User:Brandon Rhea/Han Solo Improvement Drive

"Han fancied himself a scoundrel. But he wasn't. He loved freedom—for himself, certainly, but for everybody else in the galaxy, too. And time after time, he was willing to fight for that freedom. He didn't want to know the odds in that fight—because he’d already made up his mind that he'd prevail. And time after time, somehow, he did."

- Leia Organa

Han Solo was a human male smuggler, a revolutionary leader in the Alliance to Restore the Republic who proved instrumental in the defeat of the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War, and the husband of Leia Organa and father of Kylo Ren. As a youth growing up on the streets of Corellia, Solo turned to a life of thievery for survival and eventually became a smuggler after defecting from the Imperial Army and becoming friends with his future co-pilot Chewbacca. On his first major job he and Chewie worked with a crew that stole coaxium from Kessel and, in Lando Calrissian's Millennium Falcon, piloted the infamous Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. He soon won the Falcon from Calrissisan in a game of sabacc and became a smuggler for Jabba the Hutt.

Solo ran afoul of Jabba after ditching a spice shipment to avoid trouble with the Empire, owning the crime lord a large sum of money as a result. He took a job to ferry Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and two droids to Alderaan, which turned into a mission to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star. Solo joined the Rebel Alliance as a result, helped destroy the Death Star, and spent the next several years helping the Alliance in various battles and missions against the Empire. After the Battle of Hoth and ensuing damage to the Falcon, Solo and Organa, Chewbacca, and C-3PO sought safe refuge with Calrissian on Cloud City, but Darth Vader and the Imperial Army had already forced Calrissian to set a trap for Solo and the rebels to lure Skywalker into captivity. Solo was frozen in carbonite and taken to Jabba's Palace, where he remained frozen in carbonite for many months until he was rescued by Skywalker, Organa, Calrissian, and Chewbacca.

After his rescue, Solo led the ground forces during the Battle of Endor, a decisive Alliance victory that saw the destruction of the Death Star II and the deaths of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. In the final year of the war, Solo helped liberate the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, married Princess Leia, and together they had a son, Ben. After the war, Solo managed a racing championship until Ben, by then a student at Skywalker’s Jedi academy, turned to the dark side and destroyed the new generation of the Jedi Order. Devastated by the loss of his son, Solo returned to a life of smuggling until he was brought back into the fold by Rey, a Jakku scavenger, and Finn, a stormtrooper who defected from the First Order. He reunited with Organa, the leader of the Resistance, and attempted to save his son from the dark side during the Battle of Starkiller Base. Ben killed his father, but Solo was remembered fondly as a hero by Leia, Chewbacca, Rey, and the Resistance.