My Star Wars Experience: The Lore of Star Wars

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for another Star Wars post. Today I'm going to be talking about the lore of Star Wars, and how it has evolved and changed as each new trilogy of movies and TV show introduced us to new characters. So let's get into it.

When Star Wars first came out in 1977, it introduced to us a whole world of characters, ships, concepts, worlds and creatures. Yet, because it was a movie, not a TV show, you couldn't spend that much time with all of the characters or spend much time in those really cool places or on those ships. Nor did we get more than the barest minimum of the backstory. In the movie.

Before the movie came out though, the novelization of the movie was published by Del Rey in 1976. While the book itself is a very proto version of the movie, as it was based on the final draft of the script rather than the final version of the movie, it opens with a prologue that gives a vague, early, account of how the Old Republic and the Jedi fell and how the Emperor came to power. All this stuff that we'd get in the prequel trilogy 23 years later. This novel is how we learned that Darth Vader was a Dark Lord of the Sith, and where we learned the Emperor's name was Palpatine. His first name, Sheev, wouldn't be revealed until the early 2010s, but he's never referred to as Emperor Palpatine anywhere in the Original Trilogy. Only in novels and comics. 

Speaking of comics, the Marvel Comics series, which began in 1977 with a six issue adaptation of the movie, began telling its own stories that took place between the movies with issue #7. Throughout the original trilogy era the Marvel Comics series contained the bulk of the lore of the movies. There were novels, but, with the exception of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the books were limited to stories about Han Solo and Lando Calrissian that took place before the 1977 movie, and had no effect on the comics or the movies themselves.

Aside from being the first original novel set in the Star Wars Universe, Splinter of the Mind's Eye introduced the Kiber Crystal. The original version of this crystal amplified a Force user's abilities, though in 2024, Kiber Crystals are the crystals used inside Lightsabers to create their blades.

The novelization of The Empire Strikes Back gave us some early information about who Boba Fett is, a human bounty hunter who wore armour that had been worn by a group of warriors that the Jedi had fought and defeated during the Clone Wars. Of course we'd get a different backstory for the character, whose name isn't mentioned at all in the movie, in Attack of the Clones in 2002.

The Return of the Jedi novelization probably has the biggest lore dump in all of the novelizations for the Original Trilogy, even though it's an expansion of the lore dump that we got in the movie itself. The biggest thing is this is our first look at the Duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi that we wouldn't see on screen until Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005. Ben also tells Luke that he had taken Luke, as an infant, to his brother, Owen, on Tatooine. Not Anakin's brother, Obi-Wan's brother. Which is interesting given that Owen is Anakin's half-brother when George got around to making the Prequel Trilogy in the 90's and early 2000's. 

Starting with the release of Heir to the Empire in 1991, writers, publishers, and other Lucasfilm employees began expanding the Star Wars lore, by telling stories set after Return of the Jedi. Though with the exception of The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin, the books weren't allowed to tell any stories set before A New Hope as George Lucas was beginning to seriously consider making the Prequel Trilogy. Shadows of the Empire was the only novel in the Bantam era to take place during the Original Trilogy.

The comics during the early to mid 90's were also special. Besides the first six issue mini-series, Dark Empire, which took place right after Timothy Zahn's novels, the comics told stories that were mostly set after Return of the Jedi, but you also had Tales of the Jedi by Kevin J. Anderson and Tom Veitch, which took place thousands of years before A New Hope, and was the exception to George's rule that the Expanded Universe couldn't tell stories that took place before the original movie because he was making the Prequel Trilogy. Unlike the Marvel Comics run though, the Dark Horse Star Wars comics made some significant contributions to Star Wars lore. Especially in the 2000's and early 2010s. And while these early series weren't as impactful, beyond stuff like Dark Empire, Tales of the Jedi, and X-Wing Rogue Squadron anyway, they are still important books in the 90's Star Wars Expanded Universe.

