The Novelization of SOLO Sheds New Light on the Meeting Between Darth Maul and Qi'ra

I was not impressed with Solo: A Star Wars Story. However, one thing that kept me engaged was that I knew Darth Maul had a cameo. When we were getting towards the end, I thought I had missed it in one of the gambling dens or maybe the spaceport from the beginning. Then, it was revealed he was the one actually in charge of Crimson Dawn. That was pretty cool. Of course, I didn’t think about the interaction too much since I was just blown away that they revealed Maul in this movie (they better be leading up to an epic duel between him and Obi-Wan in Kenobi), but it turns out that Mur Lafferty paid close attention to the interaction. Lafferty is the writer for the novelization of Solo and she plans to clear up the fact that Qi’ra had no clue who Maul was. StarWars.com interviewed Lafferty and that’s when we learn a bit of her plan for dealing with this interaction.

“In the final version, Lafferty’s novelization does describe the Force-wielding Zabrak — “another thing that I added almost entirely after I saw it,” she says. “It wasn’t until I saw it the second time that I realized he Force-pulled his lightsaber to him. It wasn’t on him, he pulls it in. Which is even scarier!”

But she made the conscious decision not to include his name because, she reasoned, Qi’ra wouldn’t have known him on sight. “I don’t think she would have known who he was,” Lafferty says. “They sort of implied that Dryden was beholden to someone a lot more powerful than he was. And so she knew that whoever it was scared him, but she didn’t know that the guy used to be a Sith Lord. She didn’t know who he was. She just knew that that button would call Dryden Vos’ boss.””

I know some who think that Maul will train Qi’ra to be a Sith, but I don’t agree. I think he simply wants her on Dathomir to train her to become the new Dryden Vos and nothing more. If sequels do come out for the film, I’m sure they’ll set Qi’ra up to be the new big bad and maybe that’ll make the films more interesting.

Solo: A Star Wars Story: Expanded Edition will be available September 4 and pre-orders are available now.