Han Solo movie rumor hints at adding a female droid to its cast

It sounds like the latest addition to the Han Solo movie cast will play a female droid. Hollywood insider site The Tracking Board reports that Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was indicated for a role as a CGI character, will be a droid specifically. If it's true, it would be the first time that a female droid has played a significant role in a Star Wars movie.

Oh, you didn't know that Star Wars genders its droids? Yeah, not all of them, but many. C-3PO, R2-D2, and Rogue One's K-2SO all have 'masculine programming', while the most prominent example of a droid with 'feminine programming' would probably be TC-14. Don't tell me you've forgotten TC-14! She's the chrome-colored protocol droid who greets Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan at the start of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. On second thought, it's OK if you forgot TC-14.

Waller-Bridge recently proved her comedy chops on BBC and Amazon's Fleabag series, so it's likely that she'll continue the Star Wars tradition of comic relief droids. We'll see if she winds up strapped to a wookiee's back in multiple pieces like one of the other droids that made the mistake of hanging out with Han Solo.

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and starring Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, and Emilia Clarke, the as-yet-untitled Han Solo movie is scheduled to be released in 2018. 

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Images: Lucasfilm

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.