No sooner do we learn that the first trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story is probably coming during the Super Bowl in just 2½ weeks, then The Hollywood Reporter writes that the eagerly awaited Star Wars spin off movie will reveal how the galaxy’s favourite Wookie and number one smuggler first met.

In a new Disney press kit detailing the studio’s 2018 releases, Solo’s plot description is sparse, yet still revealing more information than had previously been released.

“Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.”

While this will be the first time the original meeting between Han Solo and Chewbacca will be revealed onscreen, it’s not the first time a version of the story has been told — in other words, what was considered canon before Disney decided to disregard it.

In the now-discarded Star Wars Expanded Universe, the first meeting between Solo and Chewbacca was revealed in the 2000 comic book miniseries Star Wars: Chewbacca and involved a complicated backstory in which Solo was an Imperial officer who saved Chewbacca’s life twice when he was interrupted in the midst of an attempt to free Wookiee slaves from the Empire. As a result, the two formed a bond that only grew when Solo left the Imperial service.

Whether or not the plot of the movie will echo the earlier comic book storyline is unclear…and probably unlikely. So far, Han Solo’s past pre-A New Hope is a clean slate. Chewbacca does however appear in Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005) alongside Yoda on the Wookiee home planet of Kashyyyk.

Solo: A Star Wars Story remains slated to open May 25th.

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