Emilia Clarke “moved” by the return of her Star Wars character Qi’ra

Disney opted not to make a sequel to Solo: A Star Wars Story, but Emilia Clarke’s character Qi’ra is back in comic form, and Clarke is delighted.

Between her roles as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, Qi’ra in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and whoever she’s playing in Marvel’s upcoming Secret Invasion series, Emilia Clarke has a pretty impressive resume. Daenerys is already an icon and we don’t know who she’s playing in Secret Invasion yet, but her time as Qi’ra was cut short after Solo underperformed at the box office. In that movie, Qi’ra was set up as the morally malleable childhood friend of Han Solo. She established ties to the Crimson Dawn crime organization, and a sequel to Solo looked like it would focus on a war between them, the Hutt Cartel, and the Pyke Syndicate, but it was not to be.

But that wasn’t the last we saw of Qi’ra. She turned up recently in the Star Wars comic book “War of the Bounty Hunters #1,” which is set years after the end of Solo, between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It’s revealed that Qi’ra is still working with the Crimson Dawn, and is part of a plot to steal Han’s frozen-in-carbonite body from Boba Fett, who is taking it Jabba the Hutt to collect the bounty.

Clarke talked to ComicBook.com about her character still being part of the Star Wars mythos. “It means so much,” she said. “It means the absolute world. I know her backstory. I know her history. Maybe the movie didn’t get to go there, but that was such an honor and a privilege to be part of that universe as an actor. So then, to see the character actually be taken on to the origin of all of it — bringing it on home to the family in that way — cemented it in a way. I was not expecting to feel as moved as I was by that.”

Will there ever be enough momentum for Solo sequel to get a sequel? Time will tell.

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