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| "Incredulous question: Eliminate me? Surely you jest, master." |
It was if millions of fans cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
As the new films approached, Disney and Lucasfilm set out back in January to define what elements of the Star Wars expanded universe would remain canon going forward. The expanded universe is basically everything outside of the films: books, video games, comics, etc. If something fictional is "canon", it is
"the material accepted as 'official' in a fictional universe."
Or, as my brother put it in a recent discussion, canon "is how real the fake is."
Well, turns out almost nothing remains canon after the Order 66-scale purge. The only media that remain canon are the six main films, the
Clone Wars series, and
the upcoming Rebels series.
This was announced about a week ago, and since then, there has been an outpouring of emotion from Star Wars fans via social media. Anyone who has read expanded universe material has a favourite storyline, so the disappointment was palpable.
Some will be more impacted than others. True, none remain canon. But if you loved anything post-
Return of the Jedi, you can assume it will be incompatible with the new films.
Others, like my favourites, remain safely out of reach of the new films, even if deemed non-canon.
The entire
Knights of the Old Republic plotline (including the comics,
KOTOR II and
SWTOR) is so heavily insulated from the rest of the
Star Wars universe that its status as non-canon means almost nothing to me. I already sort of assumed it wasn't, but I also didn't care because of how amazing it was.
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| Xizor - a dangerous opponent. |
Another one of my favourites is
Shadows of the Empire. This takes place between
Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi, and deals with the Rebels' search for Han and Vader's search for Luke. In the middle of it all is Prince Xizor, the scheming head of intergalactic criminal organization Black Sun. Xizor's vendetta against Vader causes him to jump into the Skywalker sweepstakes with both feet, resulting in a power struggle for the Emperor's favour.
But is this really the end of the Star Wars expanded universe?
In a practical sense, maybe. Some EU books will continue to be published under the
Star Wars Legends
imprint. But many will likely only be available in digital form moving forward.
From another standpoint though, it's the beginning of a solid, unified canon that has the potential to remain consistent going forward.
The old stories will stay with us. Hell, you can pretend they're just an alternate timeline if you want, like
Star Wars: Infinities was.
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| Yeah... I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. |
And I'll add that a lot of the background information will likely remain mostly-valid. For example, Falleen is mentioned in
Clone Wars - maybe Xizor is still around. Lucasfilm and Disney have also stated that there will be references to some of the EU.
I'm not going to pretend that the purge doesn't make me a little disappointed, because it does. But what it lets Lucasfilm and Disney do could be an incredible opportunity to not only keep old fans, but continue to recruit new ones.
In essence, the expanded universe has been struck down. Let's hope that canon becomes more powerful than we can possibly imagine.
