A new Star Wars trilogy is reportedly in development, and with this comes an opportunity for the franchise to change its approach to the Star Wars Legends continuity. Although Legends was mostly discontinued and relegated to an alternate timeline in April 2014, it has had an enormous amount of influence on the modern Star Wars canon, inspiring characters and storylines on a conceptual level in many properties. Modern canon stories also import characters and other forms of lore from the Legends timeline, though the new iterations are usually still reimagined for the current Star Wars timeline.
Before April 2014, what is now Legends was referred to as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. For nearly 40 years, the Expanded Universe was the official Star Wars continuity, with Lucasfilm creatives maintaining a tidy timeline, often using retcons to clear up inevitable continuity issues and ensure that all properties fit neatly together, from the most obscure materials to the game-changing saga films themselves. The modern canon has a different approach to continuity, however, embracing inconsistencies to make the Star Wars franchise more akin to folklore. Going forward, the franchise ought to adjust how it uses the Legends continuity.
Star Wars Canon Is Increasingly Riffing On The Old Expanded Universe
From the start, the modern Star Wars canon has used the original Legends continuity as a source of inspiration without being beholden to it. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – a modern canon series that was never intended to be part of the Expanded Universe – would end up modeling this approach for the rest of the franchise following the 2014 reboot. The Star Wars sequel trilogy, for instance, had many notable examples of reimagined Legends-era lore, such as Kylo Ren (inspired by Jacen Solo) and Palpatine’s resurrection (inspired by Dark Empire).
Kylo Ren is a powerful villain in Star Wars canon, but the Legends version of the character was already done better years before the sequel trilogy.
In recent years, the modern canon has repurposed even more content from the original Legends continuity, especially in recent TV shows, which have seen the live-action debut of the modern canon’s version of Grand Admiral Thrawn and have promised a major role for Thrawn in the future. Unfortunately, the modern canon’s reliance on Legends-era lore and characters will inevitably result in unsatisfying stories that are overly reliant on nostalgia and lack the meaning of their original incarnations. However Thrawn’s story ends in the modern canon, it will likely pale in comparison to his demise in Timothy Zahn’s The Last Command.
The Best Star Wars Stories Are Fresh & New
The modern Star Wars canon, sadly, has numerous examples of stories and characters who are unsatisfying imitations of their original Legends-era incarnations. The franchise has imported large portions of Legends-era content in some cases and created its own unique lore in others, making faithful adaptations of Legends-era narratives and characters impossible. For instance, Thrawn’s live-action debut teases some form of an adaptation of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, only Thrawn has a vastly different backstory and, by necessity, cannot challenge – or be defeated by – the New Republic the same way as he did in the original Legends continuity.
The current Star Wars canon is going to have a hard time topping Grand Admiral Thrawn's final moments in the previous Legends timeline.
Modern canon Star Wars properties have generally been at their best when they are not trying to replicate the original Legends continuity’s content. The Clone Wars, the first two seasons of Star Wars Rebels, and Andor all go in their own directions, exploring the new Star Wars timeline without relying on nostalgia, excessive meta-commentary, or pale recreations of older stories. In other words, the modern Star Wars canon should focus on replicating the writing quality of the Legends era instead of its lore and characters.
This applies to the franchise’s two live-action spinoff films – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story – as well. The theft of the Death Star plans and the backstory of Han Solo were already shown in the Legends timeline. The spinoff films told their own versions of these stories and used the original Legends incarnations for inspiration, rather than using them as fodder for halfhearted imitations.
Going forward, the Star Wars franchise must come to terms with and course-correct its poor handling of its original continuity. Renaming the Expanded Universe “Legends” already does a major disservice to decades of Star Wars properties – and is especially egregious when considering how vastly different the two timelines handle continuity itself – but there is a remedy for this. Lucasfilm ought to continue re-releasing Legends-era content but stop dismissing Legends as a lesser aspect of the Star Wars franchise. The Expanded Universe was officially canon for 37 years and its contributions to the franchise writ large are undeniable.
Moreover, modern canon stories must stop relying on nostalgia for the Legends continuity and instead look to its writing quality for inspiration while telling new stories and creating new characters for the Star Wars galaxy. One of the main goals of partially rebooting the Star Wars franchise in 2014 was to give new properties a creative clean slate. If new Star Wars materials can only ever rely on nostalgia for and imitations of the original six saga films and the Legends continuity, they are not truly taking advantage of the partial reboot.
Star Wars is a multimedia franchise that started in 1977 by creator George Lucas. After the release of Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope (originally just titled Star Wars), the franchise quickly exploded, spawning multiple sequels, prequels, TV shows, video games, comics, and much more. After Disney acquired the rights to the franchise, they quickly expanded the universe on Disney+, starting with The Mandalorian.
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