Star Wars Easter Eggs That Weren't Discovered Until Years Later

Since 1977, a galaxy far, far away has been gifting our universe with some of the most innovative sci-fi action we've ever seen — plus some other movies that aren't as memorable. All of these films are packed with details that even "Star Wars" fans, some of the most committed (or notorious) on our planet, took decades to find. They're still unearthing details that have lain hidden for years, like an old Jedi Knight in exile waiting for the next generation to track him down. Occasionally, they get confirmation that their hunches were correct, but sometimes, they're just left to guess.

The elaborate world and history that make up the "Star Wars" franchise — plus its aforementioned dedicated fans — make it ripe for Easter eggs. There are even "Star Wars" Easter eggs in other movies, and "Star Wars" Easter eggs in the MCU (thanks to Disney owning both universes). In ten years, we could still be talking about Easter eggs none of us have yet spotted in the most recent entries in the franchise. For the moment, though, here are two "Star Wars" Easter eggs years in the making. Did you notice them?

In "The Empire Strikes Back," C-3PO tells Han Solo (Harrison Ford) that he's having trouble communicating with the mainframe of the Millennium Falcon, because it has "the most peculiar dialect." When the movie came out in 1980, this seemed like a throwaway line designed to undermine C-3PO's occasionally oversized faith in his own translation abilities (C-3PO's entire backstory is full of brags to this effect).

But the true story behind that comment was revealed nearly four decades later, thanks to "Solo: A Star Wars Story," the prequel charting Han's early adventures in smuggling and resistance (in which he's played by Alden Ehrenreich). We also met the younger version of his long-time frenemy Lando (Donald Glover), and Lando's droid navigator, the acerbic L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Unlike most droids, L3-37 is self-made, literally: She pulled herself together from components of different droids. She's more sentient and opinionated than most droids, including C-3PO and R2-D2 (originally played by Kenny Baker). Ultimately, L3-37 dies in battle, after freeing droids being used as slave mining labor on Kessel. Lando and Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) upload her consciousness into the Millennium Falcon, and she helps the gang navigate safe passage away from the planet.

Back to "Empire." When C-3PO plugs into the Falcon, he's talking to L3-37. Because she's made up of so many droids, it would make sense that she speaks in a unique dialect that even language scholar C-3PO doesn't understand. "Solo" screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Jonathan Kasdan confirmed this link in an interview for Slash Film. Jonathan explained that they wanted to make L3-37 "part of the [original] story we didn't realize was there ... [it] does actually enrich the other movies in a way that I'm excited about."

Once you know the entire "Star Wars" story, you understand that although Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) looks like a distant relative of the Gremlins, he's actually the most powerful big-eared green alien in the galaxy. 

You — and Luke (Mark Hamill) — could be forgiven for making this mistake based on Yoda's entry into the franchise in "The Empire Strikes Back." On their first encounter, Luke doesn't initially understand that Yoda is the Jedi Master he's looking for: he just sees a weird-looking, lunch-stealing erratic swamp creature. Luke is also put off by Yoda's humble hut, but that hut hints at Yoda's past.

In the 2004 book "Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy: The Ultimate Guide to the Incredible Locations of Episodes IV, V, and VI," there's a cutaway picture of Yoda's hut. Fans have pointed out that the walls look like metal coated in mud and vines, which led some to hypothesize that Yoda lives in the same ship he crashed.

When "The Empire Strikes Back" came out in 1980, it wasn't clear how Yoda ended up on Dagobah. It wasn't until a deleted scene in "Revenge of the Sith" (aka Episode III) that we saw Yoda landing on the planet, on the run from Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid) and the Empire.

Yoda's hut and the ship in that scene don't exactly match up, but we know Yoda is adapt at manipulating heavy pieces of metal, so it's certainly possible that he incorporated parts of the ship when building his hut. Picturing the once powerful Jedi Grandmaster salvaging parts of his escape craft to construct a hut in the swamp is a sad reminder of the true tragedy of his fate.