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Harrison Ford spoiled Star Wars: the Force Awakens before it opened, and nobody noticed

Alex Abad-Santos
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.

This is an article about the spoilers concerning Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is your spoiler warning.

By now everyone in the United States has seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s raked in more than $1 billion in worldwide box office earnings and has been covered extensively. And if that’s not enough, it could very well become the biggest movie of all time in the US and Canada by the end of the weekend. And, for the most part, everyone’s been pretty considerate of the film’s gigantic spoiler — everyone except for one of the film’s stars.

Harrison Ford, during an appearance on late-night’s Conan last month (before the movie came out), basically gave away a key component of the movie. Host Conan O’Brien prods Ford about why he’s been so vocal about wanting Han Solo to die (there’s a long history), and there seems to be an intimation that this is the reason he came back for the new movie. In the clip, you can see the famously spoiler-averse director J.J. Abrams squirm.

(TBS)

“I thought that the best utility for the character would be to sacrifice himself to a high ideal,” Ford says.

For those who have seen the movie, Ford’s quotes seem like an obvious tell. But at the time, no one had seen the movie, and no one knew that Ford was essentially spoiling what was coming. Now, however, we know just how sneaky Ford was being.

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