How Star Wars Legends Saved the EU
The Star Wars Expanded Universe has been a staple of the fandom for decades, going back really to the first Star Wars Novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye which was the unofficial continuation of the saga back when George himself wasn’t even sure if he was going to make a sequel or not. From 1991 - 2012 the post Endor books and comics were considered by many fans to be the true continuation of the Saga. That was until 2012 and the Disney buyout when they decided to more or less reboot the Expanded Universe with the exception of the Six films and the Clone Wars series. However what many people may not have expected is that by going under the monogram of Star Wars legends, that might have saved the Expanded Universe in ways many people have yet to fully appreciate.
Now the Star Wars Expanded Universe was considered by people inside Lucasfilm especially George Lucas himself as everything that he himself had no personally involved in. So various books, comics, sourcebooks and a few non Lucas involved tv shorts in the 80’s were all considered the Expanded Universe. However like many things in Star Wars the Expanded Universe grew and evolved into a colossus giant that even the creator himself essentially for lack of a better term lost control over as it sorta became its own subculture within Star Wars. Creating a wide array of characters, locations and planets that fans grew attached to over the many years of developments.
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Things began to change though in 1999 though when George Lucas started developing the Prequel Trilogy. While it was forbidden at that time to tell stories in that era, some of the information about the past of Star Wars did find a way to leak through. However much of it by the time Phantom Menance came about was just proven wrong or contradicted by Lucas. What the Clone Wars were, how the Empire rose, how Anakin fell, all of it was contradicted. Then in 2008 things changed again when the Clone Wars 2008 series premiered and began contradicting various EU comics that they did make in the Prequel Era.
It was a sign of things to come as Lucas was asserting his control of Star Wars again, he was contradicting things left and right about the Expanded Universe. Which in reality he never considered his Star Wars in the first place, and just really did as a placeholder to insure that the Star Wars brand was profitable until such time as he wished to make more films. Of course that would mean that the somewhat cohesion that the EU built over the years started to fall apart.
Thus when Disney decided to reboot back in 2012 and make the Expanded Universe legends, it in a sense saved the EU from any more contradictions, recons and convolutedness of having to fit in things that never intended to fit in. The Expanded Universe was allowed to rest and be essentially it’s own section of Star Wars. Thus also allowing other new fans to come in eventually and see what Star Wars storytelling was like in the past. Leaving the EU in a more or less creative stable state then it was under Lucas.
For now Disney/Lucasfilm is trying to make one cohesive universe as best they can. So leaving the EU now as a its own separate entity in many ways preserves the purity of the sub universe created by many wonderful and talented authors and allows fans still to go into those world ands see the stories that were once considered part of the Galaxy Far Far Away.
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