The Star Wars Expanded Universe is being rebooted. Almost every Star Wars book, comic, or other non-movie story that has come out in the past 37 years, has been declared non-canon. Instead, these stories will be grouped under the imprint “Star Wars Legends”. As of now, only the Star Wars movies, Clone Wars tv series, and upcoming books are considered Star Wars canon.

And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Or is there?

I’ve been thinking what to do with the collection of books & comics I have built up over the years. My bookshelf suddenly seemed a lot less interesting, because of the contents not being part of official Star Wars Canon any more. “There must be a way for these works to have a more jusified reason for existence” I thought by myself. The idea that the existing stories would not be dumped, but instead labelled as “Legends” inspired me. A few ideas to retcon the already published stories sprang to mind.

Here’s the first one.

A Star Wars Expanded Multiverse

Sure, many people won’t like it. But it could be a reason for the “old” EU existing in the first place. It’s a little like the “Star Trek” universe, which was rebooted fairly recently. In-universe, the whole reboot was explained as being the result of the time travel shenanigans going on in the 2009 movie. The result was that a lot of things looked and played out differently than in the existing Star Trek continuity.

What if such a similar in-universe event were the cause of the new SW continuity? Because even if Star Wars Legends is not supposed to be part of official Star Wars continuity, it still is a continuity. A secondary continuity, that together with the ‘official’ one, can be part of a Multiverse. The Star Wars Expanded Multiverse. 

The Legends continuity could be how events could have happened, if a certain event had played out differently, thereby making that event the divergence point of the two continuities. Certain events and situations could still play out the same, but differences could be explained by this. In Star Trek, the point of divergence was created technologically, via time travel.In Star Wars, the explanation could be something Force-related. Possibly something to do with flow-walking. In any case, the moment as of when the separate continuities should exist next to each other, should be somewhere shortly after Return Of The Jedi.

Bonus: At best, this explanation of a secondary continuity could even mean new stories still coming out under the “Legends” banner. If fan demand is high enough, they would be throwing money away not listening to fans of the old EU.

Extra bonus: If “Legends” continues to be an active continuity, in the long run there could even be stories with inter-dimensional travel taking place. Characters travelling from the Legends continuity to the official (movie) continuity. Personally I think this could be awesome, if handled correctly.

Coming soon: Part 2 – An in-universe existence of “Legends”