Solo: A Star Wars Story has finally hit theaters. After a contentious production cycle and a highly publicized change in directors, the movie has made many die-hard Star Wars fans apprehensive. Could a story about young Han Solo deliver on the hype and magic of a typical Star Wars film? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. Thankfully though, the film does deliver on one thing: crowd-pleasing cameos.
Solo does a great job of exploring the deep-cuts of Star Wars canon. There are plenty of callbacks, Easter Eggs, and name-drops that refer to a variety of characters from the most famous to the completely obscure — including many surprising secret appearances. Some cameos are extremely obvious and easy to spot. Others require a more observant eye and some might be impossible to notice without a deep knowledge of the galaxy far, far away. The most voracious of Star Wars fans probably made it a mission to catch them all — but did you?
For this list, we’re going to be discussing as many cameo appearances in Solo as we can find. Not only are we including key characters, but famous actors, background extras and mentions of absent characters as well. Consider this your spoiler warning, as this list is not going to omit any of the juicy details about these surprise appearances.
Ready to see if you spotted them all? Here are 15 Solo Cameos You Completely Missed.
Warwick Davis
Professor Flitwick, Willow, the Leprechaun and more — Warwick Davis is one of the most recognizable character actors around. He routinely shows up in the Star Wars films and plays several roles in the franchise’s pantheon of named characters. Davis famously played Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi, but he’s accumulated quite an array of appearances since then.
He plays a patron at Maz Kanata’s castle in The Force Awakens, one of Saw Gerrera’s henchman in Rogue One, a casino gambler in The Last Jedi, but he actually plays a prequel character in Solo. Davis shows up as Weazel, one of his many background characters from The Phantom Menace. Last time fans saw Weazel, he was in the Podrace audience. Weazel was sitting in box seats with Anakin Skywalker’s employer (and literal owner) Watto.
Weazel was a weapons dealer at the time, but he shows up in Solo as one of Enfys Nests’ close associates. Who knows how he got from the criminal underworld on Tatooine to becoming a member of the freedom-fighting Cloud-Riders, but it’s nice to see that this obscure character could be brought back for another appearance. This is one of Warwick Davis’ many appearances in Star Wars and hopefully not the last. See you in Episode IV!
Jon Favreau
Actor and director Jon Favreau is no stranger to the galaxy far, far away. He voices the fan-favorite character Pre Vizsla in The Clone Wars animated series and is at the helm of the upcoming live-action Star Wars television show. Despite his involvement with other Star Wars projects and his work on next year’s reboot of The Lion King, Favreau managed to find the time to show up in Solo, too.
It’s not exactly a cameo (since his name can be found in the film’s marketing), but some fans may not have recognized Favreau as the voice of the four-armed getaway pilot Rio Durant.
Sadly, Rio is a pretty minor character in Solo, only receiving a handful of lines before his unfortunate end during the train heist sequence, but he’s one of the most fun voice cameos in the film. Not only does he get to do his best Rocket Raccoon impression, but he gets to sell some pretty solid jokes before the bites the dust.
Favreau’s voice-over is a nice nod to his involvement with (and love of) the franchise, and it probably won’t be his last cameo either. With his live-action TV series right around the corner, don’t be surprised if he shows up there as well. Maybe he’ll appear in person next time.
The Pyke Syndicate
The Star Wars universe is full of criminals. It’s brimming with horrible scoundrels, ruthless thieves, and more than enough mob bosses to go around. One of the galaxy’s many crime organizations is the spice-dealing Pyke Syndicate and while they have largely been relegated to the Expanded Universe, Solo marks their first canon appearance in live-action.
The Pyke Family makes recurring appearances in The Clone Wars animated series, most notably alligning with Darth Maul as he takes over the planet Mandalore. It seems as the Pykes managed to retain their power after the Clone Wars, as a Pyke lieutenant named Quay Tolsite appears in Solo as the head of operations in the spice mines of Kessel. Tolsite meets Han and the gang during their coaxium heist on Kessel where the team destroys the mine and frees many of the enslaved miners.
Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra defeats Tolsite before all the slaves are freed by L3-37, and that’s the last anyone sees of the character. It’s a minor cameo that fans of The Clone Wars likely caught right away. It should also satisfy Star Wars canon-junkies with the knowledge that The Clone Wars will continue to be acknowledged in the films — and in Solo, but we’ll save that shocking reference for later.
