George Lucas' Star Wars EU Rules: What Was Canon & What Wasn ...

The Star Wars Expanded Universe had an incredible amount of worldbuilding with several characters, locations, and storylines – but how exactly the Star Wars EU fits into George Lucas’ vision for the saga and its canon is a tricky question. While Disney has made sure to bring the Star Wars IP to comics, novels, and video games from the moment the company acquired Lucasfilm, Star Wars has existed outside of movies and television for decades. However, even before the Disney acquisition, George Lucas never perceived other Star Wars content in the same way he perceived the first six movies and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Although George Lucas’ vision for the Star Wars prequels and the movies themselves were received with a lot of criticism, the creative inputs of the Star Wars creator are often brought up in discussions surrounding the current status of the Star Wars saga. Both those who liked the Star Wars sequels and those who didn’t try to compare the sequel trilogy with how George Lucas envisioned the Star Wars franchise – an interesting change considering the amount of criticism Lucas received for the prequels. In addition to comparisons with George Lucas’ Star Wars vision, another common topic of discussion regarding new Star Wars releases is how they compare with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, also known as the Old EU or Legends.

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Disney’s first creative decision upon acquiring Lucasfilm was to label anything Star Wars that George Lucas was not directly involved with as non-canon. In fact, before Disney, there was never an official Star Wars canon much less an official Story Group responsible for keeping all the stories inside the same sandbox. However, as soon as Disney bought Lucasfilm, an official Star Wars canon was established, and it only considered the first six Star Wars movies and Clone Wars as part of it. Everything else that had been released from 1977 to 2012 – including books, comics, and video games – was then labeled as Legends, putting an end to the Star Wars EU. While there are many who never consumed the Star Wars Expanded Universe to its full extent, there was also a portion of the audience who had become invested in the universe created in the Star Wars EU. The decision of labeling the old EU as non-canon will forever remain controversial, but it’s important to point out that George Lucas never thought of the Expanded Universe as being part of his Star Wars story.

What The Star Wars Expanded Universe Was

Between Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, there was a latent demand for more Star Wars content. George Lucas skipped making the sequelswith the original cast right away, as his plan was to tell Anakin Skywalker’s origin story first. Lucas had pointed out ever since The Empire Strikes Back that he wanted to tell a much bigger story starting before the events of A New Hope, but that he had to wait for the moviemaking technologies to catch up with his vision. That is also why it took so long for The Phantom Menace to be made after Return of the Jedi. However, considering how massive Star Wars had become, it would not make sense for the IP to be ignored for almost 20 years. That’s why the Star Wars brand started to be officially licensed for original novels, comic books, and later video games. The term “Star Wars Expanded Universe” itself was first used to describe a specific line of Star Wars toys, but it was later incorporated by the fanbase to describe all things Star Wars outside of the George Lucas movies.

With several different publishers being granted the opportunity to release official Star Wars stories, keeping track of the Star Wars Expanded Universe was no easy feat. For example, there were more than 200 Star Wars novels published between 1976 and the Disney era. Of that total, one of the most successful and impactful Expanded Universe stories was Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy. Before Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released, Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command were the closest thing to a Star Wars sequel trilogy, as the novels followed Luke, Leia, and Han after the events of Return of the Jedi. That said, the Expanded Universe was not limited to continuing the Star Wars story post-Return of the Jedi, as it also created a lot of background to the galaxy with concepts like Mandalorians.

What George Lucas Thinks Of The Star Wars EU

During an interview for Starlog Magazine in 2005 leading up to the release of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas made some interesting remarks about the Expanded Universe. Lucas revealed that he had not read any of the novels and that he did not know “anything about that world”. According to Lucas, that was “a different world than my world.” However, George Lucas also pointed out that both he and the other authors always tried to keep some level of consistency between the Star Wars movies and the Expanded Universe. Lucas mentioned a Star Wars Encyclopedia that he would refer to when coming up with a name or location to know if it had already been used by another author in the novels or the comics. Despite making clear that his Star Wars universe and that of the novels and comics were different, George Lucas did incorporate several names and concepts from the Expanded Universe in the Star Wars movie canon. The most important example is Coruscant, a name that was created by Timothy Zahn for the Republic’s capital described by George Lucas in an early draft of Return of the Jedi.

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Lucas Made 2 Topics Off-Limits For The Star Wars Expanded Universe

While George Lucas was open to other authors creating their own Star Wars stories in a separate universe, there were two topics that were off-limits for the Expanded Universe. One was anything regarding Anakin Skywalker’s backstory or Luke’s mother, as that was the story George Lucas was creating for the prequel trilogy. Considering how invested Lucas was in creating the Star Wars prequels, to the point audiences had to wait 16 years for another Star Wars movie, it makes sense for that period of Anakin’s life to be off-limits for the Expanded Universe.

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The other restriction was regarding Yoda’s species. No official Star Wars databook could ever name Yoda’s species or reveal where Yoda had come from, and neither could the Expanded Universe stories. Curiously, the Yoda’s species mystery was carried onto the new Star Wars canon, as Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have avoid revealing anything about Grogu’s species and home planet.

George Lucas’ Star Wars Sequels Would’ve Ignored The Star Wars EU

George Lucas’ plans for the Star Wars sequels, most of which were revealed in The Star Wars Archives: Episodes I–III, 1999–2005, prove that Lucas would have ignored the Star Wars Expanded Universe for his version of episodes VII, VIII, and IX. Lucas’ Star Wars sequels would have featured Darth Maul as the leader of the underworld while Leia Organa, the new Chosen One, would have tried to rebuild the Republic. George Lucas’ Star Wars sequels would also explore the concept of midichlorians and introduced the Whills, a microscopic life form associated with the origins of the Force. George Lucas’ Star Wars sequels would have also featured a new character named Kira in a leading role. None of those stories were in the Expanded Universe, and there is really nothing from Lucas’ revealed plans for the Star Wars sequels that resembles Legends stories like the Thrawn Trilogy. Therefore, even if George Lucas made Episodes VII, VIII, and IX instead of Disney, the Star Wars Expanded Universe would have still been labeled as non-canon.