Frequently being in Expanded Universe spaces will inevitably lead to anti-EU discussions when you return to more mainstream Star Wars communities, which of course always leads to bringing up Filoni’s role with Lucasfilm, which of course leads to discourse. It’s okay to like or not like something. Star Wars is vast, there is something for everyone. People are allowed to disagree with someone else’s thoughts, feelings, or interests. And really, at the end of the day, it is a fictional universe. But I want you to hear me out, so at least you can understand where the sentiment comes from, and why EU fans are so adamant about it and so passionate about maintaining in their minds that the EU is their preferred canon.
People usually bring up the fact that the Expanded Universe has been decanonized for years now, hasn’t been touched, and that people should get over it when talking about current Star Wars lore, or at least not compare or anything of the sort. EU fans aren’t gonna like that I’m saying this, but that IS a valid stance. In actuality, the Expanded Universe has been left in the dust, unfortunately. I would however like to bring up a few points, and put it you this way…
Based on my experiences, Star Wars fans, more than any other fandom don’t seem to truly grasp what the words “canon” or “continuity” mean. See… “Canon” is a marketing term labelled by the license holder (which happens to be Disney, a notoriously soulless, heartless, greedy entertainment company known for creatively mishandling its properties in recent years. SO what does THAT tell you), and is not a mark of quality, nor is it always a mark of consistency. There is a difference between content being “canon” because that is how it is labelled, REGARDLESS of whether or not it aligns narratively with the established intellectual property… and content being “canon” simply BECAUSE it does actually align with the established intellectual property.
In order for something to be truly canon, it HAS to follow the narrative of the established intellectual property. It HAS to have consistent, cohesive, coherent, streamlined dialogue, writing, storytelling, characterization, and worldbuilding. Because THAT is how you actually write a story and build a world. That is how you follow continuity. That is what “canon” means. If a bit of content does NOT follow or align well with continuity, it, by definition… is. Not. Canon. Doesn’t matter whether or not you personally enjoy a project. Doesn’t matter whether it is popular to mainstream audiences or not. Doesn’t even matter if the license holder labels it as canon or not. If it doesn’t align with the established continuity, it isn’t canon. That is objectively how linear storytelling works. Star Wars wasn’t meant to be a bunch of “campfire stories” or have the same stories and characters rebooted every year or so so that new writers could have their own take, or be riddled with time travel and multiverse storylines.
Despite what the Disney propaganda machine made people believe for years, Star Wars DID have a consistent, coherent, cohesive, streamlined continuity that was established lore. It did. That is a fact, and I’m tired of people baselessly claiming otherwise, people who have that stance based on hearsay and not because they themselves actually explored that side of the Star Wars IP. The early years of the Star Wars EU were a bit rocky, everyone knows that. But from the 90s onward, there was, for the most part, an actual continuity that was followed. The EU was canon. There are dozens of quotes by Lucasfilm creatives and executives stating that as fact. Even if you don’t want to search for those quotes, common sense dictates that it was, given that nearly every single person working on Star Wars at that time worked hard to not contradict other people’s stories, and most of the entire fandom followed it and considered these stories as canon. There was also an official timeline of books that you could easily follow. Don’t even get me started on the original Clone Wars Multimedia Project and the other subsequent Prequel Era content from 1998 onwards. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close. The Expanded Universe, almost in its entirety, was canon. The Star Wars universe was also vast (ya know because it’s space, big galaxy, lots of planets), explored many different ideas, covered many different genres. We weren’t, ya know, revisiting Tatooine every two seconds, or the same five characters over and over again.
Along comes Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Whatever your feelings are for the show, good or bad, and whatever your thoughts are on each of the people creatively involved, the fact of the matter is, this show dismantled a lot of established lore within the Star Wars intellectual property that was meticulously built up for years. It wasn’t just the three-year long Clone Wars, it touched on a lot of different SW lore. Now, when you bring this up, people tend to go the route of defending George Lucas’s vision of Star Wars as gospel. Even people who don’t really like George will say “oh but it was all George’s decision.” And I’m sorry, but that is objectively false. This is old news… George wasn’t really involved with the show after season one or two. Dave Filoni, ultimately, was the creative head of the show. And this is also old news, but… Filoni would regularly go against certain creative ideas or mandates that George had wanted. I mean there are actual, real, official interviews out there on Youtube where he talks about how he would go behind George’s back to write something into the story against George’s wishes. I mean you had people like Katie Lucas (George’s daughter) or Leland Chee speak up to, or even out Dave Filoni for WILDLY contradicting the Star Wars IP. Frequently. This isn’t new information. People have been talking about this stuff forever, Filoni fans just have this tendency to deify the man and so they don’t believe any of this stuff. Completely rewrote Anakin Skywalker, the MAIN CHARACTER OF THE SAGA. Rewrote the premise behind the Jedi Purge, one of the major turning points in the films. Just to name two examples. Two really prominent, in-your-face examples. Before I move on, I’d like to add that you ABSOLUTELY can produce a TV show that is exciting and entertaining and enjoyable to people, and becomes popular, and also doesn’t disrespect, dismantle, or contradict the source material. I think the biggest example of source material in Star Wars aside from the movies would be the Clone Wars Multimedia Project, as it was produced and released in direct conjunction with the prequel films, where it pulled from them or they pulled form it, and it was intended as being content that functioned side-by-side with the movies. As opposed to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was essentially an afterthought that disrupts the IP. It’s regarded as nothing more than fanon material by many in the Expanded Universe community, and this is all why.
