Why 'Star Wars' Has Moved Beyond George Lucas
Image Source: CultureSlate
All successful franchises move beyond their creator. That can be for a number of reasons, such as the creator offering others the chance to tell stories within it. Or the creator wanting to move on from it yet still wanting it to thrive. For Star Wars, the first of those reasons has been a thing since the earliest days of the franchise, with stories in the universe being told by others. Even if George Lucas has said, he never considered those part of his canon.
The second of those reasons was going to happen even without Disney. Lucas was already thinking of retiring and selling Lucasfilm a year before the deal was made. But good relations with Disney, who already had Star Wars attractions within its theme parks, likely decided on who to sell to an easy choice. With the sale complete in 2012, Lucas no longer had involvement with the franchise, and it had moved beyond him.
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Image Source: Disney+
In fact. But the reality was Star Wars sticking to familiar ground for quite a few years afterward. Dave Filoni, who Lucas had mentored throughout their time working on The Clone Wars, used what he had learned to craft Rebels. Who then would go on to oversee many of the live-action projects developed for Disney+. Filoni was a font of knowledge about Star Wars and how Lucas would approach creating certain things. As such, he would be consulted a lot by others for their own projects.
The sequel trilogy, while bringing forth many interesting ideas for the franchise, was always presented as a continuation of what Lucas originally started. Though Disney wiped the canon slate clean except for the movies and The Clone Wars before Rebels aired, the new material in books and comics all explored eras of the timeline familiar to fans. Even with the start of the sequel trilogy and a new era printed media could explore, many releases stuck to that familiar ground.
It wasn’t until The High Republic era started with the first wave of printed media releases that something truly new was on the horizon. A new era to explore that had little influence from Lucas. It signified a desire to start pushing in new directions, with Star Wars Visions bringing in creatives who had never worked on the franchise before to tell their own stories within it, with very few limitations on what they could do. New movies were also announced, with one in particular touching on an era hardly explored by any media.
Image Source: Wookieepedia
These last few years, Star Wars seems to have moved beyond Lucas even more with that experimentation. The Acolyte put the High Republic era on screen for the first time. Skeleton Crew is offering a viewpoint not really seen in Star Wars. And though the New Jedi Order era might share its name with the Legends version, the events of it are set to be different, with Rey being the one to rebuild the Order rather than Luke. This push to explore new aspects of the Star Wars galaxy is sure to provide a lot more to it.
With everything going on with Star Wars these days and more than ten years having progressed since the sale to Disney, it is clear that the franchise has moved beyond George Lucas. The current creatives in charge have shown it can exist without him and that there are many new directions the franchise can go. Whether the new films can pave the way for deeper exploration of those eras remains to be seen. And also provide even more unique perspectives on the familiar ones.
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