The (Mouse) Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars Expanded Universe No Longer Canon

I know I’ve recounted this story before for people who are far too young to have seen Star Wars in its original theatrical release, but there’s some news today that makes it bear repeating: there was a time, not too long after Return of The Jedi left theaters, when Star Wars didn’t mean shit.

I know, it’s hard to believe, but by around 1989 or 1990, nobody was thinking about Star Wars. After Jedi came and went in 1983, we had moved on. There had been two Indiana Jones movies, Ghostbusters had come out, people who had been scared by Darth Vader as little kids were cackling at Freddy Krueger flicks, and Batman was ushering in the first real age of comic book movies. Star Wars was over. Nobody cared. Hell, even Marvel Comics had stopped publishing Star Wars comics in 1986, and that was the title that kept the company afloat in the late 70s.

Sure, we still loved Star Wars, but by then we had moved on. George Lucas wasn’t talking about making any more movies – sometime around the release of The Empire Strikes Back he was making bold claims about producing a nine-movie epic – and by 1986, he was busier executive producing Howard The Duck, possibly from behind a giant mound of cocaine (Editor’s Note: There is no evidence or allegation whatsoever that George Lucas was using cocaine during this period. Other than the fact that he was in the movie business, and it was the 1980s. Which, as someone who lived through that period, is pretty damning evidence all by itself. But I digress.)

But then, all of a sudden in 1991, there was Timothy Zahn’s Heir to The Empire. A novel set after Return of The Jedi featuring Luke, Han and Leia. And a story that, in those pre-Internet days, was strongly rumored to be the actual stores that Lucas planned to tell in the final three movies.

And once that novel hit, Star Wars interest exploded all over again. There were two sequels to Heir to The Empire. There was the Dark Horse comics sequel to that sequel called Dark Empire. And a metric shit-ton of other novels and comics, which piqued interest enough to get the Star Wars special editions released in theaters (including that victory fireworks display on Coruscant – a city introduced in Zahn’s novels!), and then the prequels, and then years of fandom rage, and now the new Episode VII being directed by J. J. Abrams…

…but without that first novel that really established the Star Wars Expanded Universe and kickstarted a new wave of interest in Star Wars? It’s the 70s and 80s version of The Matrix: One great movie, a couple of sorta okay ones, and ultimately a thing we liked when we were younger, until we moved on to bigger and better things, so we don’t really even think about it anymore.

So Star Wars owes a lot to its Expanded Universe. Which you would think would be recognized by J. J. Abrams, who, when he rebooted Star Trek, went to great story lengths to find a way to reboot the property without invalidating all the other stories that came before.

Yeah, but you’d be wrong. Because as of today, all of those stories? Not even remotely canon anymore.

From Star Wars dot com:

In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. While the universe that readers knew is changing, it is not being discarded. Creators of new Star Wars entertainment have full access to the rich content of the Expanded Universe. For example, elements of the EU are included in Star Wars Rebels. The Inquisitor, the Imperial Security Bureau, and Sienar Fleet Systems are story elements in the new animated series, and all these ideas find their origins in roleplaying game material published in the 1980s.

Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.

Look, I poked a little fun at J. J. Abrams a minute ago, but the more I think about it, the more I think that there really isn’t any alternative here. For anyone. Because unlike Star Trek, which was a reboot, Star Wars Episode VII: The Quest For Mouse Gold (Working Title Only) is a continuation. Which means that there isn’t any magic, time travel / alternate timeline bullet anyone could easily pull out of their asses to tell new stories while still claiming that the old Expanded Universe ones still actually happened somewhere.

And this presents a clear, immediate and difficult problem for Abrams and Disney. Because if they intended to maintain that the Expanded Universe stories were still canon? Well, a lot of the stories about what happened to Luke, Leia and Han after Jedi have already been told. Which means that Abrams would just be either transcribing other peoples’ stories, or trying to find some fresh meat on a carcass that has been picked over in books, comic books and video games. Which might be fun for some fan film director to fuck around with, but which is probably less so for an A-Lister like Abrams, who took enough shit trying to find a way to dick around with Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness.

And sure, Abrams and Disney could have decided to just stick with the old company line that no one is “beholden” to the Expanded Universe and just try to tell an original story, but let’s be honest: George Lucas shit in the “not beholden” nest the minute he showed Roman Candles going off over Coruscant. Because in one fell swoop, he made it implicit that the Expanded Universe is a part of canon, which means the second Abrams tried to tell a story that didn’t reference the great battle with Grand Admiral Thrawn and Joruus C’baoth, half the fan community would be screaming for Abrams’s head on a stick for ignoring canon.

So really, this move is the only one that makes any sense. A clean break while still providing the stories for those who love them… which is the way that it should be. I’m not gonna bullshit you: I tuned out of a lot of the Expanded Universe sometime after Dark Horse’s Dark Empire, because at the time I was a broke college student, and it was right after that series that the Expanded Universe exploded into novels and comics that I just could afford.

And while I will always have a soft spot for Zahn’s novels – I have first edition copies of Dark Force Rising and The Last Command that I bought upon release because, broke or not, I couldn’t wait for paperback editions to find out what happened – that soft spot is because of what they meant to me in the early 1990s. And what they meant was that we were getting good new Star Wars stories, in a time when we weren’t getting any good, new Star Wars movies. But it is 2014, and we are getting a new Star Wars movie, reportedly with Han, Leia and Luke, at the end of next year, that will be directed by someone other than George Lucas.

So, in my opinion, the bottom line is: we don’t need the Expanded Universe anymore. We’re getting a new, shinier one. But if you love those stories, the way I particularly love the Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire? Well, it’s like the man said: they’re still right there on the shelf.

But if you can’t help but having a bit of nostalgia, well, here’s a video of a few of the contributors to the Expanded Universe talking about what it meant to them.