An Astromech Droid
Sure, it’s not much of a shocker to see an Astromech droid in a Star Wars film. R2-D2’s model of droid can be found in a handful of the movies with different modifications and varying coats of paint. These little mechanics are all over the galaxy as some of the best starship repairmen that money can buy, so it makes perfect sense for them to be a common sight. However, they are less prevalent after the Clone Wars, specifically when it comes to the “R2” model that everyone’s favorite blue robot is based on.
This makes it especially cool to catch a glimpse of an R2 Astromech droid during Solo’s early scenes on Corellia. It is only visible for a few seconds, but keen-eyed viewers will catch it. The droid is especially similar to R2-D2, as it even shares his exact shape and the predominantly white paintjob, though this one has red accents instead of blue. No extra antennae or weirdly shaped head — almost an exact copy of R2-D2.
There are plenty of other cameos in the film and several certainly more meaningful than this one, but since R2-D2 is a no-show, we couldn’t help but include this on the list. You had better pay attention, though. The scenes on Corellia are all very dimly-lit and he might be hard to pick out. Blink and you’ll miss this minor cameo.
Bossk
While Solo: A Star Wars Story is brimming with fun cameos, many characters are only mentioned in conversation. One instance that turned the heads of many fans is the mention Bossk, a bounty hunter from the original trilogy. After Han and Chewie join Tobias Beckett and his group of thieves, Thandie Newton’s character Val expresses her distaste with the duo. She tells Beckett that anybody else in their line of work would be better than them, mentioning Bossk in her list of allies she’d prefer over Han and Chewie.
Bossk isn’t an A-list Star Wars character by any means, but fans of the original films will likely recognize him.
He shares the screen with Darth Vader and Boba Fett during The Empire Strikes Back. When Vader tasks several bounty hunters with tracking down the Millennium Falcon, Bossk stands among the new hires. He can be seen right before Vader tells Boba Fett that he wants the crew to be kept alive.
Aside from appearing in Star Wars merchandise, Bossk has also been in lots of Expanded Universe content. He has small roles in both The Clone Wars and the Star Wars Rebels animated series, and even shows up as a playable character in the rebooted Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II video games. It’s nice to see that these original trilogy extras aren’t being completely tossed aside in Disney’s slew of new Star Wars films.
Clint Howard
After plenty of behind-the-scenes drama, Lucasfilm removed directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the middle of Solo’s production. As a replacement, prolific director Ron Howard was brought in to finish the film and set things back on course. It should surprise almost nobody then that his brother Clint Howard makes a guest appearance in Solo, as he cameos in most of Ron Howard’s other films.
Clint Howard gets some very brief screen-time after the card game between Lando and Han, as he appears in the crowd at the droid pit-fight in the adjacent room. Ralakili, Howard’s character, is confronted and strangled by L3-37 for treating the droids so horribly. At the request of Lando, L3 drops him to the ground and spares his life.
According to Solo: A Star Wars StoryThe Official Guide, Ralakili hates all of droid-kind. His home planet was torn asunder by General Grievous’ during the Clone Wars, leading to Ralakili’s lifelong prejudice against robots. For a such a small cameo, that’s quite a backstory. Surely, this means we’re getting a Ralakili spin-off film… right? Right? What do you mean, “no”? Think of the franchise potential here!
In all seriousness, it’s probably one of the better cameos in the film, and one that somebody clearly put some thought into given that dark and tragic backstory.
Aurra Sing
Another obscure bounty hunter gets a name-drop in Solo. Aurra Sing was originally an extra in The Phantom Menace as an onlooker during the Podrace sequence. She can be seen watching the race above the narrow canyons from a balcony. Since then, though, she’s appeared in other Star Wars media as one of the many criminals-for-hire in the galaxy.
She’s appeared in some comics but is mostly known as a recurring character in The Clone Wars series. Aurra Sing makes an appearance in the young Boba Fett story arc alongside fellow bounty hunter Bossk, makes an uneasy alliance with Cad Bane, has a romantic history with Hondo Ohnaka, and she even has run-ins with the heroes on several occasions. She makes a bitter enemy of Ahsoka Tano, and at one point, Sing is even hired by Ziro the Hutt to discretely take out Padmé Amidala with a sniper rifle. She might be on the obscure side, but this character really gets around.
Aurra Sing is mentioned briefly in Solo when Tobias Beckett remarks that he pushed her off of an undisclosed location. Beckett doesn’t go into any further detail… other than the fact that Sing didn’t survive the fall. Ouch! Is she hanging out with Boba Fett at the bottom of the Sarlacc Pit?