When the Expanded Universe was discontinued and decanonized, Dave Filoni put out a statement when he was working on Star Wars: Rebels where he added to Disney’s claim that the EU was supposedly messy and disorganized and full of contradictions (in actuality, most of the major contradictions that were not easily written away were there because of him, but tf do I know). In his statement, he mentioned that his goal as a creative in Star Wars moving forward was that he wanted to establish a… you guessed it… consistent, coherent, cohesive, streamlined continuity. An actual canon. Did he? No. Every single season of every single TV show of his does in fact contradict lore that was established by other people, himself (his own projects contradict themselves often), and even the Star Wars movies. And this is often a frustrating discussion to have with people, as it FEELS as though people who are staunch fans of Filoni’s shows don’t remember that other Star Wars content exists, including but not limited to… THE MOVIES. And to make it worse, other creatives will add onto what Filoni writes in his shows, kind of doubling down on the breaks in canon. So for example, I’ve noticed now in some books or comics, authors will characterize Anakin in relation to how Filoni writes him, which is blatantly incorrect, and not in alignment with how he is characterized in the films… the source material. This is just one example. The Filoni shows aren’t the only things that do this, but it is a more frequent issue with them more than anything else.
And so the problem you have now is that Star Wars no longer has a consistent continuity. It doesn’t have a canon. Not solely because of Filoni, but he does frequently seem to be “at the scene of the crime.” Now yes, you could absolutely bring up that it is a fictional universe, it doesn’t matter, canon doesn’t matter, whatever. Hear me out. When an intellectual property such as Star Wars doesn’t have a consistent canon, nothing matters. There are no stakes. Tension dissipates. Anyone can write anything about anything and it won’t matter from one story to the next. Anyone can write over anyone else, there are no rules. A character who should be dead can be revived, die again, be revived however many times is convenient for the current narrative being told, fuck everyone else. Certain rules for established lore can be rewritten from one season of a show, to the next, to another show, and so on. Which does happen, if you pay attention. “I don’t care that you say this happened to this character, because it didn’t happen to them in this bit of content.” The immersion is gone, and people lose interest because the story being told no longer yields investment in the universe. If anyone can write over anyone with no rules, who cares? This works fine with IPs like Marvel or DC because their whole niche is built on non-linear storytelling. They reboot storylines every couple years to give other people opportunities to share their own interpretation of the same repeating characters. Also, they have multiverses and time travel and whatnot. That’s not how the Star Wars IP functions, and so now you have this big mess.
Additionally… regardless of personal enjoyment, the difference in quality, effort, love, attention to detail (with regards to dialogue, writing, storytelling, worldbuilding, characterization) put into most SW projects now vs most SW projects then is pretty night and day to be honest.
SO, when you are talking with an Expanded Universe fan and they like to fill in the gaps in Star Wars’s story with THEIR canon, this is why. It isn’t because they don’t like the same things you like. It’s because the things you like don’t follow a consistent canon, and theirs almost always does. So they get to fill in the gaps, they like to talk about their stories or that side of Star Wars. Because YOUR stuff is messy, not theirs.
I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to enjoy any of the stuff you like. Much as I bash on the Disney era of Star Wars, I thoroughly enjoyed Rogue One, I’m sure I’d adore Andor whenever I get around to watching it, I thought Solo was a lot of fun, genuinely, I appreciated the hype that came with The Force Awakens, I enjoyed Mando Season 1 despite the lore issues, I appreciated a conclusion to TCW. Right, like you absolutely CAN enjoy the things you enjoy. I don’t want to tear you away from that. But there IS valid reason as to why Expanded Universe fans are so protective and possessive and even gatekeepy about the stuff in Star Wars that they like. It’s not solely because they don’t like the things you like. It’s not baseless. There is valid reason.
So again, people like to bring up the fact that the EU hasn’t been touched for years. True, sure. But It’s the only MOSTLY consistent canon Star Wars has ever had, so I don’t think it’s irrelevant nor is it inappropriate for fans to be so passionate about it being canon.
Anyway. I’m sure I’ll receive flak for this. The Star Wars fandom has become pretty polarized and divided (guess why). But even if you don’t like what I’m saying or disagree, at least now you get where I and the EU community are coming from.
Peace and love and all that.
