"What a piece of junk!"
It's time for Millennium Falcon. Despite being a franchise that literally burst onto the screen with iconic spaceships in 1977, Star Wars finds itself without a proper live-action successor, or even compliment, to Han Solo's old YT-1300 freighter, and the sequel trilogy and spin-offs needs to change that.
This is in no way to knock the Falcon. She's the single Star Wars Legends material introduced a slew of vessels that, with an ittedly spotty track record, were still able to take hold with fans. There are some duds like the overpowered Suncrusher, but there's also The Outrider from Shadows of the Empire and the Ebon Hawk from Knights of the Old Republic.
Outside of live-action, making The Ghost and her crew a major fixture in canon, and The Ghost even made a brief cameo in Rogue One, but only eagle-eyed fans of the series would even know that.
Related: Luke Skywalker Returns to the Millennium Falcon in New Star Wars 8 Footage
The problem isn't that the Falcon is insufficient. It will always be a major part of Star Wars, and no fan could say they didn't feel a chill when they finally saw it fighting TIE fighters again for the first time in several decades when the first trailer for Solo might even spawn its own trilogy.
Lucasfilm has done a fantastic job of mixing things up with its newest offerings, but with fans always prepared to accuse Star Wars of recycling old stories or relying on nostalgia, the fact that the only named ship of note in the sequel trilogy is the same one introduced in A New Hope in 1977 isn't helping matters. It's not as if the talent necessary to design and name a memorable vessel is lacking, in fact, most of the best people for the job are already employed by Lucasfilm, it just requires a story that doesn't want to load all the characters aboard the Falcon again, an understandable temptation for any writer given the opportunity to set their story in this universe.
To be clear, this isn't a failing exclusively of the sequel trilogy or post-Disney Lucasfilm, either. Through 3 prequel movies and 5 (and a half) seasons of The Clone Wars, all of which happened under George Lucas, the franchise also failed to produce another iconic hero craft, not for lack of brilliant ship designs. The main characters in the prequels fly around in gorgeous, but nameless, chrome plated Nabooian ships, and in The Clone Wars, Anakin and Ahsoka have "Twilight," a ship that even some hardcore fans would have to look up on Wookieepedia to name or identify.
What makes the situation even odder is the fact that Millennium Falcon playsets and LEGO kits, a new ship design with an iconic name would be an instant must-have for fans.
Eventually, most of the original trilogy Star Wars fixtures will have to be phased out of future stories. Han Solo was killed off in The Force Awakens, and the rest of the original trilogy cast will need to be written out of the story somehow as well. The Falcon has always been old and in various states of extreme disrepair, but it only seems logical that it too will one day make its last flight - a moment that could arguably draw as many tears as the death of Han Solo - and before she fails her last hyperspace jump, she needs a worthy successor.
