How does everyone in Star Wars understand each other?
A new Saturday Night Live sketch created just ahead of Solo: A Star Wars Story (that was cut for time) this past weekend explores this exact question. Guest host Charles Barkley plays a member of a Rebellion troupe called The Mos Eisley Five, sent on a mission to retrieve a kidnapped pilot. It’s during the negotiation period that Barkley’s character demands to know how they can all understand each other’s alien language.
“It makes me feel kind of stupid,” Barkley says.
It’s a very important question, and one that I’ve thought about for quite some time. It’s well understood within the larger Star Wars community that most people can understand Galactic Basic, which seems to be the Star Wars equivalent to English. That doesn’t stop newcomers to the ongoing franchise from wondering how Han Solo and Rey can understand Chewbacca perfectly (but Finn can’t), or why Poe and BB-8 have seamless conversations.
Saturday Night Live is no stranger to producing fantastic Star Wars sketches — remember Adam Driver’s unbelievable Kylo Ren sketch from two years ago? But I feel like this sketch digs into one of the bigger questions many people have about the Star Wars universe.
Solo: A Star Wars Story will be released on May 25.