Kiran Shah
You might not recognize Kiran Shah, but he’s appeared in more of your favorite films than you realize. He’s a prolific actor and stuntman that has played roles in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, episodes of Doctor Who, and even other Star Wars movies!
In The Force Awakens, Kiran Shah plays Teedo: a character that Rey meets in the desert. Rey frees BB-8 from Teedo after a quick scolding. Shah appears again in Rogue One as a character named Oolin Musters, who is one of Jyn Erso’s cellmates at the beginning of the film and can also be seen during the tank ambush in Jedha City. In The Last Jedi he plays Neepers Panpick (these names just keep getting funnier), who is a patron at the casino on Canto Bight. Fittingly, Shah makes another cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Shah appears in Solo as a character named Karjj, a Sabacc player who sits at Lando’s card table. Fun fact, though: his character was first revealed in a Solo tie-in commercial for Denny’s restaurants. So, when we finally decide to make that “Cameos In Denny’s Commercials You Completely Missed” list, he’ll surely be included.
The Decraniated
If you didn’t think Clint Howard’s cameo had some dark subtext, then settle in for this creepy little Easter Egg. On Dryden Vos’ personal yacht, an extra can be seen missing the top half of their head. Instead, they have a visor-like headgear mounted where most of their face should be. This person is part of a group called “the Decraniated” — scarred victims of scientific experiments, and a seriously deep cut in Star Wars mythology.
The Decraniated was a character design originally created during The Force Awakens.
They are victims of a crazed surgeon named Dr. Cornelius Evazan, a former cosmetic surgeon who began to purposefully disfigure his patients. After becoming a wanted man in Jedha City, he used cybernetic experiments to implant his victims with a programmable headgear, making them his personal mindless slaves. It’s like something out of a horror film, isn’t it?
Dr. Evazan isn’t some obscure character, either. He appears in the original Star Wars and threatens Luke Skywalker in the Mos Eisley Cantina — right before Obi-Wan takes his arm off. Ultimately, the concept wasn’t incorporated into The Force Awakens, but a Decraniated person can be found as an extra in the Jedha City scenes of Rogue One… where Doctor Evazan also makes a cameo. Now that is some dark stuff — especially for Star Wars.
Tag And Bink
Technically you didn’t miss this one… but that’s only because you couldn’t have seen it in the first place. So yeah — you totally missed this one. Before Solo’s release, director Ron Howard confirmed the appearance of two Star Wars Expanded Universe characters: Tag and Bink. These two bumbling besties headline several of their own comic series, which depict their adventures as they stumble their way across the universe and accidentally affect crucial events in the Star Wars films.
If you thought you simply missed them in Solo, you were more correct than you realize. Tag and Bink’s scene was publicized before the film’s debut, but was cut from Solo at the last minute.
The duo’s cameo would have come after another deleted scene, where Han would have been participating in an aerial training exercise. After disobeying orders, Han would have been kicked out of the Imperial Academy via a court martial. Tag and Bink would have escorted him out of the courtroom, which would inadvertently set Han on the path to a life of crime… and by extension his life as a Rebellion general.
Tag and Bink would have been played by Jon Kasdan and Toby Heffernan, and it would have been the characters’ first canonical appearance since Disney reset the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It looks like they will still remain relics of the former Lucasfilm era unless another film brings them back. Oh well… they’ll probably be on the Blu-ray, right?
An RA-7 Droid
There are so many different kinds of droids in Star Wars that it is hard to keep track of them all. Every once and a while though, an old design gets reused in a meaningful way. Since Solo: A Star Wars Story is a prequel film, it makes plenty of stylistic callbacks to the original trilogy and uses old props to take everyone back to 1977. As such, an RA-7 protocol droid makes a small cameo in Solo during the speeder chase on Corellia.
This droid was first shown in the Sand Crawler, when R2 and C-3PO are captured at the beginning of A New Hope. These droids do appear as background extras in other films, but in Solo the droid gets to be the star of a quick, funny moment. When Molloch is chasing Han and Qi’ra, an Imperial RA-7 runs out into the middle of the road to slow them down. Molloch hits the droid at full speed, shattering him and throwing his parts all over the place.
It’s a small moment featuring an unimportant extra, but it’s always fun to see Lucasfilm dig deep into their warehouse of props and costumes to reuse a classic design. After all, nostalgia plays a huge role in the Star Wars franchise’s continued success. Why not throw in some old school Easter Eggs like this one to bring back memories?
