Star Wars Battlefront 2's second season of content, dubbed "The Han Solo Season" will begin next week on May 16, EA announced today. As the title suggests, Battlefront 2's next season of free content will be inspired by the galaxy's most beloved smuggler and will feature a new game mode and map, a custom arcade, and additional character skins.
The Han Solo Season arrives just ahead of the theatrical release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the standalone prequel film that explores the life of Han before we met him on that fateful afternoon in Chalmun's Cantina in A New Hope. Because the film will not be released by the time the season begins, the first batch of content will not feature anything inspired by the upcoming film. Instead, most of the content will be themed from Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi.
For starters, we're getting a new map: Jabba's Palace. This map will be playable in Blast, Hero Showdown, and Heroes vs. Villains. Also inspired by Return of the Jedi are two new character Appearances (available for Credits or Crystals): Lando Calrissian in his Skiff Guard disguise and Leia Organa donning her iconic bounty hunter Boushh's gear. Leia's outfit will actually be considered the first Legendary Appearance in the game as it will actually change her voice using the speech scrambler to speak Ubese.
The Han Solo Season will also introduce the new Hero Showdown mode, a new 2v2 round-based elimination mode. Before each match in this best-of-five series, you and your partner will be able to select a paring of heroes or villains. If you win the match, you can no longer use those heroes for the rest of the rest of the series; however, if you lose you can still pick them the next round.
And lastly, Battlefront 2 is getting a Starfighter Custom Arcade where you can go in and hone your skills with all of the game's ships by taking on enemy ships controlled by AI.
Keep in mind, this is just the first round of free content coming with The Han Solo Season. The next batch of content, which will be inspired by Solo: A Star Wars Story, will arrive in June. Stay tuned for more details.