Han Solo and the Ambiguous Cameo

Passages 

Author: Charlene Newcomb

Medium: Short story

Publication date: August 1995 in Star Wars Adventure Journal #7

Timeline placement: 3 BBY

Chapter two of Charlene Newcomb’s Alex Winger saga. 

In “Turning Point,” we were introduced to Alex, a Force-sensitive little girl adopted by the governor of Garos IV after her family was killed by the Empire. She doesn’t appear in “Passages,” but we do find out that that backstory wasn’t entirely accurate. Alex’s father, Matt Turhaya, is a former Imperial pilot who went AWOL after the unexpected death of his wife. Alex was staying with relatives at the time of the Imperial attack and Matt believes that she died in the bombardment. He’s spent the years since then drinking and gambling his life away like a true alpha male. 

Finding himself 150,000 credits in debt to the DC Comics supervillain Metallo, a mechanical murderer with a kryptonite heart, Matt becomes his indentured servant, accompanying him on his travels to keep his spaceship operational. During a stop on the planet Kabaira, a random Imperial officer recognizes Matt as a deserter and has him arrested, along with some of the planet’s Rebel cell. The “Rebel Alliance” is mentioned but, as with its appearances in the Droids cartoon ten years earlier, it shouldn’t formally exist yet. Early EU lore had the unfortunate habit of deciding that much of the status quo presented in the original trilogy only recently came into being. The Rebel Alliance had only existed for two years. Bib Fortuna had only been Jabba the Hutt’s majordomo for four years. The A-wing wasn’t invented until after the Battle of Yavin. The Mon Calamari species had only been discovered during the reign of the Empire. Then someone who doesn’t know all the lore minutiae comes along and writes a story set further back in time and you run into problems. 

Anyway, Metallo teams up with the local Rebels/rebels to spring their crew mates, and Matt and Metallo end up joining the growing resistance movement against the Empire. Will this new path reunite Matt Turducken with his long-lost daughter? 

And what of Hans Solo, Prince of the Southern Isles? Early in the story, there’s a brief scene where the characters are at the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine, playing cards with a Corellian smuggler with a “cockeyed grin” and a Wookiee copilot. Thankfully, Han and Chewie are never mentioned by name so we don’t have to worry about how this cameo fits into their timeline. There’s probably no reason it couldn’t be them, but maybe it was some other sarcastic Corellian smuggler-cum-card sharp traveling with a Wookiee and Han is actually just a giant cultural stereotype.