Han's pirate vessel, a TDF104 class ship of unknown name, once belonged to Captain Oxus, a spice smuggler and pirate. After accumulating significant debt to Oxus due to a failed spice operation, Han commandeered the ship to transport Luke Skywalker, Artoo, and Threepio to Ogana Major. With assistance from his associates, Montross Holdaack and Chewbacca, he simulated a reactor malfunction, prompting the crew loyal to Oxus to abandon ship while it was docked at Docking Bay 23 in Mos Eisley.
The vessel incorporated concealed compartments. The full scope of deviations from the standard model remains unclear, although it was a customized build.
Upon examining the captured ship at Alderaan, a Sith Knight dismissed it as "drift junk." Holdaack also voiced concerns that initiating hyper-skip could lead to its disintegration.
When Han experienced a change of heart and joined the Battle of Yavin, the pirate ship sustained critical damage when Darth Vader's starfighter collided with it in a kamikaze attack. The crew escaped via a life pod, and the ship was subsequently destroyed along with the Death Star.
During the drafting stages and initial visual development of Episode IV, the ship was simply referred to as the "Pirate ship," before it was later named the Millennium Falcon.
The ship served as the conceptual precursor to the Tantive IV, as Han's ship's design was altered to the now-iconic disc shape because it bore too close a resemblance to a ship featured in Space: 1999.