How Star Wars Fans Can Learn What Happened To Lando Calrissian After Return Of The Jedi

Lando Calrissian

While Lando Calrissian wasn't painted in the best light at first during The Empire Strikes Back, he went on in the latter half of that movie and Return of the Jedi to be a key Rebellion ally. However, unlike Han Solo, Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker, Lando wasn't brought back in 2015 for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and there's no official word yet on whether he'll appear in The Last Jedi or Episode IX. Fortunately, an upcoming book is shedding some light on what happened to Lando in the immediate years after the second Death Star's destruction.

Next month, Del Rey Books will release Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End, the final entry in author Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, which explores the Rebels wrapping up their conflict with the Empire after Return of the Jedi. In the excerpt provided by io9, Lando Calrissian has returned to Cloud City after staging an uprising and found that the Empire left his operation in shambles following The Empire Strikes Back. Longtime Star Wars fans will remember that in addition to escaping with Leia, Chewbacca, Luke and C-3PO, Lando alerted the city's inhabitants to flee before the Empire gained total control of the tibanna gas mining facility. Evidently they followed his advice, and the Empire didn't bother with upkeep afterwards. Not to be deterred, Lando instructs his associate Lobot to starting rehiring staff, including some refugees who are in need of a place to stay and paying work.

In the midst of traversing through Cloud City to deal with some of the final Imperial holdouts, Lobot also reminds Lando that he needs to buy a gift for Han and Leia, who are expecting their the birth of their son soon. Not realizing how quickly time has passed since those two were married, Lando jokingly suggests that he get Ben a little cape and mustache so he can look like "Uncle Lando," but Lobot fails to see the humor. It's best not to test material on him.

In the official Star Wars canon (i.e. not counting the now-defunct Expanded Universe), this is Lando's first post-Return of the Jedi appearance. Until now, the only mention of him in this time period was in the novel Bloodline, which is set a few years before The Force Awakens. In that story, Leia receives a message of support from Lando after it's publicly revealed that Darth Vader was her father. However, we haven't been entirely without Lando in recent years, as Billy Dee Williams voiced the character in two episodes of Star Wars Rebels, which is set before A New Hope.

While it remains to be seen whether Lando Calrissian will show up in the latter two entries of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, fans can look forward to Donald Glover playing a younger Lando in the young Han Solo movie, which will be released on May 25, 2018. And if you want to see what happens to Lando in the rest of Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End, the book will hit shelves on February 21.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.