If the ceiling in the hoth base hadn't collapsed....

What would have happened next??

This question came to me totally out of the blue today, but it does make you wonder. Let's pretend the ceiling didn't collapse, allowing han, chewie, leia, and 3po to make it out of the base to her transport, what next? At that point, the base would have nearly, if not completely overrun by imperial troops. If han and chewie go back for the falcon they'll almost certainly be killed or captured, but they wouldn't give up the falcon easily. Leia would likely try to reason with them to just come on the transport with her to be safe and let the falcon go.

So what does anyone else think would have happened?

(I don't believe this question has ever been brought up before, but if it has please redirect me)

 

Han engineered the collapse...he set it all up ahead of time, so that he could transport Leia out himself...General Reeikan helped him out, he was Solo's wingman. He wanted to do something special for Leia on Valentines, and figured rescuing her from certain doom in the Falcon after a harrowing escape would earn him some brownie points...

 

Interesting Questions. I think Leia and 3p0 would leave safely while Han and Chewie would for sure be caught.

Han, Leia, and 3p0 just barely left when Vader entered the room. So if han had to take leia to her ship and maybe even say a few words "take care of yourself" "be safe" whatever, han wouldn't of made it back in time to escape.

But.......... naw nevermind this wouldn't happened, but I was gonna say if leia did escape i wonder if she would somehow end up with Luke on Dagabah? Maybe Leia tries to find out where luke is, and she crashes his Jedi training, and since leia would be there Yoda would let her in on her abilities?

Who knows. Maybe Yoda would tell Leia is strong in the force, but not tell her she's lukes brother yet. After all Yoda and Ben like keeping those secrets.

 

If Vader had caught Han, it would only hinder the plot based on the fact that Han and co. get caught sooner on Cloud City.

 

Depends if Han said a short goodbye to Leia or not. Leia would've made it out ok on the transports, but it would've been touch and go whether Han and Chewie made it back to the falcon in time. In the current version they run fast enough as is and only just make it.
But when the Imps arrive they enter and blast the rock and ice from the other end (transport side) where they were originally headed. We don't really know if the transport Leia was supposed to go on was intercepted. I think they just made it however.
The ceiling collapsing was a work of the force for sure.

 

Chewie didn't go to take Leia out of the control room, he was warming the Falcon up.

Anyway, if Han brought Leia to her transport and realized that he didn't have time to go back to the Falcon, he would have ordered Chewie to fly the ship without him and he would have changed ships later at the rendezvous point.

 

Ah that's true, I forgot chewie wasn't actually with them. That does raise new questions though, such as:

Did han have a way to contact chewie to tell him to take off? If not, how long would chewie would have waited, considering the whole life debt thing and all, would he have died waiting for han to return?

If chewie had flown off on his own, he likely would have been taken down by the imperials, as he had no copilot and wouldn't have known about the hyperdrive problem without c3po.

 

Han contacted Leia's transport, I don't see why wouldn't have contacted Chewie. Yet, it's true that maybe the Wookiee would have been in trouble if the hyperdrive failed while he was alone. And they didn't know about the hyperdrive failure through Threepio, but through bitter experience (Watch this!/Watch what?).

 

I believe one transport was captured by Zuckuss and 4LOM, but that was not the last one (Bright Hope, IIRC). Vader and Palps would be screwed if Han and Leia made it to the Rendezvous Point unscathed and Luke took all the time to train (and presumably kill his still unknown father?).

 

Vader would have chased the Falcon just as he did in Empier. To Vader, the Falcon=Luke, or his closest friends. That ship was priority over every other rebel ship. The Empire sent THREE Star Destroyers after it while the Rebels were scattering in every other direction.

Had Han got out on the transport, he would've still wanted to go back for Chewie. Leia might have insisted on going with him, and they'd have 3-PO along, so, they'd probably all end up being captured one way or the other, just sooner, and not on Cloud City.

Which brings up another interesting question: If They'd been captured before Cloud City, where would Lando be now?

 

Would Vader have known whether Leia was on the transport or not? I don't know if he could sense her in the Force or not. I think he was going after the Falcon because he believed that either Luke or someone close to Luke had to be on it.