Star Wars & The Expanded Universe

Though it’s not as mainstream as the movies, the Star Wars Expanded Universe is very popular, especially among fans. Starting after Return of The Jedi and continuing from thereon, the world has expanded as different authors produce different stories, which can be found in books, video games, television series, and more. The universe is so big that Disney probably felt the need to not make it canon for their movies—it would be very difficult to keep up with the continuity, and the one in the EU doesn’t always stay consistent due to all the different writers and stories.

So where do I stand on all of this? 

I have to admit: I have a complicated relationship with the EU. Sometime after finishing the Original and Prequel trilogy in 2005, my older brother introduced me to Wookiepedia, arguably one of the most reliable fan-based Star Wars internet encyclopedias (i.e. Star Wars’s version of Wikipedia), where I began to delve into EU material. A lot of the stuff I felt was inconsistent with the Star Wars movie timeline—and also contained continuity errors and doses of out-of-character (OOC) portrayals of some of my favorites. “Why would Luke turn to the dark side?” I questioned when I had learned of it. “Why wasn’t Mara Jade mentioned in the films if she was such an important figure to the Emperor?” So many “Why didn’t the character do this?” or that, and then some of the story lines themselves perplexed me. 

I particularly bagged on the 2008 Clone Wars series whenever it came out; while the 2002 one felt like it (and probably was intended to) follow the movie timeline up to Revenge of The Sith, this one did not. Instead, it felt like it had its separate storylines, with events that seemed enormous during the Clone Wars never being mentioned once in the movies. My biggest pet peeve, I remember, was the Ashoka Tano character. Why would Anakin be forced to take on a Padawan?” I thought, not liking the idea, “And why wouldn’t he mention her in Revenge of The Sith?” She seemed too important of a character not to—she was one of the protagonists, after all. 

But I got over that several years later—either last year or this year, unfortunately. Yes, yes, I know, it took me 5-6 years to get over it and mature, but to be fair, I was only 8 when I first started “hating” on the EU and 11 with the Clone Wars. Anyway…

My biggest problem with the EU is continuity. Everyone is supposed to be connected, and I tried to connect everything, but I ran into too many inconsistencies in the characters’ behaviors, new characters whom were important but never mentioned in the films, storminess that seemed to contradict one another…

But that’s really just the problem: it was trying to be canon. I didn’t know that there were SO many writers and that they had their own separate storylines—of COURE they’re going tone continuity errors and such! In fact, now that I think about it, they did a mighty good job trying to connect the stories together for so many stories!

I think it would have been better to just have alternate universes, which is why I’m glad Disney made the EU non-canon. Actually, I wish they would have used some of the awesome new characters introduced in the stories (I’ll get to that later), but I understand their decision: there is just too much EU material to cover to make sure that you’re not interfering with anything, and it was a hassle I’m sure they didn’t want to go through. Deeming it “non-canon” seems a little extreme, I can see, especially for fans who grew up with it (I’m pretty sure the Thrawn Trilogy started in the 80s after Return of the Jedi), but maybe they could have gone (and will, eventually) with the alternate universe route instead.

Actually, that brings me to another thing: the different cannons. G-canon (George Lucas’ canon) is “real” canon and counts the movies and any EU material George deemed happened, so that can be seen as the main universe. And then after that I think is the book canon, which makes sense since the EU books started after the films. After that I believe are the television series (though Disney considers Clone Wars and Rebels canon, despite my reservations), and the other things go into their own canon. Basically, as one person working on the Star Wars franchise did (it may have been George himself!), the different canons can be seen as alternate universes. This definitely avoids confusion

But enough of that: I like to get the negative stuff out, the “bad news” before the “good news”. Let me explain what I like about the EU.

Contradictory to what I said about some of the storylines, some of them were REALLY interesting and fit into the timeline pretty well. The Thrawn Trilogy, for example, intrigued me greatly. While I have still yet to read it, I really want to.

And my issues with Ashoka went deeper than her being Anakin’s apprentice; I didn’t care for the character herself. If it was just that she didn’t fit in canon, then I should have said the same thing about Mara Jade and Siri Tachi and Feris Oilon, but I didn’t. To me, the latter characters felt well-rounded, interesting, and unique; Ashoka did not. I felt like she was the atypical spunky teenage heroine, a female version of Anakin. She was bland to me, and still is to an extent (though I’ve learned to get rid of my unnecessary hate for her). It’s not that I don’t like Ashoka; it’s more that I don’t find her to be an interesting character, but I see her so much that I’d like to like her but can’t. 

Anyway, the EU has things I like in it and things I don’t, just like everything else. I don’t want to consistently argue about how it’s not canon, and now that I’ve gotten older, I’ve matured from that (thankfully). The EU has its place in the Star Wars universe, and, though it is really long and would probably take forever to cover all of the material, I really love how they expanded the Star Wars universe. I love the franchise so much; the only reason I was so critical of it is because of my deep love for Star Wars.