Syfy Wire: “Solo’s other mysterious and dicey connection to The Phantom Menace”
From Syfy Wire:
“”I call it luck,” Han Solo says when Obi-Wan explains the Force to Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon.
“In my experience,” Obi-Wan claps back, “there’s no such thing as luck.”
Han remains skeptical.
In the more recent installments, Han’s luck is represented by his golden dice. He truly believes that nothing controls his destiny but his own grit and the deal of the cards or roll of the dice. He takes orders from no one but himself. He’s a master of his own fate.
The galaxy has other ideas for him, though.
In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han clings to these dice as a talisman. This is the representation of his life, his hopes, and his dreams. They’ve been present in Star Wars since A New Hope, but they’ve really only crystallized as a punctuation mark on Han’s life since The Last Jedi. Solo gives us the opening verse of this song.
But what do the dice mean?
Well, the only other time we see dice important to the Star Wars saga is in The Phantom Menace. Watto, the owner of Anakin Skywalker and his mother, Shmi, uses them for gambling. When Jedi Knight Qui-gon Jinn convinces him to bet away one of the slaves, he insists, “We’ll let fate decide.”
Producing his chance cube, the Toydarian junk dealer offers odds for both Anakin and Shmi. Since Anakin is who Qui-gon is after, he uses the Force to manipulate the die into yielding the desired result. It rolls blue, just as Qui-gon intended, and he is able to take Anakin far away from Tatooine.
Even though Han calls it luck, the Force can still subvert that “luck,” and Qui-gon’s manipulation of it in The Phantom Menace illustrates that beautifully. The hand of the Force still guides everything Han does and every encounter he has. Fate and destiny are luck. And if there is anyone who could be considered a Jedi of luck, it’s Han Solo. Perhaps that why we hear notes of the Force theme every time Han handles the dice in important moments in Solo.
It’s fascinating to think that Han Solo and Anakin Skywalker share such striking similarities, like having such important moments in their lives dictated by dice. The Force has a greater destiny for both of them, and it ultimately ends with their mutual relation: Ben Solo.
Like Anakin, Han comes from a background that is deeply unfair to everyone born into it, forcing them to do whatever they can to survive. For Han, his circumstances put him in an underworld of orphans, with Lady Proxima as the Fagin to a generation of Corellian kids. For Anakin, he’s saved by fate and the Jedi, plucked from slavery and obscurity. Both of them are inherently good people to start, but their circumstances and choices mold them into something else.
For Anakin, his fate is overpowering, and in his desire to do good, for himself and others, he ends up doing ultimate evil. For Han, he is forced to do evil over and over again in order to survive, pretending that’s who he really is, until he’s given the opportunity to do the ultimate good. Both die in front of their sons, both hoping for better futures for their children than they themselves had. […]”
