WARNING: If you do not consider yourself a Star Wars fans, this writing probably looks like a gibberish nonsense to you. Leave before you wonder why there are weirdos like me.
A Long Time Ago… Not So Long Time Actually
Like many Star Wars long-time fanboys out there, I was worried when Disney took over Star Wars. Silence stood all over the galaxy until Disney made its first move following the acquisition – closing LucasArts as a separate entity. Memes and parody videos outraged everywhere to criticize the move. But most of the fanboy like me stay calm and believed in the force – thinking the move’s impact simply isolated to the financial stuff while leaving the lore alone.
The Dark Side Returned
Wrong. Before the release of Episode 7, Disney announced that it will consider everything besides episode 1 to 6 as a ‘legends’ – essentially eliminating them from the canon storyline. Now, this was the true outrage of everyone. People even went as far as declaring their oath to “consider the character XXX canon regardless of what Disney says”. Feel free to fill the XXX as any iconic characters you may know outside the movie. For me, it will be Tyber Zann. For others, it might be Starkiller (not the base!), Darth Raven, or Kyle Katarn.
Dark Side Temptation
But today, after Disney released two theatrical movies and countless other Star Wars ‘new canon media’, I feel that I was very wrong to join the outrage that opposes Disney’s moves. Disney actually saved Star Wars from the chaos that George Lucas left because he spams the license to basically everyone willing to pay lots of money. The canon world itself for years left in ambiguity in terms of continuity, for example
How Shaak Ti really dies?
In the deleted scene of episode 3, she is killed by General Grievous, and her fate outside the deleted scene is never explained. In STAR WARS: FORCE UNLEASHED, she appears to be living well hiding from the empire. Poor her, the new canon declared she was killed WHILE MEDITATING during order 66. At least the padawans fought back?
Just how many Jedi survived order 66?
People love Jedi. They want Jedi in every story. But the timeline where you can make a story about them is strictly limited. The gap between episode 1 to 3 essentially sees the clone wars which already occupied by the Disney Series, so many writers resorted to writing around Jedi off the world that survived order 66 – telling how they hide from the empire and (usually) ended up found by Darth Vader and getting pawned. With each license, George Lucas sells, however, this number has grown too high.
How the rebel found out about Death Star?
Prior to the newly established Rogue One, there were at least 6 canon explanations about how the rebels found out and stole the plan of the Death Star. Often they conflicted each other and LucasArts didn’t even bother saying a word about it.
And the list keeps going on… but let’s stop so this doesn’t turn into a bible.
The Light Side Strikes Back
When Disney stepped up, they cleaned up the mess – sending fans crying like Luke after finding out Vader is his dad. But they also do it for a good reason – because they want to start new without ambiguity problem, giving the new writers freedom to write the new canon together under the unified guidance of the newly-founded Lucasart Story Group, which has a noble task of preventing the same canon problems.
Sure, this doesn’t make up fully for the loss of our beloved legends characters, but we also got new interesting characters and stories inspired by the legends material. Rey and Ren both inspired by the legends character hailing as an offspring of the episode 6 protagonists – although for Rey the case is still unknown.
We also have Evaan Verlain, an Alderaan survivor who hailed as a rebel pilot and Leia’s best friend following her planet destruction. Recently Disney also confirmed that Verlain, in fact, was also present during the battle of Scariff-Yavin and survived. My point is, Disney is quick to restore the canon materials outside the cinematic releases by having lots of tie-in of characters across their media, and they are doing it better while also paying honor to the legends materials.
Of course, Disney’s takeover never hurt the majority, casual Star Wars watchers whose knowledge is strictly limited to theatrical releases, they probably also consider us the diehard fans simply because we probably give them more money through comic books and novel purchases to make sure we understand every single thing happening outside the main movies. Regardless, they do the single thing that has to be done since the day of continuity chaos happened. And we should thank them for it.
