With just over a week left until Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story is released in theaters, it’s been revealed that Star Wars veteran Warwick Davis appears in the film. Usually known for portraying exotic aliens like Wicket the Ewok, Davis reprises a role this time around that he’s not touched since Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1999: Weazel, a stocky human who appears alongside Watto the Toydarian during the podrace scene.
Weazel’s a unique resident of the Star Wars galaxy in the sense that he has almost no story to speak of, not even in the non-canon Legends continuity. The character’s human simply because George Lucas decided during the production of The Phantom Menace that he wished to see Warwick Davis’ face onscreen.
Details on how he’ll factor into Solo are still scarce, but it’s certainly refreshing to see Lucasfilm decide to breathe new life into a lesser-known character this time around rather than simply elect to repurpose a more popular one like Grand Admiral Thrawn, who became canon again in the third season of the animated TV show Star Wars Rebels.
While Weazel never managed to leave Tatooine in Legends, it seems like he has a more more important role to play in Solo: A Star Wars Story. In Disney’s new canon, the little man is apparently in league with the Cloud Riders, a pirate gang led by the enigmatic Enfys Nest. As such, it’ll be exciting to see Weazel clash with Han and how the Riders choose to use his small size to their advantage.
A wielder of impressive-looking weapons almost as big as he is, Weazel is said to appear at a pivotal moment in the pic, too, and while no further details have been released beyond that, audiences can see exactly how one of Warwick Davis’ lesser-known characters comes into play when Solo: A Star Wars Story arrives in cinemas on May 25th, 2018.