At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian wears Han Solo’s clothes on board the Millennium Falcon. After Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and taken by Boba Fett to Tatooine to claim a bounty from Jabba the Hutt, Lando and Chewie take the Millennium Falcon to search for him. As Lando and Chewie fly away from the Rebel medical frigate carrying Leia, Luke, R2-D2, and C-3PO, Lando Calrissian is shown wearing Han’s beige shirt and black vest, which is notably odd as he’d dressed far more flamboyantly on Cloud City.
One Star Wars fan seemed especially perplexed by Lando’s clothing choice: Seth MacFarlane. In Family Guy’s second Star Wars-themed episode – Family Guy season 8, episode 20, “Something, Something, Something, Dark Side” – Brian Griffin’s version of Chewbacca asks Lando why he’s wearing Han’s clothes and then breaks the fourth wall, looking directly at the camera while saying, “Seriously, watch the actual movie. Lando is wearing Han’s clothes in this scene. It’s really weird.” While it does indeed seem weird at first glance, the prevailing (and logical) theory was that Lando simply didn’t have time to grab a change of clothes as he fled Cloud City. However, the odd choice of clothes in the Empire Strikes Back scene with Lando has been addressed briefly by the actor.
In a Q&A session with Billy Dee Williams at the 2011 New Orleans Comic-Con, the host described why Lando wears Han’s clothes – and Billy Dee Williams agreed to several of the explanations.
Host: The real answer is costume designer John Mollo decided to put him in the same clothes as Harrison. Didn’t mean anything, they were actually sized differently. The fan answer – or the universe answer – is it’s actually part of the Corellian Corps group. If you look at Han Solo’s pants he’s got those red marks on them and stuff. It’s from the old army basically, so it’s the same uniforms.
Billy Dee Williams: Yeah, we’re all in the army… I was a general or something.
The “real” answer means that Lando was simply more conservatively dressed than usual; the style is indeed more befitting of Han’s rugged personality than the incredibly suave, cape-wearing Lando Calrissian. While the answer may clear up one question, it creates many more, like why Han Solo of all people is traveling around in an army uniform, why Lando would take the time to snag his own prior to departing Cloud City, why he’d wear it when he’s preparing to go undercover, and why he doesn’t wear it again in Return if the Jedi, where he’s actually a general. Given Billy Dee Williams specifically mentions being a general in his answer, it’s possible, though unlikely, that he misunderstood the question and was referring to Return of the Jedi.
Additionally, Lando once owned the Millennium Falcon and had a whole closet of stylish clothing on board – as shown in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Supposing Lando didn’t take his clothes from the Millennium Falcon after losing it to Han (and Han somehow hadn’t ditched all of them), Lando might have had some clothes remaining somewhere on the ship. Or, there’s always the possibility it was actually Han who was wearing Lando’s clothes this whole time after acquiring the Millennium Falcon. Considering drastic changes in Star Wars canon over the years and the lack of a clear in-universe answer, the odds are that Lando simply needed a change of clothes and Han’s were the most accessible in the moment.
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