'Solo' features two major deep cuts from the old, now-dead Star Wars canon
The Legends of Star Wars live on in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
First, a brief history lesson: Not long after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, the new corporate parent made a controversial decision. The Star Wars Expanded Universe, a timeline of events outside the movies that was chronicled in books, comics, video games, and more, would be no more.
The various forms of media from that timeline would be re-branded as "Legends" to avoid confusion. Meanwhile, all future books, comics, games, etc. would fold into a new and improved Star Wars canon, grounded by the movies and the Clone Wars TV series (Rebels didn't exist at that point).
It was a sensible decision for the new Star Wars stakeholder, if also a controversial one. The "EU," as it was referred to, had grown increasingly unwieldy and muddled over the preceding 20-odd years. Making a clean break from that continuity allowed a Disney-owned Lucasfilm to tell stories without being bound to thousands upon thousands of hours of source material that even many longtime fans weren't familiar with.
Even still, the Star Wars EU has resurfaced again and again in the new canon. Star Wars: Rebels introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn, the blue-skinned Imperial officer who was a popular recurring character in the Legends timeline. In The Force Awakens, we learn that Luke tried to rebuild the Jedi Order, and that Han and Leia's son turned to the Dark Side -- both holdover ideas from the books.
Now we have Solo: A Star Wars Story, freshly released on May 25. It's an imperfect movie in a lot of ways, but one driven in large part by fan service. The story spends a great deal of time demystifying long-debated pieces of lore, like the Kessel Run and Han's first team-up with Chewbacca.
But that's not all it does. Solo is awash with references to the broader Star Wars universe, even the one that isn't regarded as canon anymore. Two standout moments in particular bring elements of the Legends timeline into the new canon.
Teräs Käsi
Shortly after the Solo gang arrives on Kessel, Qi'ra finds herself in a private meeting with an administrator there. As the gang puts their plan into action, she neutralizes the bureaucrat with a swoosh of her borrowed space cape.
When she steps out of the room, she offers a brief explanation of how she took care of the potential threat so quickly: She employed the unarmed combat techniques of Teräs Käsi. It's a surprising reference to one of the most unusual oddities in Star Wars lore.
Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi is a 1997 video game released for the original PlayStation. Built by the now-defunct studio LucasArts, the game was an attempt to capitalize on the popular fighting game genre by tethering it to the Star Wars brand.
In Teräs Käsi, you chose from an assortment of familiar characters and alien races -- Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, even EU favorite (and Luke Skywalker's eventual wife) Mara Jade. You would then face off against the game's other combatants in a 3D arena.
It's a bad game. Legendarily bad. It features a simple, nonsensical story in which the Emperor hires an assassin to ice Luke and his pals, but they discover the plot and challenge the assassin to a more honorable unarmed combat exercise.
Yes, that's it. I told you it's stupid.
Even if you set aside the story, the game itself struggles. The pace of the combat is slow, as if each character is pushing through a vat of molasses. The combos are unexciting and lack flash. Masters of Teräs Käsi isn't just one of the worst Star Wars games of all time; it's also one of the worst fighting games.
Now, thanks to Solo, the idea behind the game -- this space martial art called Teräs Käsi -- lives on in the new Star Wars canon.
The Maw
As our Solo gang makes their dramatic escape from Kessel, they're faced with a problem: Unrefined Coaxium becomes unstable at higher temperatures. If that temperature doesn't come back down, the hyderdrive fuel will explode in spectacular fashion.
In order to save the Millennium Falcon and its crew, Han hatches a plan: Ignore the unsafe environment around Kessel to plot a shorter course through the spaceways to the nearest refinery. There's just one problem: Skipping the safe route and forging a shortcut through the Akkadese Maelstrom means getting dangerously close to the Maw.
In Solo, the Maw is a gravity well that lies at the center of the Maelstrom. This swirling celestial body exerts tremendous gravitational pull, drawing all nearby objects into its crushing center. Only quick thinking and a considerable amount of luck saves the Falcon's crew.
But Solo isn't the Maw's first Star Wars appearance. Back in the EU days, the Maw was introduced in the Jedi Academy trilogy of books from the early '90s. The Legends version is also situated near Kessel, but in the books it's revealed to be a cluster of black holes at the center of the Maw Nebulae.
For fans of the Legends era, it's exciting on its own to see the Maw make a movie appearance. But there may be more to this than we were shown in Solo.
In the books, the Maw was the site of a secret Imperial research facility focused on developing superweapons. The Death Star wasn't built there, but its prototype was. So too were a number of Legends-only threats, like the Sun Crusher or World Devastators.
Solo only shows us the swirling mass at the center of the new canon's Maw, and context makes it fairly clear that nothing could possibly be built close to its destructive power.
However... the Solo gang encounters an Imperial Star Destroyer as they're fleeing Kessel, a world that isn't under Imperial control. That raises a question: What was it doing there? The Solo crew speculates that it may have followed them there, but let's entertain another possibility.
What if the new canon's Maw actually is home to a secret Imperial research facility? That would justify the otherwise inexplicable presence of this Star Destroyer, if nothing else. It would also explain the presence of a previously unseen "heavy TIE Fighter," which is one of the attack ships that gives chase as the Falcon flees.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
