The Solo: A Star Wars Story trailer has finally dropped, and there’s a deeper reason why it may not be working for you.

Lucasfilm’s decision to make a young Han Solo movie may have been a no-brainer from a business perspective. I, however, am not convinced.

Sure, everyone loves Han Solo. In the economy of fandom, the answer to a popular thing is to provide more of that same thing. Why wouldn’t we all rejoice to see the layers of that legendary smuggler’s past pulled back to shine under a camera’s lights? Why wouldn’t we be delighted to expose and devour every scruffy, untold detail?

Isn’t that exactly what we want from stories in the first place?

Well… no.

The art of withholding is a delicate one in storytelling, especially in speculative fiction as immersive as the Star Wars galaxy. There is so much information that can be shared — from the name of the latest Imperial tech to that one alien’s tragic backstory — that it feels as though it ought to be shared. But this instinct is misguided at best, and at worst deeply destructive to the tenets of serial storytelling.

Related: First Solo:A Star Wars Story trailer debuts on Good Morning America (first posters too!)

In stories, what we don’t know is every bit as important as what we do know. Fully-fleshed out characters and intricately built worlds resonate because they present intricate, inviting, and intensely textured realities. But detail and understanding are just one part of this equation.

The other half is mystery.

I don’t mean this in the classic J.J. Abrams “Mystery Box” sense, in which narratives withhold critical details for the sake of preserving the sense of magic and secrecy. I mean that stories need mystery — and fans need story to have mystery — because life is lousy with mystery.

And what’s more integral to a scoundrel and smuggler than mystery? Forty years after the release of A New Hope, Han Solo’s first appearance in the cantina remains as delightfully enigmatic as it ever was, precisely because his history is still unexposed territory. His boasts about the Kessel Run could be pure fabrication, his cocksure attitude unvarnished bluster. We just don’t know, and most fans — whether they know it or not — like it that way.

Star Wars fandom has followed Han Solo to the end of his life, but he still appeals as an unknown quantity. Not knowing what came before Mos Eisley infuses everything that comes after with tantalizing unpredictability; because of his unexplored origins, Han had the ability to surprise us to the very end.

And when a character as beloved and bedeviling as Han Solo has a life half-shrouded in secrecy, the rest of his journey becomes exponentially more powerful. It is partly because we know so little about Han’s beginnings that hints to his history are so exciting, and why fans have cherished the character who grows from galactic zero to reluctant hero of the Rebellion. The shadows of mystery sharpen the colors of Han Solo, and of the story around him.

In May, that mystery will evaporate as Solo: A Star Wars Story conquers movie screens around the world. The Kessel Run, a Wookiee rescue, the purloining of the Millennium Falcon — it will all be codified, canonized, and neatly removed from the fan imagination.

It is exciting and hollow all at once. It is, and I recognize the danger of using this word in the context of Star Wars, disappointingly unrealistic.

The known spaces of our lives are riddled with unfilled gaps and unanswered questions. These blank spaces exist not because the answers aren’t important, but because the answers are not part of our stories. When was the last time you learned about your barista’s first love? Do you know the name of every person in your grandparents’ wedding album? Where did your favorite teacher go to school?

Life is riddled with riddles like this. Good stories are too — and in good stories, these blank spaces serve an active purpose: They not only mimic life, but they allow fans to mimic art. Preserving mysteries in fiction allows fans to become secondary storytellers within the existing tale.

This can manifest in obvious ways, through fanfiction, fan art, and all other kinds of transformative work. But blank space in stories also have subtler effects. It gives fans room to imagine and invent, to theorize and construct their own realities within an otherwise rigidly-canonized story. When the geography of narrative is mapped only within its own borders, the untamed wilderness beyond (histories, backstories, details, unseen connections, the list is endless) becomes a space for fans alone to explore and plant with their stories.

But when a property tries to shine light on every conceivable story, leaving nothing to mystery or imagination, we get something like the feeling generated by Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Fans of Harry Potter know this flavor of oversharing well. Look no further than the backlash to J.K. Rowling’s ever-flowing font of information about the Wizarding World and its many, many denizens. Pottermore and its revelations were exciting in theory, but too much canon quickly exposed an uncomfortable reality. Rowling’s official backstories and explanations don’t open more doors to fan creativity, they close them. It’s beginning to look like this may be the case for the Fantastic Beasts franchise as well.

To her credit, Rowling has stood firm against the oft-expressed fan desire for her to tell the official story of the Marauders. She has intimated that the idea “doesn’t excite” her, but whatever the reason, her instincts are correct. Canonizing that fertile story ground, no matter how terrific the tale, would be a real loss for the fan community, and their experiences of the stories beyond the borders of Potter.

Star Wars was probably destined to overstep its bounds like this. It is a galaxy bursting at the seams with canon, a property where details are itemized and sold in books, comics, video games, and endless other media beyond the big screen. For many Star Wars fans, that proliferation of fact is part of the appeal.

And so instead of restraint, we’ll get swagger. Instead of subtlety, we’ll get Solo.

But it seems a shame that the minds behind the galaxy far, far away couldn’t hold back in this case. Respecting Han Solo’s mysterious origins, allowing his life before Mos Eisley to be whatever fans imagined it to be, would gone beyond preserving the spirit of an iconic character. It would have reenforced a lesson that modern storytelling desperately needs to learn.

Sometimes the most powerful story is the one that remains untold.