The release of The Phantom Menace in 1999 opened up an entire era of the Star Wars Universe that, up until this point, we weren't allowed to know about. Sure, we still had two more movies to go, but suddenly, we could have books and comics that take place before this movie, in that unexplored era. And we got that with the novels Cloak of Deception and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter in 2001, and the comic book series, Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: Republic) in 1999.

The novelization of The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks, gave us one of the most important characters in the Star Wars Universe, Darth Bane. While we wouldn't learn about his full story until the Darth Bane Trilogy got published from 2006 to 2008, but his name is first mentioned in the scene where Darth Sidious and Darth Maul are speaking on Coruscant before Maul heads off to track Queen Amidala's ship that had just escaped from Naboo. This scene is in the movie, but in the book, it's written from Sidious's point of view, so we find out what he's thinking about during that scene, which we don't get in the movie. Despite this novelization becoming Legends in 2014 when Disney rebooted the Expanded Universe, Darth Bane was brought into Canon through his appearance in the season 6 finale of The Clone Wars in 2014.

The New Jedi Order, which was published from 1999 to 2003, continued to push the Star Wars Universe further into its future, followed by the Dark Nest Trilogy in 2005, Legacy of the Force from 2006 to 2008, and Fate of the Jedi from 2009 to 2012. During this period from 1999 to 2012 though we also had novels featuring Han, Luke, and Leia, that took place throughout the post-Return of the Jedi era, both during the books that had been published during the Bantam era, and between 1998's Vision of the Future and the first book in the New Jedi Order series, Vector Prime. 

Starting with Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars in 2003, we started getting a look at the Clone Wars, which is something that had only ever been mentioned in A New Hope, and in novels and comics. We also saw the beginning of the war in Attack of the Clones in 2002 and the end of the war in Revenge of the Sith in 2005, but we hadn't seen the war itself before. While the 2003 series is no longer canon, the 2008 series, starting with the theatrical feature film, really opened that era to us in a way that the Prequel Trilogy couldn't do. It also introduced us to Ahsoka Tano, someone who continues in the Star Wars Universe to this very day with the live action Disney+ shows, as well as appearing in Rebels.

Around this same time, the comics pushed far beyond the Skywalker Saga by setting the Legacy comic book series 130 years after the Original Trilogy. It gave us a new Skywalker named Cade, who turned his back on the Jedi Order after the Sith returned and corrupted the Second Galactic Empire, which had replaced the Galactic Alliance sometime after the 2013 novel, Crucible and after the deaths of Han, Luke, Leia, and their children. Unfortunately, this comic book series is part of the Legends continuity and most likely will never be retold in canon material. I've only read the first two trade paperback volumes, so I don't know a whole lot about what happens in the later issues of the series.

Then Disney bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2012, and chose to make their own Star Wars movies. Suddenly all of this lore that had accumulated over the last nearly 40 years is relegated to Legends and all of this ground is ripe for the picking yet again. And while we still had a year before The Force Awakens was due to come out, Disney and Lucasfilm gave us Star Wars Rebels, an animated series set five years before A New Hope. As mentioned Ahsoka returned, we got Vader, and a whole new family of characters with Ezra, Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper. And they really are a family in every sense of the word. We also got Grand Admiral Thrawn in seasons 3 and 4. Alot of people were thrilled with this because Thrawn is such a beloved Legends character since he was the best villain in the Bantam era novels. The show also gave us the World Between Worlds and built upon the lore surrounding the Jedi, the Sith, and the Force that we got in The Clone Wars, particularly in the Mortis arc from season 3 with the Father, the Son, and the Daughter.

The first novel in the new canon to be published was A New Dawn, which was a prequel novel to Rebels. It tells the story of how Kanan and Hera meet and get involved with each other. So it's a more personal story, which falls in line with what Filoni and his team were doing with Rebels in those first couple of seasons, and again in season 4. So it doesn't add grand lore to the Star Wars Universe that the TV show did. And it wasn't meant to. It was meant as a tie-in to the TV show. It did introduce Rae Sloane, an Imperial admiral who would become important in later novels and in comics and video games. 

