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A popular prequel era EU character’s surname linked to untitled Han Solo Star Wars film!

Please do not share the details of this article openly on social media and spoil the untitled Han Solo story for those that want to remain spoiler free. These are very general potential spoilers but let’s respect other fan’s wishes and not spoil those that do not appreciate spoilers. Be cool!

I had an incredible time this week at Star Wars Celebration Orlando. Some really amazing, fun things happened to me, and also some very interesting things. At one point over the week, I had a piece of paper put in front of me. The paper had the words “Red Cup” on it (that is the production name alluding to a red “solo” cup, aka Star Wars: Han Solo) Immediately my eyes widened. There was a name written on the page with a note:

Dryden Vos (major cast member)

For one second I thought about the name and it sounds cool. But the last name has been used for none other than fan favorite Quinlan Vos. That’s as strong of a connection to Quinlan Vos we have here. The identical last names could be a coincidence. What follows is speculation that Dryden Vos could be Quinlan Vos. It could be a situation similar to Obi-Wan Kenobi taking on the name Ben Kenobi while keeping his surname even though he was in hiding. I have been able to get confirmation that the name is a legit name from the untitled Han Solo Star Wars story.

There were rumors that Quinlan Vos was spared from certain death by George Lucas in Revenge of the Sith because he had bigger plans for the character. You can see the animatic of his demise on The Complete Saga Blu-ray release where he dies in battle thanks to Palpatine’s Order 66 which wiped out most of the Jedi.

Rumors then circulated that Vos was a George Lucas favorite set to appear in the unproduced live action television series Star Wars: Underworld. Wookieepedia writes:

Lucas had originally written a scene for Revenge of the Sith involving the Expanded Universe character Quinlan Vos, but the character received only a mention in the final film. Lucas himself later instructed the writers of the Star Wars: Republic comic book series to not kill off the character. This has led some fans to speculate that Vos may play a role in the series.

So what is the potential Han Solo connection? Well, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian were all slated to appear in Star Wars: Underworld aka The Star Wars Live-Action Series. The series was going to explore the depths of Coruscant’s level 1313, which also inspired a video game that was highly anticipated yet ultimately canceled.

There were costumes created for Vos for Star Wars: The Clone Wars that denoted his undercover bounty hunter look. Level 1313 was to be included in the unproduced arc as well. This could foreshadow Vos’ profession after the fall of the Jedi Order.

What if the untitled 2018 Han Solo film features a lot of George Lucas’ story for the young life of Han Solo? Could Star Wars: Underworld have featured episodes about a Jedi that survived Order 66, having previously infiltrated the level 1313 and the underworld who then fled to it for protection from Palpatine’s empire? Perhaps even becoming a bounty hunter or gang leader?

One of the plot points revealed by Lucas and producer Rick McCallum for Star Wars: Underworld was that there would be stories showing the audience how the Rebel Alliance procured their weapons and how the underworld played into that. Lucas foreshadowed these events in Star Wars: The Clone Wars when Hondo supplied Saw Gerrera’s Onderonian insurgency with weapons, a character we saw jump from animation to live action in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you remember last summer, we also learned that Saw may have been in mind for a George Lucas live action television series. Last June Story Group member and creative executive Pablo Hidalgo told The Star Wars Show:

Saw’s been kicking around for a while. A lot of people know him from Clone Wars but he started off before that. George had him in mind for his live action TV series that was in development. It ultimately never happened but he found a place to put Saw in his story in The Clone Wars.

What if Vos found a path for good by being a secret link between the Rebel Alliance and the underworld? It does sound like a worthwhile way for a Jedi to spend his life when he can no longer effectively function as a Knight. It could also be a way of using Saw again in a brief cameo if they so desired. Kathleen Kennedy told Empire:


Quinlan Vos would be able to interact with Han Solo and he would be none the wiser to his spiritual background, allowing him to still proclaim the Jedi to be “simple tricks and nonsense” to Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope. It appears Han Solo knew Maz Kanata for some time and probably did not know about her powers either, but that may be “a story for another day.”

It is also worth noting that Peter at /Film spoke to Kathleen Kennedy at The Force Awakens premiere in late 2015 and she told Peter that there was a lot of gold in those drafts for Star Wars: Underworld. Kathleen Kennedy told/Film:


Perhaps the mining of those scripts brought us Quinlan Vos in the aftermath of that research. I find it hard to imagine a film being produced that explores the seedier underworld of the Star Wars universe through the eyes of Han Solo and those scripts not being a part of the research phase for that work. Perhaps the character jumped off the page for Lawrence and Jon Kasdan and they wrote him into the script. What I’m proposing is a pipeline where Quinlan Vos in the underworld passes weapons to be smuggled to Han Solo who then delivers them to Saw.

Are Dryden Vos and Quinlan Vos the same character? Only time and investigating will tell. Clearly this article has mainly been speculative and we’re not saying this happens in the Han Solo film. We’re only saying the name Dryden Vos should appear in the film that is in production right now. The notion of what the name could mean is exciting and the potential is there. We’re not promising Quinlan will appear, we’re only saying we have heard of a character that shares the same last name and the possibilities exist. It could be a relative, someone completely new, or Quinlan Vos himself for all we know at this point. Either way, the untitled Han Solo story is going to be a lot of fun.


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Jason Ward (EIC)

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