Lando Calrissian was a smuggler and eventual baron administrator of Cloud City on planet Bespin.
Biography[]
Background[]
Lando Calrissian spent a happily misspent youth as a smuggler and gambler, traveling the galaxy in his starship, the Millennium Falcon – which he lost to his friend Han Solo in a Sabacc game that may or may not have been fair. After his smuggling days Lando turned respectable, becoming administrator of Cloud City, a Tibanna gas installation in the atmosphere of the planet Bespin.
But Lando hadn’t gone entirely legitimate – Cloud City was a small operation whose backers preferred to avoid the attention of the Empire.
Encounters with the Lothal rebels[]
Lando found such a ship after playing a game of sabacc in Jhothal, a settlement on Lothal. He played the game in Old Jho's Pit Stop, competing against Tsoklo and Garazeb Orrelios, the latter of whom was a Lasat crew member aboard the Ghost, a ship operated by a band of rebels on Lothal. Orrelios believed he had the upper hand and bet his crew's astromech droid, C1-10P, but Lando beat his hand by using an Idiot's Array. The droid, nicknamed Chopper, therefore belonged to Lando, but he agreed to give the droid back and pay the rebels much-needed credits if they assisted him on an operation—which, unknown to them, was the acquisition of the puffer pig. The crew was reluctant to trust Lando, but they needed the credits and wanted Chopper returned to them, so they agreed; Lando spent much of the time using a divide and conquer strategy, trying to play the rebels against each other so he could accomplish his goals. During the trip to rendezvous with Azmorigan, Chopper gave Lando a tour of the ship, where he admired the artwork of Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian artist and member of the crew. Lando used this as part of his strategy, flattering Sabine's work in order to make himself look good.
Once the Ghost arrived at the rendezvous, the ship docked with Azmorigan's vessel, Merchant One. Lando and the crew's leaders, Hera Syndulla and Kanan Jarrus, boarded Merchant One, and Calrissian told them to follow his lead. Lando also hinted that the ship had escape pods—a coded message to Syndulla, whom he intended to hand over to Azmorigan as payment for the puffer pig, and he knew that she would need a way to escape the vessel. Despite Jarrus' protests, Syndulla played along once Calrissian offered her to the crime lord, and Azmorigan gave Calrissian the puffer pig, which was locked in a crate. Lando and Kanan returned to the Ghost, where Lando explained that he expected Syndulla to use an escape pod to leave Merchant One—which she did, returning to the Ghost and attracting the ire of the crime lord. Once Syndulla was aboard, the Ghost jumped back into hyperspace, leaving Azmorigan behind them.
Lando showed the crew the puffer pig and warned them not to let it out of its cage, as it would expand into a larger creature if it was startled. Orrelios and fellow crew member Ezra Bridger ended up letting it out, and the pig ran throughout the Ghost before being so startled that its size increased and it became stuck in one of the ship's hallways. This proved potentially problematic once the Ghost returned to Lothal, where they needed to slip through the Imperial blockade; Syndulla, the ship's pilot, was stuck on the other side of the pig, so Jarrus would need to pilot the vessel himself. Lando asked Chopper, who only responded to Lando's commands, to fix the mechanism that would allow the Ghost to mask its signature and slip past the blockade. Chopper was able to do so and the ship nearly made it through the blockade, but the pig expanded again, knocking Orrelios into the controls that allowed the ship's signature to remain masked. The Empire detected the Ghost as a rebel vessel and sent a group of TIE/LN starfighters in pursuit, which the Ghost was able to destroy.
The crew made their way to the farm that Lando purchased from Vizago, where Lando explained that his plan was to use the puffer pig for mining. They were confronted by Azmorigan, however, who had anticipated that Lando would return to the land. This led to a shootout between the rebels and Azmorigan's forces, one that ended when Azmorigan threatened to kill Orrelios if they did not hand Lando over to him. Syndulla refused, and Chopper—who stole a crate of fuel for the Ghost and returned to the ship—fired the cannons on the Ghost at Azmorigan, giving Orrelios a chance to gain an upper hand and hold Azmorigan at gunpoint. Syndulla demanded that the crime lord leave, a demand that he acquiesced to. With Azmorigan gone, Lando claimed that he did not have the credits that he owed the rebels, but he did return Chopper to them. Nonetheless, Syndulla held Lando in her debt, though what he did not reveal was that he knew Chopper had stolen the fuel, which was why he did not give them any credits. He did, however, believe that he would one day meet the rebels again.
Lando came into contact with the rebels again some time later. After the rebels destroyed the Sovereign, the personal Star Destroyer of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, the Imperials tightened security on Lothal. The rebels returned to Lothal after having been away from the planet, where they were pursued by numerous Imperial agents: including Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith. Vader ordered that no ship could leave Lothal, leading the rebels to contact Lando to ask for his assistance in smuggling them off-planet. He spoke to them via hologram, as he was not on Lothal, but nonetheless agreed to help them in exchange for three military-grade shield generators. With the deal having been made, Lando ordered his personal droid to assist the rebels with the masking transponders that would trick the Empire into pursuing false signals from their stolen Imperial shuttle. The rebels successfully escaped Lothal, and Ezra would go on to use Lando's name as an alias on various occasions, including dealings with Hondo Ohnaka and Gar Saxon.
Gallery[]
Appearances[]
Season One[]
- "Idiot's Array" (First appearance)
Season Two[]
- "The Siege of Lothal" (Appears as hologram)
- "Brothers of the Broken Horn" (Mentioned only)
Season Three[]
- "Imperial Super Commandos" (Mentioned only)
- "The Wynkahthu Job" (Mentioned only)
- "Trials of the Darksaber" (Picture only)
Books[]
Video Games[]
Trivia[]
- He is voiced by Billy Dee Williams, the actor who portrayed Lando in the original Star Wars films.