Star Wars: Han & Lando Were Lovers Says Billy Dee Williams - But He's Joking...Right?
Queer representation in Hollywood — and especially at Disney — is still very much a work in progress. But there was a time when even the thought of a gay relationship in a major franchise like Star Wars would have been relegated to niche fan zines and the minds of viewers desperate to see themselves on camera. One could argue that we haven't made that much progress when it comes to the biggest family-friendly brands. Kirk-Spock is still just a fan ship, and that's unlikely to change.
But what about Han-Lando? If you're an aficionado of queer fan ship theories (it's a bigger field than you'd realize), you might already be familiar with this one. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) may not leave any explicit indication in the original Star Wars trilogy that they were once lovers, but there are kernels of hope for anyone looking. One is simply Lando's sexuality, which includes attraction to just about every kind of being in the galaxy. The other is a curious detail in "The Empire Strikes Back" — the fact that Lando can be seen wearing Han's clothes at the end of the film.
Billy Dee Williams addressed this during an appearance on the podcast "Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum." When asked by the show's host if he thinks Lando wearing Han's outfit is "weird," Williams responded, "No. They were lovers," as if this was common knowledge. Obviously, it's a joke ... or is it?
Is there any canonical backing for a Han and Lando ship?
Billy Dee Williams has spoken positively before about Lando representing a more feminine kind of masculinity. It's no surprise that he would stoke the rumors of a Han ship in jest, or that he followed up his podcast comments with a sultry read of Lando's iconic line, "Hello, what have we here?" presumably aimed at Han instead of Leia.
Canonically, apart from some strange wardrobe exchanges (they are eyebrow-raising, to be sure), there's sadly no real evidence of a relationship between Han and Lando. While Lando likely would have been down to clown, as evidenced by their flirtatiously combative relationship in "Solo: A Star Wars Story," Han's romantic arcs have only ever been straight. He's a himbo for sure, but unfortunately, Lucasfilm has refused to let him be a bear.
But the beauty of fan shipping is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Canon isn't the limit of how people engage with and enjoy a story, especially in a universe as enormous and diverse as Star Wars. The franchise has been pitifully puritanical in the realm of queer representation, even in the Disney era. The most fully developed gay relationship we've seen in mainline Star Wars is probably the messy rebel foxhole romance between Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu) in "Andor." At times, Disney's apparent hesitance to feature primary queer characters has arguably hindered Star Wars projects, especially the sequel trilogy.
Han and Lando aren't the only major queer Star Wars fan ship
There have been more concrete lore answers offered over the years for why Lando wears Han's clothes — him leaving Cloud City in a rush, something about Corellian military uniforms, but nothing as fun as a sneaky romantic rendezvous. "The Empire Strikes Back" also isn't the only Star Wars movie to have a queer-coded exchange of clothing.
In "The Force Awakens," Finn (John Boyega) takes Poe Dameron's (Oscar Isaac) jacket after the ace pilot seemingly perishes in a crash. Finn wears the jacket for the rest of the movie. When he tries to give it back, Poe — a clear Han Solo stand-in for the sequel trilogy — declines. "Keep it," he says, smiling. "It suits you." Disney allowed this scene to pass and somehow expected us not to spend the next five years writing Finnpoe fanfiction.
We may never know if there were any real conversations at Lucasfilm about putting the two characters together. All we know is that Finn gets a different female love interest in each movie, and Poe even gets one in "The Rise of Skywalker." The relationship between Finn and Poe, though, remained a hot topic for shippers online. Given how reactive a lot of the other storylines in the later sequels are, some have taken these arcs as a desperate plea from Lucasfilm to view the characters as straight. But as any good slashfiction writer will tell you, all bets are off once they start swapping clothes.
To read more about Star Wars, check out the untold truth of "The Empire Strikes Back."