Star Wars Rewrites History: Books, Comics No Longer Count

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By Chris Taylor2014-04-25 21:45:26 UTC

If you felt a great disturbance in the Force this Friday, that's because there are major changes afoot in the Star Wars universe.

Lucasfilm has announced that all of the books and comics that filled the empty space in the Skywalker story after Return of the Jedi in 1983, hundreds of titles collectively known as the Expanded Universe, will no longer play any part in official Star Wars canon — and they won't stand as precursors to the upcoming movies.

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"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," says the official announcement on Starwars.com.

What does that mean? Well, for one thing, the multimillion-selling trilogy by author Timothy Zahn — which started with the no. 1 New York Times bestseller Heir to the Empire in 1991 — no longer happened. Neither its much beloved Imperial villain Grand Admiral Thrawn, nor the popular former assassin Mara Jade, future wife to Luke Skywalker, officially existed in the Star Wars timeline.

Zahn's books, and hundreds of others, will be repackaged under the title "Star Wars Legends." They were always second-class citizens in Star Wars canon, occupying a separate tier below the movies and TV shows. But now they're not in canon at all.

That has to be something of a blow to Zahn, who pointed out to me late last year that the exact same amount of time has elapsed in the novels up until this point as in real life — roughly three decades. "They can go past the Expanded Universe stories and ignore them without destroying them," he said. "You don't destroy what was worth $4 billion" — the sale price of Lucasfilm to Disney.

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Indeed, part of what Disney CEO Bob Iger touted as the strength of Star Wars when it bought the franchise was the fact that it contains more than 17,000 characters. What he didn't say: the vast majority of those characters are in the Expanded Universe (known to the fans as the EU).

But Zahn has always made it clear that he serves at the pleasure of Lucasfilm, and he was quite happy to appear in this video bidding a fond farewell to the EU as we knew it:

As for the fans? Some are angry that the stories they spend hundreds of hard-earned dollars on over the years are now moot. But in general, there's a mood of Jedi-like acceptance. Not all of the EU (Zahn aside) was the best material ever written, after all — just pick up a copy of The Crystal Star or The Courtship of Princess Leia. (On second thoughts, don't.)

It's entirely possible that some of the favorite characters in the EU may yet make an appearance in the movies, probably in a different context. "Creators of new Star Wars entertainment have full access to the rich content of the Expanded Universe," says the official announcement obliquely.

At least one actor has to be pleased that the EU is no longer official: Peter Mayhew, the once and future Chewbacca. Everyone's favorite Wookiee was (spoiler alert) killed at the end of the 1999 novel Vector Prime. Given that Mayhew has cancelled a number of appearances due to "filming," it's almost certain we'll be seeing Chewie in Episode VII next year.

Meanwhile, Disney Publishing has wasted no time in announcing a slate of new books that will be part of official Star Wars canon, including a Luke Skywalker novel called Heir to the Jedi.

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Topics: Entertainment, Film, Star Wars