The new Star Wars trilogy needs to pay homage to the legends… and stop adapting them

A new Star Wars the trilogy is reportedly in development, and with that comes an opportunity for the franchise to change its approach to Star Wars Continuity of legends. Although Legends was largely discontinued and relegated to an alternate timeline in April 2014, it has had a huge influence on the modern world. Star Wars canon, inspiring characters and stories on a conceptual level across many properties. Modern canon stories also import characters and other forms of lore from the Legends timeline, though new iterations are usually still reinvented for the current Star Wars timeline.

Before April 2014, what is now Legends was known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. For nearly 40 years, the Expanded Universe was the Star Wars continuity, with Lucasfilm creatives maintaining an organized timeline, often using retcons to clear up inevitable continuity issues and ensure that all properties fit together seamlessly, from the most obscure material to the revolutionary saga films themselves. The modern canon takes a different approach to continuity, however, embracing inconsistencies to make the Star Wars franchise more similar to folklore. Going forward, the franchise should adjust how it uses Legends continuity.

Star Wars Canon is increasingly riffing on the old expanded universe

From the beginning, the modern Star Wars Canon used the original Legends continuity as a source of inspiration without being beholden to it. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – a modern canonical series that was never intended to be part of the Expanded Universe – would end up modeling this approach for the rest of the franchise after the 2014 reboot. Star Wars The sequel trilogy, for example, had many notable examples of reimagined legends from the Legends era, such as Kylo Ren (inspired by Jacen Solo) and the resurrection of Palpatine (inspired by Dark Empire).

In recent years, the modern canon has adapted even more content from the original Legends continuityespecially in recent TV shows, which saw the live-action debut of the modern version of canon Grand Admiral Thrawn and 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 overly rely on nostalgia and lack the meaning of their original incarnations. However Thrawn’s story ends up in the modern canon, it will likely pale in comparison to his death in Timothy Zahn’s book. The Last Command.

The best Star Wars stories are fresh and new

The modern Star Wars The canon, unfortunately, has numerous examples of stories and characters that are poor imitations of their original Legends-era incarnations.. The franchise has imported large portions of Legends-era content in some cases and created its own lore in others, making faithful adaptations of Legends-era narratives and characters impossible. For example, Thrawn’s live-action debut teases some form of adaptation of Timothy Zahn’s film. played trilogy, only Thrawn has a very different backstory and, by necessity, cannot challenge – or be defeated by – the New Republic in the same way he did in the original Legends continuity.

Modern canon Star Wars properties are often at their best when they’re not trying to replicate original content from the Legends continuity. The Clone Warsthe first two seasons of Star Wars Rebelsand Andor everyone goes 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 quality of the Legends era’s writing rather than 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 – also. The theft of the Death Star plans and the story of Han Solo have already been shown in the Legends timeline. The spin-off films told their own versions of these stories and used the original incarnations of the Legends as inspiration rather than using them as fodder for half-hearted imitations.

Star Wars needs to allow Legends and Canon to diverge

Going forward, the Star Wars the franchise must accept and correct the mishandling of its original continuity. Renaming the Expanded Universe “Legends” already does a great disservice to decades of Star Wars properties – and it’s especially egregious when considering how differently the two timelines handle continuity itself – but there is a solution to this. Lucasfilm should continue re-releasing Legends-era content, but stop dismissing Legends as a minor aspect of the Star Wars franchise. The Expanded Universe has been officially canon for 37 years and its contributions to the franchise on a grand scale are undeniable.

Furthermore, modern stories in the canon must stop relying on nostalgia for the Legends’ continuity and instead draw inspiration from the quality of the writing while telling new stories and creating new characters for the Star Wars Galaxy. One of the main objectives of partially restarting the Star Wars franchising in 2014 was about giving new properties a creative, clean slate. If new Star Wars the materials can only rely on nostalgia and imitations of the original six films in the saga and the Legends continuity, they’re not really taking advantage of the partial reboot.