- Oct 26, 2006
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The explanation I've heard for that one is that the "Kessel run" is a heavily-patrolled smuggling route with dangerous areas that pilots would often go around instead of through, such as Black hole clusters, and an asteroid cluster encased in a nebula arm. Solo took the extra risks and covered a shorter distance in moving from his point of origin to his destination.
This explanation is not considered canon, though.
It is now - they retconned it in the Solo movie so that's basically what happened (I only saw it once, but IIRC there was also a ravenous space squid or something that was on the shortest route).