In the year 10 BBY, during the early years of the Galactic Empire's rule, the notorious Tobias Beckett, a criminal, and his group of outlaws embarked on a Vandor heist. Their objective was to steal coaxium from an Imperial conveyex on the planet Vandor. This mission was undertaken for Dryden Vos, the head of the Crimson Dawn crime organization. The criminals encountered a small detachment of range troopers guarding the transport, which forced them to jettison several of the conveyex's cars to escape them. Later, Enfys Nest and her Cloud-Riders ambushed Beckett's crew, aiming to seize the valuable cargo for their own purposes.
Tobias Beckett was a seasoned smuggler and gunslinger hailing from Glee Anselm. By the time of the Imperial Era, Beckett had assembled a crew that included Rio Durant, an Ardennian pilot, and Val, a skilled saboteur and human woman. While Beckett and his team were in the process of stealing an Imperial AT hauler on Mimban, they also recruited Han Solo, an Imperial deserter, and Chewbacca, a Wookiee.
Driven by the need to settle his debts with Dryden Vos, the crime lord of Crimson Dawn, Beckett sought his associates' assistance in a daring heist. Their target was refined coaxium aboard an Imperial 20-T Railcrawler conveyex transport on the snowy, mountainous Mid Rim planet of Vandor. Vandor was chosen because it housed a secluded Imperial vault. Solo and Chewbacca agreed to participate in exchange for a share of the profits, which they intended to use to acquire a starship.
Beckett's strategy involved Rio dropping him, Solo, and Chewbacca onto the wagon carrying the coaxium. Rio would disrupt Imperial communications, while Val would detonate a nearby bridge, enabling their escape with the coaxium in an AT hauler. Unbeknownst to Beckett and his gang, Enfys Nest and her Cloud-Riders also sought to steal the coaxium to fund their resistance against the Empire and the Five Crime Syndicates.
As Val positioned herself on a bridge overlooking the tracks, Rio piloted the AT-hauler to drop Beckett, Solo, and Chewbacca onto the Imperial conveyex transport. Their arrival attracted the attention of Captain Denwade Banevans and his squad of Imperial range troopers, leading to a fierce firefight. Amidst the chaos of gunfire and treacherous terrain, Solo and Chewbacca successfully detached the coaxium wagon from the rear section of the conveyex, where the range troopers were stationed.
Rio, circling above in the AT hauler, lowered cables to secure the coaxium wagon. However, before they could complete their heist, Enfys Nest and her Cloud-Riders, riding swoop bikes, launched an attack on Beckett's gang. During the ensuing battle, Beckett's crew managed to down several of the Cloud-Riders' swoops. Tragically, Rio sustained fatal injuries while defending his AT-hauler from boarders.
While Chewbacca worked to detach the coaxium wagon from the front section of the conveyex transport, Solo returned to the AT-hauler to take the place of the dying Rio. Meanwhile, Val engaged several Imperial 11-3K viper probe droids that had been deployed to the scene. Realizing she couldn't abandon her post without jeopardizing her comrades' heist, Val detonated the bridge, sacrificing herself in the resulting explosion.
The bridge's destruction also damaged the rail line, exposing the Conveyex transport to a deep gorge. While Beckett engaged in a fight with Enfys Nest, Chewbacca successfully detached the coaxium wagon from the Conveyex transport's front section before it plunged into the gorge and exploded. Although the AT-hauler still held onto the coaxium wagon, the Cloud-riders attached grappling hooks to it.
Given the volatile nature of the coaxium, Solo didn't want to endanger Chewbacca and Beckett. He persuaded Chewbacca to evacuate with an unwilling Beckett before releasing the cable. The coaxium wagon and several attached Cloud-Rider swoops plummeted into a deep gorge and caused an explosion that split the Luftgriff Peak in half.
The failed Vandor heist put Beckett in a precarious situation with Dryden Vos and the Crimson Dawn. Grieving the deaths of Val and Rio, Beckett took his anger out on Solo, blaming him for preventing him from settling his debts with Vos. Seeking to rectify the situation, Solo and Chewbacca offered to assist Beckett in exchange for their share of the promised payment.
Beckett, Solo, and Chewbacca met with Vos aboard his yacht First Light, which was visiting Vandor. While Vos expressed displeasure with Beckett's failure, Solo and Qi'ra, Beckett's lieutenant and Solo's old friend from Corellia, convinced Vos to allow them to steal unrefined coaxium from the Pyke Syndicate, who operated a spice mine on the Outer Rim world of Kessel. Vos agreed to their plan, ensuring Crimson Dawn's plausible deniability.
After enlisting the services of Lando Calrissian and his ship, the Millennium Falcon, Beckett's crew and Qi'ra successfully stole the coaxium with the assistance of Lando's droid L3-37, whose actions sparked a revolt among slaves and droids. After completing the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, Solo piloted the Falcon to Savareen, where the coaxium was refined.
Enfys Nest convinced Solo and his team to withhold the coaxium from Dryden Vos, intending to use it to fund their insurgency against the Empire and crime syndicates. Collaborating with the Cloud-Riders, Qi'ra and Solo successfully defeated the Crimson Dawn, killing both Vos and Beckett, who had betrayed them. After delivering the refined coaxium to the Cloud-Riders, Solo and Chewbacca parted ways with Qi'ra.
The Vandor Heist was a key sequence in the 2018 Star Wars Anthology film Solo: A Star Wars Story. The sequence was present in every version of the film's script, though it underwent several modifications.
According to writer Jon Kasdan, earlier versions of the script depicted Enfys Nest's Cloud-Riders pirate gang attacking the conveyex using Bantha-II cargo skiffs, but former directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ultimately chose to replace them with swoop bikes. Initial versions of the scene, however, featured an extremely dangerous criminal being transported to a maximum-security prison, instead of coaxium as cargo, and Beckett's gang being hired by the criminal's gang to release their leader. The plan was for the criminal and his gang to depart silently after being rescued, and then reappear in a potential Solo sequel to rescue Han Solo at a critical moment.
In the DVD commentary for Solo, the filmmakers revealed that they used underwater firecrackers filmed with high-speed cameras and slowed down in post-production to create the conveyex explosion at the end of the heist. The original script had Val surviving the explosion that kills her in the finished film by falling out afterwards. However, the crew decided to kill Val off instead of building the large set-piece necessary for the scene when it came time to film it, much to the dismay of Val's actress, Thandiwe Newton, and Jon Kasdan, who felt that Val's death felt like a cheat in retrospect.