10 Awesome Star Wars Ideas That Nearly Happened

As far as epic fatalities in the galaxy far, far away go, Han Solo's dramatic death in The Force Awakens definitely ticked all the boxes necessary to leave audiences with their jaws banging off the floor.

Sudden. Atmospheric. Definitive.

Actually, Rise of Skywalker quickly made a mockery of that last element, but you get the point; Harrison Ford finally had the gravitas-imbuing conclusion he'd been angling for since 1983. In all honesty, though, perhaps it wouldn't have been the worst idea in the world to have given the grizzly actor his wish a few decades earlier in the midst of Return of the Jedi.

Had Solo sacrificed himself for "a high ideal", as Ford put it when discussing the proposed death on Conan, that third Original Trilogy entry would've undoubtedly come equipped with much more dramatic weight and stakes, making for a far more meaningful and perhaps even bittersweet victory over The Empire in the end.

George Lucas and the gang clearly didn't see much value in shooting down this smuggler-turned-general way back when, however, and not even a blade through the chest some three decades on could keep Solo off our screens when all was said and done.