Ron Howard drops Death Star hint from Han Solo set

Ron Howard appears to be stepping up his Twitter game from the set of the Han Solo movie.

First it was all mundanities, like pictures of his walking boots and bottles of water, then road signs to Pinewood Studios, his rather legendary temporary workplace.

But the director’s latest snapshot has both confounded and excited Star Wars fans in equal measure.

To the casual fan, it’s just a shiny black helmet, but to the incurable geek, that right there is a Death Star trooper’s helmet.

And it’s resting on what suspiciously looks like a Death Star control panel.

And that’s where the confusion sits, simmering away.

In terms of ‘Star Wars’ timelines, the Death Star shouldn’t figure in a prequel movie about the young Han Solo (being played in the movie by Alden Ehrenreich).

The deadly space station was only finished in ‘A New Hope’, and this movie is said to be set many years before that.

However, it’s perhaps not too far of a reach to wonder whether there’s some canny plot dovetailing of ‘Rogue One’, the first ‘Star Wars’ prequel, which dealt with the building of the space station, and the forthcoming Solo picture.

Plus the massive planet-destroyer must have taken a while to build. Could it be some sort of Death Star prototype perhaps, ahead of final construction?

At this point, your guess is as good as ours.

Whatever the significance of Howard’s knowing mischievousness, soon his feed was awash with Solo’s exceptional quote from the Death Star scenes in ‘A New Hope’ (in case you’ve forgotten, to paraphrase: “Everything under control, situation normal… we’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”).

The ‘Han Solo’ prequel, which so far doesn’t have an official name (but has already been the subject of some considerable controversy), also stars Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Warwick Davis, Michael K. Williams, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

It’s due out on May 25, 2018.

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