Lucasfilm Story Group executive Pablo Hidalgo went on an epic Twitter rant about the Force and heavily insinuated that recently departed smuggler extraordinaire Han Solo might have been Force-sensitive.
This is fascinating news considering any Star Wars fan knows that Han had been a huge skeptic of the Force since A New Hope. You’ll recall during Ben Kenobi’s first real Force lesson to Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon, Han had a quick retort to Kenobi’s suggestion that people could feel the Force flowing through them:
“Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. Anyway, it’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense,” he said, calling it nothing but “luck.”
As he’s wont to do, Hidalgo used his Twitter account to get some Star Wars related ideas off his chest, this time involving the official understanding of the Force. The linked tweets went on to name real-life figures like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Isaac Newton that he sees as being Force-sensitive. He also gave the best interpretation of midi-chlorians you’re likely to ever read.
He started off by referencing the aforementioned exchange from A New Hope to rationalize that though Han Solo would deny the existence of the Force, Kenobi would claim Han’s skills are a result of his innate Force power.
A Force-sensitive Han is interesting for many reasons, not only because he denied its existence. Maybe we were supposed to infer Han’s potential powers from the initial conversation, but when you look at it considering Hidalgo’s comments, it gives a whole new context to Han’s actions in the original trilogy. The disparate Force sensitivity between Han and Leia also might have pushed young Ben Solo over the edge, leading him to assume the identity of Kylo Ren before the events of The Force Awakens.
Who knows if Han’s sensitivity to the Force will make its way into the standalone movie, but until that hits theaters in May 2018, we’ll have to mull over what would have happened if Han became a Jedi.
