Why Han Solo Doesn't Get A Funeral In 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'

With plenty to already argue about in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the “extensivedeleted scenes that are expected to arrive with the home video release will only give fans more to talk about. However, there’s one thing you won’t be seeing visualized except in your own head — Han Solo’s funeral.

The death of everyone’s favorite smuggler was one of the most surprising and emotionally intense moments of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Honoring the character in ‘The Last Jedi’ is likely a path that many filmmakers would’ve chosen to go down, but director Rian Johnson explains why he ultimately decided it wasn’t necessary for his picture.

“[There was no debate of showing Han Solo’s funeral], just because pacing-wise it didn’t have a place. It’s tough in ‘Star Wars’ because I always think about the mourning that Luke gives to Ben’s death, which is all of four-and-a-half seconds before, ‘Come on kid we’re not out of this yet’ and then boom, you’re into ‘Yay, woo-hoo! Don’t get cocky!’ There’s the moment for it, but it’s not long,” he told Collider. “We don’t have time for our sorrows, commanders. That’s kind of the thing of ‘Star Wars’; you don’t really linger on grief because you’re moving forward.”

It’s an interesting observation, and Johnson stresses that in his already story-filled ‘The Last Jedi,’ there wasn’t a natural place to squeeze in mourning for Han.

“It was never something where there was an organic place for it like, ‘Oh it would go here.’ It was always something like, ‘We wanna get this right up on our feet and going from the start,’ ” he added.

The good news is the upcoming official “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” novelization by Jason Fry will have the funeral sequence that didn’t make the big screen. And yep, it’s canon. The book hits shelves on March 6th.