By: Jay Carlson

I had some difficulty choosing a headline for this post. Also in the running was “Han, Old Buddy! (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Han).” That last subtitle had some comedic truth to it – if you’re like me you’re worrying less and less with each piece of this new Star Wars that is revealed.

If you think Harrison looks good arriving at the recent premiere for The Expendables 3 in the video above, wait til you see what he’ll be wearing on screen in Episode VII:

It’s great to see that Han’s style hasn’t changed much over the years. These coats would fit right in on Hoth or Endor. The half dozen designs we’ve seen may indicate a lot of costume changes for Harrison and his healing foot to go through, though some sketches may never get past that concept stage to end up on screen. It’s interesting to note that while Han’s outfitted with his classic DL-44 blaster (SW7 actor John Boyega appears to have the original prop in this photo!) and iconic gunbelt, In all of the sketches his belt now has a second holster on his left hip. It’s a mirror image of the one on the right. Will Han wield two guns in his old age?

In our Stormtrooper post, I mentioned that I believed the seemingly original trooper design was an update to Empire’s Snowtrooper – Han’s cold weather gear here was one of my main reasons for that. This isn’t the first time a rumor of a snow planet has surfaced, either. When production was scheduled for Iceland, speculation ran rampant that we’d see Hoth again. Production sources later advised that there are desert planets outside of Tatooine, ice planets outside of Hoth, and forests outside of Endor, and that we shouldn’t necessarily expect to see any of the above in the new films. And while Iceland is technically a lot greener than Greenland, I can’t help but think the Episode VII team is eager to present us with a lot of the familiar. The desert village set certainly looks like Tatooine/Mos Eisley – complete with McQuarrie’s structures (comparison via Making Star Wars) intended for that location in the original Star Wars – and the Forest of Dean set would make a fine stand-in for Yavin. Besides, it’s not as though productions like these aren’t known for blatant misdirection.

Personally, I don’t need a second ice planet revealed in the Star Wars universe. Hoth is familiar to me and to our friends from a galaxy far, far away – it makes perfect sense that they’d return there. After all, part of the story is rumored to involve a search for Luke, and any detective would start by visiting the places the subject is familiar with. Could a deserted wampa cave be a good place for a Jedi Knight to retire? We’ll find out sometime around Christmas 2015!

Do you think we’ll be seeing locations from the original trilogy in these sequels? Leave a reply and let us know.