Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - effectively nullifying the majority of Solo's canonical impact.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is presented as a vibrant, strong, and independently-minded character who, as the first mate on the Millennium Falcon, had a powerful connection with Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). She was also an outspoken advocate for the rights of droids, who have essentially been treated as enslaved people in the Star Wars Universe, making her beliefs and opinions analogous to the wider resistance to the Galactic Empire. During a heist of the Spice Mines of Kessel, it was L3 who provided the distraction for Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and Beckett (Woody Harrelson) to steal a shipment of unrefined Coaxium, leading an insurrection by the compound’s droids against their masters from the Pyke Syndicate.

Related: What Happened To Qi'ra After Solo: A Star Wars Story

However, in doing so, L3-37 was shot down and died in Lando’s arms aboard the Millennium Falcon. While this surprisingly tender moment showed Lando’s genuine affection for L3, it was immediately undercut by the forced removal of her consciousness and its placement within the Falcon’s computer system. To kill the movie’s most unabashed advocate for resistance was undoubtedly an odd choice, but using her consciousness without permission amounted to a bizarre decision that strips away L3-37's free will. The forced captivity of droids was something L3 had fought against, making the containment of her consciousness inside the Millenium Falcon's system a horrifying and out-of-character choice by Lando and company.

L3-37 from Solo: A Star Wars Story

This said, it should be ed that Han, Lando, and the others were doing what was necessary to ensure their survival. Without using L3-37’s navigation system, they would not have had any chance of surviving the infamous Star Wars Kessel Run because the unrefined Coaxium they had stolen would have exploded. However, there should be little doubt that effectively enslaving a being that so valued their freedom was appalling in an ethical sense, even though the novelization of Solo: A Star Wars Story tried to show Han and, particularly, Lando’s discomfort with the decision.

Unfortunately, this same Star Wars novelization also showed an even greater horror of their decision because L3 was actually aware of what was happening to her at the time. In a conversation between her consciousness and the Millennium Falcon after the ship had left Kessel and was trying to escape from the Death Star's Imperial ships, L3 made it clear she believed that pairing with the Falcon would make her a “slave inside a ship forever.” In response, the Falcon told L3 she could either with the ship or cause the deaths of everyone aboard, including her friend Lando, stating, “If you refuse, you die. He dies. The others on the ship, they all die. If you with us, we all can live. The choice is simple.

If the choice was indeed simple, it was because there was no choice at all for L3. Clearly, this merging with the Falcon would have been hugely unpleasant to her even if the Millennium Falcon had remained with Lando Calrissian. At the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story, however, Lando famously lost the Falcon to Han Solo in a game of Sabacc, meaning that L3-37 was effectively forced to go wherever Han subsequently chose. Just as she had predicted, this jovial Sabacc game made her a “slave inside a ship forever” who, as the original trilogy of Star Wars movies repeatedly showed, was usually the first to be blamed when anything went wrong. It’s not hard to assume that this made her continued existence an inescapable form of torture for the proudly independent droid, adding a far darker layer to the events of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

More: Last Jedi Gave Away Solo Movie's Big Millennium Falcon Twist