The upcoming Star Wars spin-off about Han Solo’s early years looks set to change a lot about how we perceive the character, with the Alden Ehrenreich-starring prequel set to fill in many of the blanks surrounding the origins of the character who first sprung on to the screen in 1977.

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And apparently those blanks may be more fundamental than we ever realised, with new reports suggesting that we don’t actually know the real name of the character played by Harrison Ford.

Yup – Han Solo might not actually be called Han Solo.

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Said bizarre detail comes from a discussion held by Disney CEO Bob Iger this week in Los Angeles, where he chatted about all sorts of upcoming projects from the House of Mouse including the Han Solo film.

Revealing that the film would follow Han from the ages of 18-24, see him win the Millennium Falcon from frenemy Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover playing the younger version of the Billy Dee Williams character) and meet Chewbacca, Iger then reportedly said that the story would include Han “getting his name”, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz.

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Now, it could be that this is just a garbled way of saying Han MAKES his name in the film, building his reputation to become the ne’er-do-well smuggler we meet in A New Hope. Hell, maybe Iger’s just referring to a scene where Han makes the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs or something, a feat apparently interesting enough to be remembered by Daisy Ridley’s Rey in The Force Awakens.

However, it is also possible that Iger means exactly what it’s reported he said, and that Han Solo isn’t the given name of Alden Ehrenreich’s character. Maybe, it’s one he picks for himself instead.

After all, Star Wars has long established Han as orphaned from a young age and left to fend for himself – maybe he never knew his real last name, and later adopted “Solo” as an accurate representation of how he saw himself. Or maybe the name has a greater significance in the Star Wars universe than we realise, and it’ll have a hidden meaning revealed over the course of the movie.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’ll be the tragic conclusion to a surprisingly sad tale of loss that’ll have us all sobbing in the aisles.

Whatever the truth, this is the most interesting Star Wars news we’ve heard in a while – Hans down.

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The untitled Han Solo Star Wars movie will be released in May 2018

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