Two weeks ago, Jon Favreau tweeted out a photo of himself hanging out behind the scenes of Solo: A Star Wars Story with director Ron Howard and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. No news there. Favreau could have just been peaking in on his Disney buddies, making sure everything was on-brand in that Thanos t-shirt. Now, thanks to Howard’s own twitter feed, we’ve learned that Favreau was actually stopping by to lend his voice to a “very cool and important alien character.” Let the speculation begin.
Despite having already seen a teaser and a trailer for Solo, we don’t really know that much about the film. We’ve got the cast list, and the plot synopsis, but that’s pretty much it. Where would “an important alien” character even fit into the story?. I have no idea.
Whether we ever wanted to or not, we’re going to see how Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) first got together. We’re going to see how Solo pried the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). We’re going to see the scruffy-looking nerf-herder bump up against his first spunky brunette badass (Emilia Clarke).
Solo promises to be a Star Wars heist adventure. Woody Harrelson’s space pirate is putting together a crew, and he’s looking for a few good men, women, and Wookies to put one over the Galactic Empire. Favreau could easily fit in there somewhere. There is Lando’s droid co-pilot, but rumor has it that character will actually be voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Han faces off with a mysterious masked figure marked with Aurebesh writing in a Leone-like desert, but I’m holding out that that is actually Paul Bettany’s crime boss character, Dryden Vos.
I think the safest bet is that Favreau will be voicing that cute, little four-armed creature we see hopping into a cockpit 36 seconds into the extended trailer. The joystick he’s piloting is similar to the one we later see Han grappling with, and we could be looking at the smuggling ships Harrelson’s thief is using to sneak past imperial dimwits. That’s certainly a modus operandi we’ve seen work before in Return of the Jedi and Rogue One. This little bugger will probably pipe up with the comic relief, and that’s a role Favreau has played several times in the past as Happy Hogan in the Iron Man films, or Reily in Open Season.
What can this four-armed creature contribute to the team? Obviously, he can be fast on those switches. His body type bears a little bit of a resemblance to Obi Wan Kenobi’s favorite short order cook from Attack of the Clones, so maybe he can whip up a mean plate of hash…uh…yeah, no, why’d I invoke that wretched memory? I’m sorry.
The truth is that Favreau could be any number of faceless cantina aliens, and his role could amount to no more than that of Nathan Fillion’s monstrous inmate in Guardians of the Galaxy. Who knows what a “very cool and important alien character” could mean to Ron Howard? Favreau could be a member of the gang or a proud delegate from the Besaldii Hutt clan resurrected from A.C. Crispin’s lost Solo novel, “The Paradise Snare.” A sick part of me hopes Chewie finally strings some words together and Favreau’s voice gurgles out.
A few folks on Twitter are pretty confident that Favreau could be voicing the ultimate Han Solo villain, Jabba the Hutt. As we’ve seen in the Special Edition of A New Hope, Han and Jabba had a firmly established relationship before Luke and Obi-Wan stumbled into the Mos Eisley cantina. Howard’s Solo could be the perfect opportunity to set up their conflict in the final moments of the film. Harrelson may just be another Greedo or Boba Fett on the Hutt payroll.
At the end of the day, the actor I’m most concerned to see in Solo: A Star Wars Story is Clint Howard. Where’s he going to fit in? More Tranya!