Star Wars fans torn over real reason Chewbacca didn't get a medal

Star Wars fans have discovered the actual, canon reason as to why Chewbacca wasn’t given a medal at the end of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope… and, surprisingly, it sort of makes sense.

If you like Star Wars, you already know the scene I’m referring to. Just before the credits roll at the end of Episode IV - A New Hope, Han and Luke are bestowed medals by Princess Leia for their role in blowing up the Death Star.

Chewbacca, on the other hand, isn’t bestowed anything. He simply turns to the camera and lets out a big growl. Assumedly, he’s saying something akin to “This is racist!” in Wookieespeak.

So, what’s the deal here, LucasFilm? Why do the two handsome, fleshy dudes get medals, but the "walking carpet" who was along for the whole ride gets left out?

Turns out, some over on the r/StarWars subreddit already asked this question, and there are actually a few pretty straightforward answers.

The first answer is less of a canon reason and more of an explanation of the mistake on behalf of the screenwriter.

“In Star Wars [Episode IV], Chewbacca is written as Han's pet,” writes user Three_Twenty-Three.

“Despite being a senator and princess trained in diplomacy, Leia would say things about him like "Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?" and "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookie." By the later films, they'd done some course correction and started treating Chewie better, but the first films are clumsily human-centric.”

Yeah, that checks out. It’s easy to forget, but George Lucas is the sole credited writer of Star Wars: Episode IV’s screenplay.

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, and is the only film in the original trilogy for which George Lucas doesn’t get a screenwriting credit. Huh, I wonder if there’s any correlation between that and Episode V being everyone’s favourite…

There is actually a canon, in-universe reason Chewbacca didn’t get a medal during the ceremony, though.

As user Zardhas points out in their comment, a comic book adaptation of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope dropped in 1977, the same year the film hit cinemas.

And, surprisingly, the very final page of issue #6 outright confirms that Chewbacca does get a medal for his role in blowing up the Death Star… it’s just that Leia wasn’t tall enough to actually put said medal on him during the ceremony.

I’m not making this up. I just tracked down the comic and read it for myself, and, yup, in the second-to-last panel, the narrator straight up states: "Chewbacca the Wookie, too, will have his own medal... but he will have to put it on himself. Few space princesses are that tall."

Huh. That’s certainly some kind of explanation, I guess.

But wait, you’re telling me Chewbacca couldn’t have just, I dunno, kneeled down? Nah, I’m going back to my racially motivated theory, because that’s some nonsense.