The Legendary Star Wars Expanded Universe Turns A New Page
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.
On the screen, the first new canon to appear will be Star Wars Rebels. In print, the first new books to come from this creative collaboration include novels from Del Rey Books. First to be announced, John Jackson Miller is writing a novel that precedes the events of Star Wars Rebels and offers insight into a key character’s backstory, with input directly from executive producers Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg, and Greg Weisman.
And this is just the beginning of a creatively aligned program of Star Wars storytelling created by the collaboration of incredibly talented people united by their love of that galaxy far, far away….
Read the full story at StarWars.com
It’s good to finally have hard confirmation that the films won’t follow the EU, even though we all (well, most of us) knew that to be the case.
Although we Hasbro collectors are overly familiar with the term “Legends,” I think it’s a great fit for the non-canon EU, indicating that they’re more like tall tales than real story-altering events that happened in the galaxy but are still important in their own right. That’s about as diplomatic as they can be here, I suppose. I’m glad some material will still be republished and still available for those who still want to check it out – Heir to the Empire is shown, but what else? This isn’t quite like creating alternate universes, but it’s close.
It seems like the EU storylines are now completed and that future books and comics will be based more around the films and shows, which is to be expected, but I wonder how much they’ll deviate from those timelines. I also still haven’t read Miller’s Kenobi, but I’m interested in his Rebels book if it has involvement from the show’s creators.