Star Wars character’s death gets HEARTBREAKING new twist – it’s even darker than it looked

The new novelisation of Solo: A Star Wars Story, penned by Mur Lafferty, digs deeper into the unfortunate demise of droid L3-37, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

The character lit up the screen thanks to a sharp sense of humour and great chemistry with Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian, but her passion for activism ultimately led to her losing her head.

In the end, she lived on by having her ‘brain’ uploaded to the Millennium Falcon, but it seems that was less of an uplifting send-off and more of an extra moment of torture.

In the novel, as reported by Digital Spy, L3 is seen struggling to adapt to life as a “slave inside a ship”; reeling at the prospect of no longer having a body.

An extract sees her sparring with the Falcon itself, adding: “She looked around impatiently, ready to tell Lando what she thought of the current situation. But she had no head.

“She had cams now, with the ability to look into every room.

“Audio sensors let her hear everything from the Wookiee’s stressed breathing to the drops of sweat dripping from Lando’s pain-racked face. Outside the ship swarmed one last TIE fighter.”

The Falcon tells her that if she refuses to accept her new role, “you die. He [Lando] dies. The others on the ship, they all die.

“If you join with us, we can all live.”

Solo: A Star Wars Story was received fairly well by fans and critics upon its release earlier this year, but struggled to match the same box office heights as the main saga entries.

Now, attention turns back to the Skywalker saga with the production of Episode 9 having kicked off at the start of the month.

Among the returning stars are Daisy Ridley, Kelly Marie Tran, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac and Mark Hamill.

Carrie Fisher’s Leia will also be seen courtesy of unused footage from 2015’s The Force Awakens and 2017’s The Last Jedi.

Tran, who was racially harassed so much on Instagram that she quit the site, posted an essay this week detailing her experiences with the uglier corner of the Star Wars fanbase.

She said that trolls’ comments “awakened something deep inside me – a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at nine, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me.”

She added: “I want to live in a world where children of colour don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white.

“I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence.

“I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socio-economic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings.”

Richard E Grant, Naomi Ackie and Kerri Russell are joining the line-up for the first time.

Star Wars 9 is out in late 2019.