Unpopular onpinion: Lando is just a Han clone and offers nothing to the story.
Lando is a really fun and cool character in Solo and Empire, but once he turns good he’s boring. In ROTJ, they didn’t know what to do with him. They had too many characters, put Han in the falcon or Lando on the ground and the story would of been exactly the same (except for “I love you”).
I was perfectly fine with them abandoning Lando in the sequels. His story is finished, and it’s not like his son is evil like Han. Him not appearing raises the stakes in the EU, when Lando almost died in the Battlefront II campaign I legit thought he might. But now we know he survives until that strange week 30 years later, when the entire galaxy is flipped upside down.
I think that opinion is spot on. That’s one of the biggest problems with ROTJ. Both Han and Lando’s character arcs are finished in Empire. They both just take up space in ROTJ.
They easily could have found interesting things character-wise for both of them to do in ROTJ, they just didn’t. For example, Lando being a part of the rebellion is just something taken for granted.
True. I should have been more specific. Their character arcs in Empire have a sort of completeness to them rather than a finality. Yes, they could have found interesting things for them to do in ROTJ, but didn’t. I think that was proven with Han Solo in TFA. Giving him father-son issues gave the audience a different (I think very interesting) look at Han.