The Marvel STAR WARS comic book just potentially changed the movie canon in a major way!

Firstly, if you haven’t been reading the Marvel “Star Wars” comic book, then be warned that this post contains a MAJOR SPOILER and you should probably stop reading now if you don’t want it ruined for you! Secondly, why haven’t you been reading the Marvel Star Wars comic? When the old Expanded Universe was scrapped, it was replaced by the animated Star Wars Rebels, a half-dozen novels and Marvel published comic books. That last part was kind of a big deal, as it was Marvel’s Star Wars comic book spinoffs that helped kick-start the original EU way back in the 1970’s., but for the last few decades Dark Horse Comics had held the publishing rights producing their own works.

With Lucasfilm and Disney deciding to wipe the EU slate clean and start afresh with new stories outside of the movies that were not only wholly canonical, but were in fact overseen by the Lucasfilm Story Group – who make sure that there is 100% narrative cohesion between every element of this universe – they decided to give the comic book publishing rights back to Marvel (seeing as both companies are now owned by Disney, this made perfect sense). Marvel announced several new titles including “Star Wars: Darth Vader”, “Star Wars: Princess Leia” and “Star Wars: Kanan”, but it’s acclaimed writer Jason Aaron and superstar artist John Cassady’s simply titled “Star Wars” that would be the flagship and where all the major stories would be playing out.

I tell you all of this preamble for two reasons: 1) To give enough room for the SPOILER-phobes to get out (You hear that? This is your last chance!), and 2) so that you can understand that the events of this week’s “Star Wars #6” is totally legit and not some hopped-up fan-fiction that is just going to be ignored by the larger universe. So here we go…

Aaron’s “Star Wars” is set between the events of Episode IV: A New Hope and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and thus far has been a highly enjoyable romp through some stories that either just mentioned/implied in the movies, or fill in the gaps between Luke blowing up the first Death Star and the Rebels settling on Hoth. In issue #4 though, Aaron introduced a mysterious masked figure who was on the trail of Han Solo. She was introduced in a scene set in Mos Eisley in which she shot up some Rodians using a blaster hidden under a table, which, as any Star Wars fan knows, is pretty much how we first met Han in the movies.

But who is she? As she’s been hunting down Han over the last few issues, we haven’t had a clue. Until she unmasked in the latest issue, that is.

(Comic book pages courtesy of CBR)

Yes, Sana Solo is Han Solo’s wife. Might I remind you that this takes place before Han and Leia ever hook up romantically in Empire Strikes Back, in which Han definitely does not mention being married. Now naturally, we don’t know the full story, so we have no idea of what happened to Sana, but its a detail to Han’s character that we never even suspected, and could possibly completely change the way we view his relationship with Leia. What’s more, being a female of color – a demographic that the movies have been desperately trying to include after being rightfully criticized for the franchise’s lack of diversity – I actually would not be surprised if she were to be introduced in the movies as well at some later stage (granted she actually makes it out of the comic alive, of course).

Naturally, comic book fans and Star Wars fans, being who they are, immediately jumped on their internet soap boxes to either loudly berate or defend this story development – either way, it was loud and with many exclamation marks. CBR Assistant Editor Brett White, also has a nice write-up though on why Aaron had to do this in the story: In a nutshell, there has to be some reason why Han and Leia don’t get romantically involved here already instead of only in Empire, which would have severely watered down that movie’s impact. In this case, it was because there was already another woman in the picture. And one that apparently may not exactly be the nicest person to be around, and probably doesn’t take too kindly to sharing.

It sure will be interesting to see how Aaron plays all this out – and being a gigantic fan of his work for years now, I’m fairly certain that he won’t just make this some cheap one-off shock gag or a misleading switcheroo that actually has no dramatic heft – whether Lucasfilm now lives up to their promise of having this now be one universe with actually narrative crossover and no longer have the divide between movie and EU elements as they used to.

Last Updated: June 5, 2015