Mark Hamill’s touching tale of returning to the Millennium Falcon is something that pulls on the heartstrings when you realize just how epic it is to have the man back in the Star Wars franchise. It’s understandable why he would be so choked up with emotion when he walks into the Falcon. After all this is the ship where Ben Kenobi started teaching him how to use the Force, and where he eventually started to bond with Han and Chewbacca. It was the ship where he took a brief amount of solace after losing Kenobi and it was also the ship that saved him, thanks to Han Solo, when he was making his Death Star run. So yeah, there’s a lot of emotion packed into this return and it’s easy to understand.
“It was sort of like visiting an old house you lived in when you were a kid,” said Hamill of his return to the Falcon. The actor visited the set with his wife and kids before filming his part as Master Luke Skywalker as he boarded the Falcon and the response was much the same. “I need to be by myself” was the next thing he said apparently upon entering the Falcon. You can just imagine the level of emotion that was welling up inside Hamill as he visited the faithfully-recreated set, imagining his times with the rest of the cast on the bridge or in the lounge of the freighter. The Falcon is after all one of the most iconic ships in the entire franchise. In fact it’s the only ship that most fans and non-fans remember without any prompting.
The Millennium Falcon is the one ship throughout franchise that has been seen as an indispensable part of the film that just cannot be taken out if Star Wars wants to remain Star Wars. For Rogue One there was obviously less need for it since the story did not focus on Han Solo or Chewbacca and the plot didn’t call for it. At that time time Han and Chewie were still smugglers living from one job to the next and not caring at all about the Rebellion or what it meant for the galaxy. In fact Luke was still a teenager at that point looking to the skies and wondering when he’d ever get off the giant sandbox that is Tattooine.
There have been a great many stories involving the Millennium Falcon, including one that might not be canon any longer, thanks Disney, that had to do with the Falcon’s creation and how it came to be one of the most notorious ships in the galaxy. After all, Han Solo and Chewbacca were not the ship’s first owners. If that comes as a shock to you then you might not be as hardcore a fan as you thought, but like I said, it might no longer be canon.
What is canon though is Luke’s initial reaction to it in A New Hope and his current reaction, which is like saying hello to an old friend you haven’t seen in far too long.
Follow Us
