I look forward to seeing what this *Hans Olo* gets up to in the future. He seems like an interesting character.
There I was worried that it might remind me too much of Firefly's train job episode...
Yeah, as we were walking out of the theater last night, my wife turned to me ans said, "That was one of the better episodes of Firefly I've ever seen."
Between us, that's not a knock on the movie - we like Firefly, so the comparison is a compliment. We liked the film.
The bit with Darth Maul was a bit like a Marvel post-credits scene, and judging from my compatriots, it has a problem with folks who don't know about the cartoon - their first thought was that this screwed up the timeline, as this makes Han perhaps 10 years older than Anakin, rather than ten years older than Luke, and how does that work with the presence of the Empire?Because, if you don't give a little more indication of his condition, the idea that someone screwed up continuity is easier to grasp than a character survived being literally cut in two.
From the trailers I went in worried about the comparison with Firefly (which I also like) but it didn't really jar at all. Similarly, you've hit the nail on the head of our initial confusion with Darth Maul (i.e. as he's dead from Episode I this must be before Episode I and so how is Han so young when he meets Luke??? He'd be as old (almost) as Ben!).
Well Firefly is very heavily influenced by Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon.
Star Wars got its start as "Wagon Train to the stars"
As to the Firefly references ... well, Firefly is a space Western; Star Wars got its start as "Wagon Train to the stars" so it all fits, and you can do a lot worse for a Star Wars movie than use Western genre tropes. Heck, I personally hope that both the future Kenobi film and the Boba Fett films borrow heavily from Westerns.