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Star Wars/Canon
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| Star Wars canon | |
|---|---|
| Type | Fictional continuity |
| Franchise | Star Wars |
| Overseen by | Lucasfilm Story Group |
| Established | 2014.04.25 |
| Replaced | Expanded Universe (now Legends) |
Star Wars canon is the official body of Star Wars stories that Lucasfilm treats as "really" happening within a single, connected universe. A story being canon means it counts as part of the shared history of the galaxy, and that other canon stories must respect what happens in it. Stories that are not canon may still be enjoyable, but they are treated as separate and do not bind the official continuity.
For most of the franchise's history, the line between "official" and "extra" Star Wars was fuzzy. That changed in 2014, when Lucasfilm reorganized everything into a clear new canon and moved the decades of older spin-off material into a separate category called Legends.
1 The old Expanded Universe✎
After the first film arrived in 1977, Star Wars quickly grew beyond the movies into novels, comics, video games, and more. This sprawling collection of tie-in stories became known as the Expanded Universe, or EU. For years, creator George Lucas generally treated only the films and the Clone Wars animated material as his true canon, while the Expanded Universe ran alongside it. Some official guides claimed the EU was fully part of the story, but in practice it was always understood that the films came first, and the films never had to follow what the books and games had established.
2 The 2014 reboot✎
In 2012, The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm, and new Star Wars films were soon planned. To give the writers of those films freedom — without forcing them to obey thousands of pages of older novels and comics — Lucasfilm made a major decision.
On April 25, 2014, Lucasfilm announced that the Expanded Universe would be rebranded as "Star Wars Legends" and would no longer be considered official. In its place, a new, unified canon was established. At first this new canon included only the original six films and the Clone Wars series, plus everything released from that point onward. The new continuity began on screen with the series Star Wars Rebels and in print with the 2014 novel A New Dawn.
This was one of the biggest changes in the franchise's history, and it caused heated debate among fans, many of whom had grown up with the Expanded Universe stories now set aside.
3 What counts as canon✎
Under the new system, Star Wars canon is built as a single connected continuity in which every official story — films, television series, novels, comics, and games — is meant to fit together without contradiction. This is managed by a team at Lucasfilm called the Lucasfilm Story Group, which keeps track of details across all the different stories and helps make sure they stay consistent.
Generally, officially licensed Star Wars material released after the 2014 announcement is part of canon. A handful of small exceptions exist, and a few projects have continued to be released under the Legends label even after the reboot.
4 Legends as a resource✎
Even though the older Expanded Universe is no longer official, Lucasfilm has said it remains a "resource" that creators may borrow from. Because of this, many ideas, names, and characters from Legends have been pulled into the new canon. The planet-name "Coruscant," for example, was invented for a Legends novel before becoming a fixture of the films and the new continuity. In this way, parts of the old stories continue to live on inside the official galaxy.
5 Behind the scenes✎
The job of tracking Star Wars continuity was pioneered by Lucasfilm's Leland Chee, who built a database known as the "Holocron" to keep order among the franchise's countless characters and events. Before the 2014 reboot, this system sorted stories into several levels of importance, which together made up what is now called the Legends continuity. The modern Lucasfilm Story Group carries on this continuity-keeping role for the unified canon.
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