Solo: A Star Wars Story is rumoured to be getting the sequel which it was obviously angling for in the form of a series on Disney+, and let’s make one thing clear: no Donald Glover, no interest.
And look, Solo was… fine. It was fine.
It had some good bits, it answered a bunch of questions literally no-one ever had (surnames can just be surnames, you know) and it wouldn’t have been such a “flop” had it not had to be effectively made twice after original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were sacked a ways into production and replaced by Ron Howard.
And all the performances were OK, including Woody Harrelson playing Standard Woody Harrelson Character #398 and Alden Ehrenreich as An Impersonation Of Harrison Ford.
Oh, and Joonas Suotamo, who was genuinely amazing as Chewbacca doing more than Chewie’s been allowed to do since The Empire Strikes Back.
But the one outstanding performance was Donald Glover playing Young Lando Calrissian as a pansexual amoral gambler, smuggler and card cheat who may or may not have been banging his droid. Mind you, since said droid was Phoebe Waller-Bridges, completely fair.
So any rumoured Solo Disney+ series has a bunch of problems in following the film, like that most of the interesting characters are dead and the others have left Han and Chewie. Also, we now have Darth Maul in the mix for some stupid reason except Han can’t interact too much with him and still plausibly think the Force is a myth when talking to Luke.
(And if anyone from Disney is reading this and wants a spec script about Han meeting Jabba the Hutt and getting into a heist-gone-wrong situation with Boba Fett, Greedo, Bossk, and Dengar that gives all sorts of kick-arse motivation for their respective appearances in the original trilogy, then give me a call.)
So something interesting has to happen, and that something is clearly Lando.
Of course, the film ended with Han winning the Millennium Falcon off Lando after screwing up his cheating trickery presumably to dovetail into that meeting on Cloud City in ESB. Also, who could afford Donald Glover these days – even Star Wars?
But in any case, if it’s a Land-no, then abandon the whole thing.
And Disney, if you want to replace it with a series involving Zuckuss and 4-LOM as a mismatched pair of bounty hunters bumbling from one zany adventure to the next, again: call me. I think “What the Zuck?” has amazing potential, frankly.