Before Lando Calrissian became the smooth Cloud City administrator we know from The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas had a much stranger idea for him.
After the first Star Wars became a huge success in 1977, Lucas began working on ideas for the sequel with screenwriter Leigh Brackett. He wanted to introduce someone from Han Solo’s past, a gambler, a con man, and a different kind of rogue from Han. At that early stage, the character was not the final Lando Calrissian yet. He was still being shaped.
One of Lucas’ early ideas was that this new character might not be a normal human. He could be a clone. Back then, the Clone Wars had only been mentioned briefly by Obi-Wan in A New Hope, so Lucas was still figuring out what the clones actually were and how they connected to the galaxy’s history.
Leigh Brackett’s first draft of The Empire Strikes Back took that idea even further. In that version, the character was called Lando Kadar, not Lando Calrissian. He was described as a clone from the Ashardi family, a surviving group connected to the old Clone Wars.
Leia’s suspicion of him also ties into that idea. After Han says Lando’s people were refugees from the Clone Wars, Leia immediately asks, “Is he a clone?” Han does not know, but Leia already feels something is wrong. She thinks Lando is lying, and she even suspects that Threepio may have been smashed on purpose.
Later, Lando confirms the truth himself. He tells Leia that he is a clone from the Ashardi family, explaining that his great-grandfather wanted many sons and created them from his own cells. His great-grandfather’s sister did the same thing with daughters.
Lando also talks about what it was like growing up around other clones. To him, seeing the same face repeated again and again did not feel strange. It made his people feel connected, like they belonged together. But after the Clone Wars, only a few of them were left. By the time Han and Leia meet him, Lando feels alone because the world he came from is mostly gone.
But that idea was eventually dropped. As the story changed, Lando Kadar became Lando Calrissian, the clone backstory disappeared, and the version played by Billy Dee Williams became the character fans know today. Years later, George Lucas finally explained the Clone Wars in the prequels, but by then the clone story had moved away from Lando and became tied to Jango Fett and the Republic’s clone army.