When the comic book license returned to Marvel in 2015, they started a monthly ongoing comic book series set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, much like they had done in 1977 following that initial six issue adaptation of the movie. This series was a bit more personal like A New Dawn was, simply because Jason Aaron couldn't do as much with the movie characters since this main series took place between the movies, and it was confined to the Original Trilogy era because of the fact that the Sequel Trilogy was being made, and they also couldn't do as much with them unless they were tie-ins to The Force Awakens.

 Speaking of the Sequel Trilogy, there wasn't as much room for stories between the movies, so the focus of the Expanded Universe, and, later on down the line, in the Disney+ TV shows, was turned to stories that could be told between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens because there was so much time between the two movies that could be explored. 

Since then we've had so many comics and novels that have really expanded on things introduced in the movies, in Legends material, and even in reference books. The books and comics also introduced characters who made appearances in the TV shows. For example, the Aftermath Trilogy introduced a character named Cobb Vanth. He wasn't a main character and only had one or two scenes per book, but he was brought into season 2 of The Mandalorian, played by Timothy Olyphant, and then into The Book of Boba Fett. Rae Sloane, who was introduced in A New Dawn, was the main antagonist in this trilogy, and is a POV character in all three books. I haven't read the full trilogy, so I know she's a main POV character in the first book, and from what I've read on Wookieepedia, she remains so in Life Debt and Empire's End.

Another character, who made their live action debut in The Book of Boba Fett, was Black Krrsantan, the Wookiee bounty hunter. He was actually a comic book character originally. He debuted in issue #1 of the 2015 Darth Vader Marvel Comics series, and went on to be a main character in the first thirteen issues of the 2016 Doctor Aphra comic book series, as the Chewbacca to Aphra's Han Solo.

Star Wars is one of the few franchises where the books, comics, video games, and reference books, be it Legends or Canon, are just as important as the movies and TV shows. And that's because from the very beginning, George Lucas saw the value in the story of the Star Wars Universe continuing beyond the movies. In fact, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was originally written because if Star Wars had been a moderate success, the book would act as the basis for the film sequel to A New Hope, which is why the book's story is such a small scale story, in case George had a limited budget that was even smaller than Star Wars's had been. Barring that, it would act as a novel sequel to the movie if the movie had bombed entirely. 

As a result, the lore morphed and changed as each movie came out, as each book was published, as each TV show was produced. It's fascinating to see how the Jedi and the Force are portrayed now in The Acolyte and even in Ahsoka, compared to how they were portrayed in A New Hope in 1977. Even between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, because that movie's director, Irvin Kershner, and its writer, Lawrence Kasdan, portrayed the Jedi and the Force, through the scenes on Dagobah between Luke and Yoda, differently than George Lucas had portrayed them in the original movie. Because, in the original movie, the Jedi were more like superheroes, and the Force is merely the source of their superpowers. 

Unlike most other franchises, so many people have contributed their takes on the franchise throughout the years, and that makes it an interesting one to be a fan of, because it's so different today than it was, even when I was a kid, growing up in the 90's, before the prequels started coming out, when we only had three movies, two animated shows, and a handful of novels and comics. And all of their contributions mattered, and still matter. Even the Legends material still matters because so much of it informs the way Star Wars is today, even if the stories themselves are no longer canon.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday for a look at the evolution of the lore of Star Trek. In the meantime though, as mentioned on Monday, I'm appearing on the VHS Club Video Podcast tomorrow night at 9 pm ET on YouTube, to talk with the hosts, Katie and Natalie, about the history of VHS and VCRs. If you can't make it for the live show tomorrow night, the episode will be up on various podcast platforms on Friday for you to listen to. Again, that's the VHS Club Video Podcast on YouTube tomorrow night at 9 pm Eastern. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.