All eight Star Wars movies in the Skywalker saga are now available to watch on Disney+, but right now viewers are fixating on a single added second. When the original Star Wars was released in 1977, Han Solo shot Greedo, the green, starry-eyed bounty hunter, before Greedo could shoot him, establishing Han’s character as a bad boy who acts out of self-interest rather than a sense of honor. But when George Lucas rereleased his trilogy 20 years later to take advantage of updates in technology, he changed the timing of the scene so that Greedo shoots first and misses, making Han’s blaster shot an act of pure self-defense.
This did not go over well with fans, to say the least, and “Han shot first” became a battle cry used to object to Lucas’ endless tinkering with his movies over the years, including in the so-called Special Editions. In 2004, the scene was edited yet again, this time so that Greedo and Han shoot at more or less the same time. Now, in one of the strangest edits yet, the scene has been further changed for the 4K version so that just before the pair exchange fire, Greedo says something to Han without subtitles that is being transcribed by fans as “maclunkey.”
Here’s the new version of the scene:
And here’s every previous version, for comparison:
The Verge confirmed that the new change was made by George Lucas himself before Disney acquired the rights. But what does it mean? After scouring the Complete Wermo’s Guide to Huttese, I suspect it’s actually supposed to be ma klounkee, a phrase used in The Phantom Menace: Sebulba tells Anakin “Neek me chawa, wermo, mo killee ma klounkee,” which is translated in the subtitles as “Next time we race, boy, it will be the end of you.”
By that logic, “ma klounkee” would mean something like “I’ll end you.” Still, Twitter users have their own, admittedly more fun theories about the meaning:
