Earlier today, director Ron Howard finally confirmed the title Solo: A Star Wars Story, while announcing that the Han Solo movie has wrapped production. Just before filming wrapped, the director took to social media to confirm two very surprising characters that will be brought into the Star Wars canon, Tag and Bink. Before this reveal, these characters were previously only featured in comics known as the Star Wars Legends series, (i.e. Expanded Universe), and weren't considered part of the Star Wars canon, until now.

Director Ron Howard sent out a photo featuring two Imperial officers with the hashtag #tagandbink, two humorous characters created by comic book writer Kevin Rubio for the 2001 comic Tag and Bink Are Dead, a parody of sorts on the classic Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, Tag and Bink inadvertently set in motion some of the major events in the Star Wars universe, as shown in the original two-part comic that debuted in 2001, and the 2006 two-issue follow-up, Star Wars: The Return of Tag and Bink Special Edition and Tag & Bink: Episode I - Revenge of the Clone Menace, which were all written by Kevin Rubio and drawn by Lucas Marangon.

In the first two issues, Tag and Bink were soldiers aboard the Tantive IV when it was captured by the Star Destroyer dubbed Devastator. After almost being captured, they disguise themselves as Stormtroopers and it seems that they are chosen to be the two TIE Fighter pilots that accompany Darth Vader in the iconic trench dogfight, where it's implied that Darth Vader wasn't almost killed because of the Millennium Falcon, but because of the inept piloting work of Tag and Bink. However, while those TIE Fighters were killed, it was revealed that those pilots weren't actually Tag and Bink, who were in the background when Vader selected his two pilots, allowing Tag and Bink to steal an Imperial landing craft and escape from the Death Star just before it explodes.

Throughout the comics, Tag and Bink end up meeting plenty of iconic Star Wars characters like Lando Calrissian, Boba Fett and even Emperor Palpatine, with the duo dressed as the Emperor's Royal Guards during a scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke Skywalker confronts the Emperor. After the second Death Star was destroyed, Tag and Bink were killed, but they became Force Ghosts, and the final comic, Tag & Bink: Episode I - Revenge of the Clone Menace, shows how they were previously Jedi in training, but they became stranded on Naboo, only to return when the Jedi order is wiped out, with Darth Vader sparing them but telling them to abandon their Jedi training, which they do.

After Ron Howard sent out that original photo, Kevin Rubio responded, thanking the filmmaker for making his beloved characters part of the Star Wars canon by putting them in this movie. While Ron Howard himself didn't respond, Solo: A Star Wars Movie co-writer Jon Kasdan did, telling the author that he loved his books and not only decided to put Tag and Bink in the movie, but also decided to play one of the characters, with assistant director Toby Hefferman playing the other. Take at the original photo from Ron Howard's Twitter, along with more tweets from Kevin Rubio and Jon Kasdan.