Despite the many Star Wars comics, novels, games, TV shows and movies, there still remain some mysteries in a galaxy far, far away. Was Anakin Skywalker really conceived by the Force? How did the First Order gain so much power so quickly? How did Anakin’s blue lightsaber end up in Maz Kanata’s bar?
Now, new Marvel comic Star Wars #3 sets out to clear one of them up, albeit not one that fans have spent much time pondering over. And that’s how did Leia know how to defrost Han when she rescued him from his carbonite prison in Return of the Jedi?
The issue takes place soon after The Empire Strikes Back and shows the three Ls (Leia, Luke and Lando) concocting their plan to save Han. Part of this involves a return to Cloud City, where Leia heads to the carbonite freezing chamber to check out the controls. There she learns the “decarbonization sequence,” only to be discovered and non-lethally zapped by Stormtroopers.
While The Empire Strikes Back presents being frozen in carbonite as unusual (Darth Vader freezes Han as a test to make sure Luke would survive the process), it’s actually happened a few times across the saga. In The Clone Wars, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ashoka needed to smuggle themselves into a high-security separatist citadel, and concluded that freezing themselves in carbonite would allow them to bypass the scanners. In addition, the very first episode of The Mandalorian showed the titular character having a portable carbon-freezing chamber aboard his ship so as to allow him to safely imprison his bounties.
Thing is, given that Han emerged blind and disorientated, maybe Leia actually screwed up the defrosting process? In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the characters don’t suffer any major damage, so perhaps she should have paid a little more attention to the way the controls work?