Could ‘Solo 2’ Find New Life As A Disney Plus Series?

For reasons I don’t fully understand, #MakeSolo2Happen is trending on Twitter today. I have seen this periodically, where a band of Star Wars fans get together and request that Solo should get a sequel, given how many loose ends it left hanging, clearly setting up something larger with the reveal of Darth Maul, a turn that shocked everyone who has never seen Clone Wars.

Solo was the film that caused Disney to put their single-character spin-off concepts on hold, due to box office underperformance and mediocre critical and fan reviews. But if say, the promised Obi-Wan solo film was turned into a Disney Plus show, could a Solo sequel have the same fate?

There are some…complicating factors here that would make this difficult.

Solo star Alden Ehrenreich is currently leading Brave New World, a sci-fi show on NBC’s Peacock streaming service. That’s already been filmed, but if it stuck around for a second series, he might not be free.

Donald Glover, who was a huge asset to the film as Lando, probably does not have enough free time between FX’s Atlanta and his music career to make a Disney Plus series work with his schedule.

But there’s some good news.

Emilia Clarke, at least as far as we know, is not wrapped up any new projects at the moment, with her last listed role being Last Christmas, and she’s only had two total roles since Thrones ended, not attached to any new series. So she could be free to return as Qi’ra.

I would have to imagine that Ray Park would love to play Darth Maul again, as he always leaps at the opportunity whenever he’s needed, be it in a cameo like Solo or doing voice/stunt work for animated series.

Solo 2: The Series could scale down the budget so it’s not some mammoth blockbuster and follow in the footsteps of The Mandalorian. But I think it’s a question of whether or not Disney wants to revisit one of their movies that performed the poorest for them, and it would take more than a few trending hashtags to make it work. I do agree that there is an interesting show to be made with Qi’ra and Maul and young Han (I maintain Ehrenreich did as good as a job as anyone could have with the difficult task of channeling a young Harrison Ford).

However, Disney has so many irons in the fire, I’m not sure what would motivate them to return to Solo as a new timeline to focus on, unless they could perhaps somehow pair it with Obi-Wan, the only other series they’re working on that would be in a similar time frame. But The Mandalorian and a possible Ahsoka spin-off are well in the future, and even Rogue One’s Cassian Andor show should be later too. And a new show from the Russian Doll showrunner is supposed to be a timeline that we’ve never been to at all, possible part of Disney’s new desire to push this “High Republic” era they are beginning to explore. Solo doesn’t really fit into any of that.

There is one way I could see this working, as a limited series, like Obi-Wan. That show is reportedly six episodes and then it’s done. If you say turned Solo 2 into an eight episode miniseries with Mandalorian-length 30 minute episodes, guess what? That’s four more hours of Solo content, enough to fill two other movies and wrap up whatever storylines were teased at the end of the movie. And it’s short enough where maybe Ehrenreich and Donald Glover could fit it in, if it was a one-and-done.

Do I think this is likely to happen? Probably not. I think Disney thinks of Solo as a rare loss for the Star Wars brand and they don’t want to revisit it. There’s a way it could probably work, but I just don’t know if they’re going to bother with so much else in the pipeline right now.