Warning: Spoilers follow for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Jump into hyperspace and away from this page if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
L3-37, droid, revolutionary, and friend of Lando Calrissian, is a better co-pilot than Chewbacca. She’s self-made from astromech and protocol droid parts, and she can directly tap into the Millennium Falcon‘s navicomputer to compute hyperspace routes and determine how to traverse them at maximum speed. And instead of being rebuilt after her unfortunate death in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Lando incorporated L3 into the Falcon’s navigational system forever.
She’s been there all along, helping Han Solo make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs and assisting him and Chewbacca throughout their adventures in the original trilogy. C-3PO even makes a comment in The Empire Strikes Back that sure sounds like it could be in reference to L3-37. After Han and Chewie take the Falcon into the asteroid field and land inside the asteroid cave/space slug, Threepio tells Han in an exasperated tone, “Sir, I don’t know where your ship learned to communicate, but it has the most peculiar dialect.”
As far as I know L3 wasn’t conceived when Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote Empire nearly 40 years ago, but this is totally in reference to her, right? She’s unlike any other droid we’ve met, and I like thinking her unique attitude remained after she was put into the Falcon.
And another cool connection/Easter egg: according to Solo: A Star Wars Story The Official Guide, L3’s “brain module began as an R3 astromech.” Her brain also includes data from an espionage droid, custom coding, and protocol droid processors. That’s a nice nod to the Star Wars Blueprints published in 2008, which mention the Millennium Falcon’s main computer features an R3-series astromech, a slicer droid, and a V-5 transport droid.
How many times do you think L3-37’s navigating skills have helped Han and Chewie get the Falcon out of a bind? Tell us in the comments.
Images: Lucasfilm
Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist. She likes Star Wars a little. Follow her on Twitter.
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