04/18/2023
Han Solo was a terrible dad.
When we look at the shiny, beautiful Millennium Falcon in Solo, and then look at the dirty, bits-falling-off bucket-of-bolts it is in A New Hope, it should come as no surprise that Han Solo was basically an awful father.
If he loved the Falcon that much and that’s how he treated it, then how badly did he treat his son?
Well, first off, we have to cut Han a bit of slack. Ben Solo was a damn scary child. Being naturally gifted in The Force, Ben displayed the ability to powerfully wield The Force very early on in his life – kinda like Baby Yoda from The Mandalorian.
However, kids don’t really tend to understand the difference between good and bad too well, and young Ben would often throw temper tantrums as a young child where he’d crush everything around him, or rip buildings to pieces.
Understandably, this scared the hell out of Han, who was very eager to ship young Ben off to Uncle Luke for some Jedi training.
Han truly did fear there was too much Vader in Ben, even at such a young age, and didn’t want life under the Empire to be recreated with Ben at the helm.
On one instance, Ben overheard Han saying he could end up being a “monster” – something that affected him deeply and something that, sadly, ended up becoming true.
But, as we saw in The Rise of Skywalker, Ben eventually proved his father and all his other critics wrong, turning to the Light in one final act of Vader-esque self-sacrifice.