Dryden’s Den, The Droid Arena, and More Potential Locations in Solo: A Star Wars Story – Shaping the Timeline of Events in the Movie
Two days ago we published an article revealing multiple Solo toy products and games expected to be released in the coming months. We also received a press release from Hasbro with some new items from them, and thanks to the high resolution of the images, you are able to see some bits and pieces that might actually reveal some cool things about the movie itself.
BEWARE OF POTENTIALLY BIG SPOILERS FOR SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY!!!
The first item that might reveal some potential plot points from Solo: A Star Wars Story is Hasbro’s new Monopoly game.
Some of the spaces on the board are hard to make out given the resolution of the photo, but there are still several things we can discover from the game board concerning the various ships and locations mentioned that may give us some clues about the overall plot of the movie.
Starting with the obvious, the “Community Chest” cards have been replaced by “Scoundrel” cards. Likewise, the “Smuggler” cards serve as the “Chance” cards, and the Railroads from the regular version of Monopoly have been replaced by various ships and vehicles seen in Solo. The “Income Tax” and “Luxury Tax” spaces have also been dubbed “Debt” and “Mercenary Fee” respectively.
The four corners of the game board remain the same as the original version of the game, from “Go” to “Jail/Just Visiting”, “Free Parking”, and the dreaded “Go to Jail” space. However, all the spaces in between have been changed to match the Solo theme.
As you know, in Monopoly several spaces are connected together using the same color, which lead us to consider them part of the same location in the movie. Still, not always locations are arranged in chronological order on Monopoly. Keeping that in mind, you will see below that actually the arrangement in the Solo Monopoly is pretty close to what we think the chronology of the movie will be.
Starting with “Go”, this is what we were able to make out:
Light Blue:
- Recruitment Center
- Imperial Academy
- Training Facility
It is interesting that in the game the Recruitment Center and the Imperial Academy are placed after Mimban. Our initial guess was that Han goes to the Recruitment Center and is dispatched as an Imperial soldier on Mimban. Of course, this is only a game, and we can’t be sure how accurate all of this is. Still, it’s worth keeping it in mind. But for the purposes of keeping everything in chronological order we will move this before Mimban.
Note that this is the only change we will be doing in the whole game.
Brown:
- Battlefield
- The Pen
We see a Mudtrooper on the Battlefield space, which means that these two are connected with Mimban.
I think it’s safe to assume that the Pen is the place where Han and Chewie are held captive for whatever reason.
Pink:
- The Den
- Spaceport
- TIE Fighter Factory
I wonder if the place where we see Qi’ra and Han meet again is this Den. The place might look too flashy to be called a “den”, but who knows. It’s also the place where Dryden Vos is located. Also, we know that Han is together with Beckett on Mimban, so most likely they both came to the Den for some reason.
And here’s a bit more speculation. All the trailers were made to look like Beckett is telling Han about the mission on the sand planet or on the snow planet (which we think is one and the same). But what if he already told him that during their days on Mimban or in the Den? And the trailers were cleverly edited to mislead us (like they often do).
So my guess is that Han, Chewie, Beckett, and Qi’ra are in the Den to meet with Dryden Vos about the specific mission that Beckett mentions in the trailers.
Not sure how this TIE Fighter Factory fits in all this, but I would speculate that they manage to steal a cargo Hauler ship (piloted by Rio Durant) from there, which they will later use to steal a carriage from the Conveyex.
Orange:
- Campsite(?)
- Bridge (?)
- Impound
These were really hard to make out, but I think we got them correct. Actually, we were first thinking that the Conveyex heist will happen after the stand-off between Han and Enfys Nest. But this Monopoly arrangement suggest that the heist is first. The Campsite is when Beckett gives Han the iconic DL-44 blaster and where the crew prepares for their strike. You can see in the background the snowy mountains and Han is wearing the warm furry coat.
The Bridge is where Han will manage to lift a whole carriage from the Conveyex using the Hauler ship, after Beckett fights some Range Troopers on top of it and releases it.
This is where things will go wrong. Enfys Nest’s Cloud-Rider gang is also targeting whatever our heroes are trying to steal (we speculated that it could be the so called Coaxium here). One of the trailers actually shows that the gang, using cables, manages to steal the cargo from Han’s Hauler (see image above) – hence the name “Impound“. The trailers also suggest that this thing explodes after that, but this could be another clever and misleading montage.
Red:
- Chase (?)
- Refinery Canteen
- The Coast
This part of the movie is where the famous Han vs. Enfys standoff happens. There will possibly be a chase there with the Cloud-Rider gang which will lead our heroes to their lair, where they hope to retrieve what was stolen from them.
Yellow:
- Tavern
- Droid Arena
- The Backroom
This is the part of the movie where Han and Lando finally meet and where we will see the Millennium Falcon for the first time. As you can see, it’s pretty late in the game. I would have thought that the whole game of Sabacc would happen on a different planet, but we are pretty sure that it happens on the same planet where the standoff between Han and Enfys happened, simply because of the shot below (still not 100% sure if the sand location is part of the planet Vandor, but this is not that relevant):
My guess is that the shot above is after Han, Qi’ra, Chewie, Lando, and L3-37 join forces and leave this planet and go to Kessel. And we know for certain that Donald Glover was on Fuerteventura when they were filming the scenes with the sand location.
The Tavern perhaps is the place where the famous game of Sabacc between Han and Lando will happen. We saw it in the trailer too:
The Backroom should be the actual place in the tavern where the game will take place:
It’s interesting that we also have a Droid Arena mentioned here. Two days ago, Funko released an upcoming Pop! 2-pack featuring a couple of “Fighting Droids” from the film. This reveal coupled with the Droid Arena location seen in the Monopoly game strongly suggests that we will indeed see the GFFA version of a Battlebots throwdown in the movie.
Green:
- Operations Center
- Landing Platform
- Spice Mines
We know little about these three but obviously they will happen on the planet Kessel. We’ve seen some action taking place there, but that’s pretty much all we know.
Blue:
- Kessel Run
- Millennium Falcon
The final two spaces on the board are pretty self explanatory. We’re still not sure what exactly Han and Lando’s mission is at this point. They surely will have to smuggle some cargo, but what is it? And what is the connection between the Conveyex heist and the Kessel Run? As we speculated in the other piece here, perhaps they needed a certain part (the Coaxium), which they stole from the Conveyex, for their ship to make the Kessel Run possible. It’s interesting though that when they stole the Coaxium, they didn’t know that they would be using the Millennium Falcon. So perhaps this part is universal and can fit any ship.
It is also here where we will see the scenes with the TIE fighters chasing the Falcon and the giant creature that was on their way. Interestingly, in some of the shots with the Falcon we see Lando, but later he and L3-37 are gone. Here’s the place to tell you that we are pretty confident that Lando will not be in the Falcon when Han, Chewie and Qi’ra will be doing the Kessel Run. We will tell you why we think that in a week time.
It’s also worth mentioning that the early Corellian years of Han and Qi’ra from the beginning of the movie have been completely left out from the board. With so much going on it’s understandable.
Well, there you have it. Again, keep in mind that this is just a game and most of the stuff here is just educated speculation, but you can see that most of it makes sense.
What do you think? Do you think we got the plot right? Could there really be something more that was intentionally left out from the game and the trailers?
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
