'Solo': Qi'ra Meets a Few Familiar Bounty Hunters in New Star Wars Short

Han Solo’s childhood companion Qi’ra forged even more connections to existing Star Wars characters in a new episode of Forces of Destiny.

The 2-minute episode, titled “Triplecross,” released the same day as Solo: A Star Wars Story. It features Qi’ra running through the marketplace on some alien planet while getting shot by an assassin droid that wants the bounty on her head. Just as Qi’ra tries to enter a door to safety, out walks a Weequay mercenary working with the droid. They cuff her, but with some deft lock-picking and clever tricks, Qi’ra is able to get them to turn on each other instead. So she walks away to get the bounty on both of their heads.

“Triplecross” is a fun little video that shows how badass Qi’ra is, but even more interestingly, it connects her to these two other characters — IG-88 and Hondo Ohnaka — who we’ve seen before in Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars animated series like Clone Wars and Rebels.

Here’s the full episode:

Hardcore Star Wars fans ought to instantly recognize IG-88 as the assassin droid that originally appeared alongside Boba Fett in Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader hired a bunch of mercenaries to track down the Millennium Falcon. He’s since popped up in another Forces of Destiny short called “Bounty of Trouble” featuring Leia and Sabine Wren (which took place after “Triplecross”). Ultimately, IG was killed by his competitor Boba Fett and left for scrap on Cloud City.

Hondo is a smuggler, pirate, and occasional bounty hunter that first emerged during The Clone Wars with his pirate gang. He actually dueled with Anakin Skywalker and somehow survived. Much later, during Star Wars Rebels, he aided Ezra Bridger in various endeavors, openly in support of the Rebellion. According to some initial information about Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge theme park, Hondo might even be the reason that the Millennium Falcon winds up on the planet Batuu sometime after the original trilogy.

If we do get one day get Solo sequels, then it’s possible we might see these characters in live-action again, especially if they’ve encountered Qi’ra before. (Based on this episode, she seems to have some kind of history with Hondo.)

Big spoiler for Solo follows.

When you also consider that the end of Solo turns Qi’ra into a villain conspiring with Darth Maul, it complicates what we see of her here. How might these three characters interact in future stories as Qi’ra goes from “Crimson Dawn lieutenant” to the ruthless leader of the group? We might never get a definitive answer unless Solo does get a sequel. Here’s hoping that happens.