to the equation 87-21.
Of course, this is just one of many ways in which J.J. Abrams and the team behind TFA tried to lovingly pay homage to Lucas’ body of work. Unfortunately, however, it sounds like the franchise’s creator still wasn’t a fan. It’s known that Lucas criticized Episode VII as not original enough when he first saw it. That said, he did act as a kind of consultant on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so there can’t be too much bad blood there.
