Thandiwe Newton Knows Her Solo Character’s Death Was Bad

Solo isn’t probably the most well-respected of Star Wars films, however there’s one second that felt particularly egregious: the bizarre, complicated sacrifice of Val, performed by Thandiwe Newton.

In the movie, she’s a realistic legal and sharpshooter in Tobias Beckett’s crew who helps stage a heist to steal the coaxium off a Railcrawler. Her position was to detonate a bridge that may trigger the prepare to crash, minus a cargo automotive that Tobias and the remainder of the crew would hijack and fly away with. However, after interference from Enfys Nest and her Cloud Riders messes up their plan, Val inexplicably sacrifices her life within the hopes, principally, that her lover Tobias will wealthy.

Val doesn’t get a whole lot of display time in Solo, however what’s there contradicts her actions in her loss of life scene. In an interview with Inverse, Newton explains that the explanation the character died wasn’t as a result of it made sense to anyone, however purely due to logistics:

“I felt disappointed by Star Wars that my character was killed. And, actually, in the script, she wasn’t killed. It happened during filming. And it was much more just to do with the time we had to do the scenes … When we came to filming, as far as I was concerned and was aware, when it came to filming that scene, [Val’s escape] was too huge a set-piece to create, so they just had me blow up and I’m done.”

It was an ignominious finish for the character, significantly given Newton’s significance in Star Wars cinema:

“I remembered at the time thinking, ‘This is a big, big mistake’ — not because of me, not because I wanted to come back. You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie. Like, are you fucking joking?”

She’s completely proper. It was a foul name for Lucasfilm and Disney, and a foul search for the Star Wars franchise, too. It’s actually that straightforward.

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