In The Empire Strikes Back, why does Han significantly outrank Luke?
Luke blew up the freakin' Death Star and he only gets to be commander. Han wants to skip out on the whole rebellion thing and he gets to be a general.
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Keep in mind, Han was promoted for the mission on Endor, so he wasn’t a general during ESB. The rebellion kind of promoted people as needed (or just straight up willy-nilly, see Lando being given a rank of general or whatever.)
Also, like in rebels, they promoted a teenager to “lieutenant”…. Because he was a half-trained Jedi… (yeah that went well,)
Further, after Hoth Luke was off at dagoba doing Jedi training; and while not shown, there was probably some time there.
Also, banging one of the main leaders gets you faster promotions than being the sister of said leader.
Luke, after almost banging his sister: "Damn! This close to a promotion!"
Chewie, realizing he never got that kiss: "RAWRRlRLrlrlrlrlrRLrlrlrLRRLlrRl."
Poor guy
I agree, ChewbaccasClitoris
"You are in your sister... but we do not grant you the rank of general"
Also, Han had a ship and could lead a squadron/attack force, plus he had a ton of experience.
Shooting womprats in beggars canyon is experience!
Yeah. Training by the Carida naval academy, flushing out and lots and lots of smuggling experience…
Endor was post-Empire. He was a general on Hoth.
(this is the scene oblin99 is referring to, the morning after Han went out after Luke.) Han was a Captain at Hoth, and was outranked by Luke... who is a commander at the time.
also, the Emperor died on the 2nd death star, which is when most worlds finally shrugged off imperial occupation. (see the celebration montage of them toppling the statues and stuffs); this is generally when people say that the empire was gone, even if it took a while to, ah, tidy up.
The Empire continued to exist organizationally just much smaller, and not that nonsense sequels bullshit evil macguffin splinter group form. The Empire remnant was called on in the EU against the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. The EU that is still canon because it was canon before it wasn't.
The yuuzhan vong will never be canon for me.
The Yuuzhan Vong were canon for 19 books and then some, 1999 -2003, and overlapped the prequel releases and remained cannon through 2008 in the Legacy of the Force books. Right up until Disney bought out and fucked over authors, story lines, and a fleshed out and workable path for movies.
But its ok, nobody is perfect, you can overcome it some day.
Kind of a shitty tone to take over a crappy plot line.
I was replying in an overtly tongue-in-cheek manner as a response to your own shitty tone, and now you doubled down on the shitty tone? No fun allowed kids, we're done here, pack it up and head home.
Nah the mini rant tips your hand. You were not being tongue in cheek, you were being sincere.
It was a mini rant precipitated by a joke, now you're just trolling for the sake of it.
Nah you were genuinely wounded that I didn't revere the yuuzhan vong.
Lol ok sure
When Rogue Squadron is using the com links and looking for them after they camped out for the night, doesn’t Rogue 2 refer to both as Captain though?
Looks like we were both wrong. Luke is a Commander and Han is a Captain in Empire and this article basically answers my question, so should I delete the thread?
https://screenrant.com/why-han-outranks-luke-star-wars-original-trilogy
nah leave it was a fun read
Ok. Sounds good!
That is a good read but I'm going to muddy the waters a bit.
I'll start off with saying I understand this is fiction and doesn't necessarily directly fit into real life.
In the US military the ranks Captain, Commander, and General don't exist in the same rank structure. Captain and General exist in every structure except the Navy and Coast Guard which have Commander and Captain. In the former, Captain is an O3 and General could be an O7 through O10. In the latter a Commander is an O5 and and Captain is an O6.
So at the end of ANH Luke as either an O3 or O6 and in RotJ he had separated. Han in ANH was and O5 and later jumped structures and was an O7.
I think you've got that a bit turned around. I don't think Luke was ever referred to as a "Captain" so if indeed they're roughly mapping to US ranks, he would be the O5 (or possible O4 as Lt. Cmdr.s are often referred to as Commander for convenience) and then, as you say, separated or inactive in ROTJ.
If we assume Han had formal ranks and wasn't just being called Captain to acknowledge he was captain of the Falcon, he would have been the O6 in ESB and received probably some sort of brevet or field promotion to O7+ because of the importance the Alliance assigned to the ground operation on Endor. It's conceivable that he was in the "Army" track all along though and was the O3 in ESB, but I think either the honorific or Naval track is more likely.
Lando, if the scriptwriters put much thought into it, was either rolling with a title earned at Tanaab or was on a USAF track, which builds off its heritage as the Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces.
To muddy the waters even further, I will note that it's also tradition to refer to whoever is in charge of a ship or aircraft as captain, regardless of actual military rank (or even if they're just civilians). And as Han Solo will tell you with great emphasis, the Millennium Falcon is his ship, and he is her captain.
No.
"Captain Solo. Do you copy?" "Commander Skywalker. This is Rogue 2."
So, Han is a Captain and Luke is a Commander in ESB. Tho, I don't know why Han gets a promotion to General when he's just been frozen in carbonite between films.
The years you don't do any fuckups count double
This. It says a lot about the personnel available to the Alliance and the optics, namely the importance they placed on the ground mission, and the fact that they needed to set expectations for how Han would be treated by his new troops.
I think it is more that Han Solo became general after ESB, not that he became one for Endor.
Even though Solo is captured, he does cause Cloud City to flip to the rebels, giving Han an army and navy. At the time, generals were both military leads and the people who were able to mobilize a fighting force. Even if Lando is kept as a high ranking officer, that would be enough to make Solo a general.
ESB ends with Han encased in carbonate and loaded onto fett’s ship,
RotJ starts with the gang rescuing him. ESB, he was “Captain Solo”, he spent the intervening time frozen in a block of space-slag, so he had to have been given that promotion for that mission.