Solo will stand as a pivotal moment for the Star Wars franchise. It explored a new era of the series, and it deeply connected the events of the original trilogy with aspects of the often-ignored prequel movies (ahem, Darth Maul).
But it also underperformed at the box office—the movie has made nearly $214 million in the U.S., but that's the second-worst performing Star Wars film, behind Empire Strikes Back, when adjusted for inflation—with many fans believing the film ended the one-movie-per-year formula for the Star Wars franchise. Disney has since announced it's slowing down the number of Star Wars movies that will hit the box office year to year, and it's hard not to wonder if it was Solo that was really the cause of this upheaval.
That hasn't stopped fans from gathering around the film in support. On Thursday, a group of Solo-heads swarmed Twitter with the hashtag #MakeSolo2Happen, pressuring Disney to put out a sequel to the 2018 film. The hashtag gained so much momentum that it began trending, and even got the attention of director Ron Howard, who responded with a smiley face.
It's hard to imagine how Disney could ram a sequel between Solo and A New Hope. The 2018 film ended with Han getting word of something going on down on Tatooine, which likely alluded to the events that begin in Star Wars Episode IV. He's got the Millennium Falcon, he's met Lando, and he and Chewie are best friends already. What else could happen to them before they get to the events of A New Hope?
We'll have to wait and see if Disney decides to heed the call of the hashtag and do another film in the Soloverse. Until then, fans can catch the next Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, on 20 December, 2019.
Dom Nero is a staff video editor at Esquire, where he also writes about film, television, tech, and video games.
