Solo: A Star Wars Story's Biggest Cameo Was 'Too Secret To Ever Name'

Contains major spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story features a Game of Thrones actress in its main roster, and apparently, the creatives took a page from the HBO series' secret-holding book in keeping an ultra-tight lid on the biggest cameo in the film. 

Solo screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan recently opened up to Variety about just how much effort he and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan put into concealing the appearance of Darth Maul (played by Ray Park, voiced by Samuel Witwer) in the pic's script, revealing that they didn't even write the character's name on the page. 

"It was never specifically named in the script. It just said, 'A character too secret to ever name,'" Jonathan Kasdan explained. " Everyone did a great job of keeping it secret, and Ray was such a delight."

He continued, discussing how Maul's post-The Phantom Menace survival and expanded narrative in the animated series Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars gave him the perfect opportunity to include him in Solo, as he fit into the story pretty flawlessly. "Maul had gone into this criminal underworld and this particular period in his life was left vague and gray in the canon," Kasdan stated. "That gave us an opening to say, 'Okay, can we use that character, and if so, does he fit really nicely into a world of scary people?'"

Kasdan also noted that the revelation of Maul in Solo was something he "was hoping to lay in very early," as the red-faced former Sith Lord doesn't show up until the final moments of the film, during which he speaks with the traitorous Qi'ra (Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke). "We were doing it very subtly. I wanted to build toward the idea that this crime syndicate that they were involved with was much bigger than this Dryden Vos character [played by Paul Bettany]. This scary guy wasn't even in charge and there was someone much scarier above him, so we were looking at who could be that guy," said Kasdan. 

Maul's sequence was one of the very last things shot in Solo — captured in January of this year, just five months before the film's launch — and the scene was meant to be filmed with minimal crew on a closed set. Things didn't exactly pan out as planned, however. As a Solo crew member recounted to Variety, "Everyone was told, 'Keep your mouth shut.' But ultimately word spread through the crew and every f***ing crew member ended up on stage. Everyone was geeked out. When Park walked onto the stage in regalia and the paint, everyone started clapping."

In an era where spoilers are totally unavoidable, it's a treat that Solo: A Star Wars Story included such a jaw-dropping moment that caught everyone by surprise — and it's all thanks to the Kasdans' super-secrecy.