Anna Daniels
When you go into a project as big as Star Wars, you have to be prepared for a life of secrecy. But J.J. Abrams knew that whole drill, having helmed 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. So when he and co-writer Chris Terrio came into Star Wars Episode 9, they came prepared with a few cheeky codenames. Abrams and Terrio created Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker codenames for some of the secret characters whose mere presence would spoil the film.
In an interview with GQ Magazine, Terrio revealed the secret codenames he and Abrams had created to hide the presence of two characters in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While Emperor Palpatine would eventually be revealed in the trailers, there is at least one more character whose codename pretty successfully hid his appearance:
“The code for The Emperor was Trooper 13. Or if we were talking about Harrison [Ford] we would call him The Janitor. We felt that was a huge unresolved part of Kylo. The family sin. So closure was necessary for Ren to make peace with the memory with his father, so we called Harrison The Janitor because he allowed Ren to clean up, at least spiritually, some of the mess he’d made.”
The code name of The Janitor for Han Solo is kind of tongue-in-cheek considering Harrison Ford’s past career as a jack-of-all-trades while he was a struggling actor — he famously was working as a carpenter when he was cast by George Lucas for a role in American Graffiti. Movie fans like to spin the tale that he was working as a carpenter or janitor on the set of Star Wars when Lucas noticed him and cast him as Han Solo, but he was merely a stand-in for screen tests before getting offered the part. Still, that codename seems like a cheeky nod to Ford’s past career (maybe he was a janitor at some point) or at least to the urban legends around his casting in one of his most iconic roles.
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