If The Force Awakens belonged to Han Solo (AKA the galaxy’s greatest smuggler), then Star Wars: The Last Jedi was really Luke Skywalker’s movie.
Whether it was his fraught master-apprentice relationship with Rey or that climactic showdown, Mark Hamill’s Jedi Knight was afforded ample screen time, which more than makes up for his silent cameo in The Force Awakens. And according to Rian Johnson, Luke’s arc in The Last Jedi actually opens up more possibilities going into Episode IX, but in the interest of keeping spoilers at bay, that’s all we’ll say on the matter.
Circling back to Han, though, Harrison Ford’s wise-cracking smuggler died at the hands of his estranged son, Kylo Ren, and was left plummeting into the depths of an unstable Starkiller Base. But like all great Star Wars characters, Han’s spirit lives on, as evidenced by the Resistance’s bombing raid in The Last Jedi.
Amid the evacuation of D’Qar, Poe Dameron steers a fleet of Resistance bombers toward an imposing Dreadnought, much to the bemusement of Leia Organa. The mission is almost a total failure, until Rose Tico’s sister manages to drop those bowling ball-shaped explosives at the 11th hour, blowing the Dreadnought to kingdom come.
The end result is a CG-powered firework display for the ages, but it turns out the Resistance actually engraved cheeky messages onto the surface of each device, including, “Han says hi!” How’s that for flipping the bird at the First Order?
You’ll also notice in the gallery below that each piece of text is written in Aurebesh, the dominant language of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise. Speaking of which, it’s now amassed more than $4.06 billion worldwide in the past five years, which is enough to cover Disney’s landmark acquisition – one that breathed new life into a dormant giant.
