So There’s Hope We Could See Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra in ‘Star Wars’ Again?

Hello, it’s me, the number one Solo: A Star Wars Story fan. And with that comes a lot for that movie that knows no bounds. So whenever Jonathan Kasdan (who wrote the movie with his father, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan) talks about it, I listen—especially when he talks about going back to a character I personally loved and want to see more of.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Kasdan talked about the character of Qi’ra (played by Emilia Clarke) and how he’d like to see her again, and given how Disney has been doing small specials for different characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, why not have one for Star Wars that explores Qi’ra and her connection to the Empire that we saw at the end of Solo?

“Before I got involved and before anyone was involved, my dad was really passionate about creating a different kind of femme fatale in the Star Wars universe, someone who was sincerely morally ambiguous,” he said. “Qi’ra had grown up very hard, she’d had a life that forced her to become a survivor, and she was going to have to make tough choices that Han [Alden Ehrenreich] couldn’t quite make. Even in the final moments of his life, Han was always going to be undone by his humanism and his heart, but Qi’ra was on the other side of the line.”

He went on to praise Qi’ra and Clark’s performance, saying, “So what I thought Emilia brought to it wonderfully is that she’s not evil or duplicitous. She’s a survivor and she’s maneuvering through all these different powerful entities to get to the end of the game. As the years have gone by and there has been more Star Wars, my enthusiasm for doing more Solo has waned only because there’s so much great Star Wars out there right now. But the thing that I would love to revisit is the relationship between the two of them, because there’s so much fun and complexity to be found in the relationship between Han and Qi’ra.” 

The appeal of Qi’ra

Time and time again, the thought of Qi’ra coming back into the Star Wars world has excited me and yet we still haven’t seen her again. Solo ends with the reveal that Qi’ra is working with Darth Maul, and we just … left it there?! And Clarke was so incredibly good as Qi’ra that it feels strange that we haven’t returned to the character in some way.

She’s so connected to the Empire, and we keep getting shows set in a time when she could still be working with them, and we haven’t seen her? It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

I don’t necessarily think we’ll get more adventures between Clarke’s Qi’ra and Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, but I do wish they’d both come back in their own stories. And the fact that Kasdan does seem to love Qi’ra is promising, but with so much in the works with Star Wars, I’m not holding my breath. That’s not to say I don’t have hope, but I don’t think it’s going to be soon if we do get more Qi’ra content.

(featured image: Lucasfilm)