Jabba the Hut
Jabba the Hutt doesn’t actually show up in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Surprised? Many fans expected the infamous mobster to have a few minutes on screen, as it only seemed appropriate to have Han meet his mortal enemy in a young Han Solo movie. Shockingly, Jabba doesn’t show up at all. However, Beckett does mention a guy “putting together a crew” on Tatooine. Could this be a reference to Tatooine’s resident Hutt cartel and his smuggling operation?
It’s not a direct reference, but given Han’s history with Jabba, it’s likely that Beckett’s information will lead the duo to him.
This film drops plenty of hints at future sequels and spin-offs. With Han and Chewie discussing this Tatooine crew at the end of the film, it’s possible that Jabba appearance is being saved for a future Star Wars movie. This doesn’t necessarily mean a future Solo film, either. While Lucasfilm could be saving Jabba for a sequel, he could easily appear in the upcoming Boba Fett film or even a potential Lando spin-off.
Of course, he may never actually show up at all. Perhaps this minor reference is all that fans are going to get in regards to the galaxy’s biggest crime lord.
Maul
He’s finally back! Ray Park’s Darth Maul makes a shocking yet crowd-pleasing appearance at the end of Solo, as Qi’ra reveals him to be the leader of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate. He’s a bit older, sports a cybernetic pair of legs, and wields his lightsaber from Star Wars Rebels. He threatens Qi’ra with an ominous monologue, hinting at more to come from the long-absent prequel villain.
Casual fans last saw Maul get sliced in half by Obi-Wan. For them, this was a gigantic surprise. For canon-junkies, Maul has been a constant in Star Wars ever since The Phantom Menace. The Clone Wars reveals that he survived getting cut in half, as the show has him build his own shadow collective of criminals to get revenge on Obi-Wan for his life-ruining defeat. It looks like a life of crime has proven pretty lucrative for Maul, as he’s still up to no good so many years later.
His cameo in Solo takes place before his appearance in Rebels, as the series has him reunite with Obi-Wan for a rematch. He’s still no match for the Jedi Master and meets a noble end in the desert on Tatooine. This certainly lessens the impact of his cameo and the promise of future movie appearances, but most fans will agree that it’s nice to have the underrated villain back on the big screen.
Sam Witwer
Ray Park returns as Maul — but only physically. Maul’s voice actor in Solo is a cameo in and of itself. Maul is voiced by Sam Witwer, his voice actor in The Clone Wars animated series as well as an actor who has long been a part of the franchise’s legacy. If you don’t recognize him as the voice of Darth Maul (or the Emperor, who he voices every so often), then you might recognize him as the performance-capture actor for Starkiller, the main character in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and The Force Unleashed II video games.
In The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul was voiced by actor Peter Serafinowicz. It’s unclear why he did not return for Solo, but Witwer has long been the heir to Maul’s character. He has spent the last few years making the role his own, and hardcore fans likely find it hard to separate Witwer’s voice and persona from the former Sith lord.
It’s nice to have Ray Park back in the makeup, but it seems like an especially smart choice to have Maul’s voice carry over from the animated shows. It demonstrates that Lucasfilm is trying to incorporate all aspects of Star Wars mythology into the films, and besides — Sam Witwer is fantastic at voicing Maul. Hopefully when the villain returns, Sam Witwer returns with him.
Anthony Daniels
He’s been in every major Star Wars film to date. Did you expect him to skip out on this one? Unfortunately, no, C-3PO doesn’t make an appearance. Solo is one of the only films in the franchise where he and his pal R2-D2 don’t show up. However, 3PO’s actor Anthony Daniels does make a small cameo. Did you catch it?
Daniels cameos on Kessel during the prisoner breakout. As Han and Chewie are carrying the coaxium through the tunnels, Chewie must part ways with a fellow Wookiee. As they press their heads together in a farewell hug, Daniels’ character can be seen. Playing a Kessel mining slave (crediting as “Tak”), he shouts “This way!” as the prisoners escape the mine. The scene itself is dimly-lit and it can be very easy to miss him, but well-trained ears will likely recognize his voice.
It’s a shame that the droids couldn’t appear, but this is a nice compromise. It’s probably the only way that Anthony Daniels could have maintained his spotless Star Wars attendance record without jarring the film’s story. If 3PO were to show up, it would have to happened through some pretty contrived plot points. Thankfully, the writers found a fun way to work in this Star Wars legend in an organic way for fans to enjoy. See you next year, 3PO!
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Did you notice all these cameos? There are plenty that couldn’t make our list. Leave your thoughts in the comments section and tell us which one you liked most!
