A few months ago, Lucasfilm announced that they were putting together a new team called the Story Group. This group of Canon champions (including Leland Chee and Pablo Hidalgo, two long-time curators and mavens of the EU) had the task in place to ensure that everything that was created within the Star Wars universe would be interconnected and adhere to Canon. Everything. This included movies, TV shows, Novels, comics and games. No more Mandalorian Contradictions. No more Even Piel double-deaths. None of the contradictions that had long troubled the Expanded Universe and annoyed us detail-oriented fans. This noble group was going to fight for consistency and universe-building on behalf of EU fans everywhere. No group since rogue squadron had ever been created to fight for the good of the EU.
Except that they also blew the whole thing up.
That’s right. While the Story group will be doing incredible things moving forward (and I really AM excited to see how much they will improve the new canon) they completely nullified everything before. In order to allow complete freedom to the new, integrated, multimedia universe that was blooming, everything that already existed would have to go (as far as canon was concerned). It seemed, at first, like a huge blow to the gut of this Star Wars fan. All of that time and effort sunk into the Expanded Universe seemed to have been wasted. My favorite characters would never make it to the movies. There really is no such thing as a Yuuzhan Vong?!
But after some time to digest, that reaction seems silly now. The “old expanded universe” now known as Legends is still a great read and a worthwhile part of my fandom. Here are a few reasons why:
1) The story is still the same:
This may seem unnecessarily obvious, but nothing about the story told among those Legends novels has changed. No really, it hasn’t.
When we consider the stories as the history of the universe we all love, sure… in that case it no longer exists. But if we take a deep breath and remember that they are stories… that hasn’t changed at all. We all have stories that we love that are not tied to a franchise we obsess over. And you know what? We still love those stories. If you separate the stories from Star Wars, what do we have left?
We have great characters. As a matter of fact, most fans of Legends would say that the Big Three are the least compelling and interesting of the bunch! Jaina, Jacen, Saba, Daala, Vestara, Plagueis (for the most part) all exist completely within the Legends Universe.
We have great stories. The X-Wing books are incredible as adventure stories with or without Star Wars attached to them. The same goes for every other book and plot as well. The stories are still great.
We have an improved Canon. This is probably a tough concept to grasp, but is incredibly important to realize. That internal canon of the novels still exists… it’s just not the canon of 
Star Wars. Characters live and die on the same timeline. Jacen’s decisions during the Dark Nest crisis still causes a Galactic Civil War that leads to Luke’s expulsion from Coruscant. Thousands of years later, the Yuuzhan Vong still tell the legend of The Ganner. It’s all Legends canon… it’s just not Star Wars canon. As a matter of fact, the canon gets improved when you look at Legends in isolation. Most of the continuity errors came from cross-platform media (and when I say “cross-platform media” I really mean The Clone Wars). Now that the books are disassociated with the new continuity, they get to exist on their own and many of the canon-debates can be closed.
Just because they aren’t officially Star Wars doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enjoy every thing about these books that we always have. And if you’re someone who hasn’t read Legends before, it doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy them as great stories in a self-contained universe.
2) Who knows what will stick around:
As I watched the prequels, one of the most interesting aspects of the story to me was the planet Coruscant. I was pretty intrigued by the idea of a galactic political base and an entire city-planet. It seemed like a pretty thriving place full of diversity, urban challenges and an overwhelming sense of business and urgency. It was the exact opposite of Tatooine in every way… and pretty dissimilar to Hoth and the forest moon of Endor as well. I remember being impressed that they seemed to really break the mold that had been established by the original trilogy.
I should point out here that I didn’t get into the Legends novels until after the saga was completed… meaning I hadn’t read the Zahn trilogy until after Episode 3 was out. I point this out because Lucas didn’t create Coruscant, Timothy Zahn did. To be fair, he may have based the idea on Lucas’ notes and outlines…. But that’s not the same thing. Zahn named the planet. Zahn gave us our first description of the planet. Zahn decided what it looked like, who lived there, and how the government center was organized. Zahn made it real and Zahn made it known.
Star Wars fans can be finnicky and so we tend to focus on all of the times that there was tension between the “George Lucas” Star Wars and the “Expanded Universe” Star Wars. But we shouldn’t forget that George and other LucasFilm producers borrow successfully from the Expanded Universe all the time. Coruscant is probably the most obvious example, but did you know that Kashyyyk and Twi’lek are expanded universe words as well?
Countless ideas in the Prequels and in The Clone Wars were taken from the Expanded universe and, while occasionally it led to continuity disasters, for the most part it was exciting to see the species, people, and creatures I had read about being brought to life on the screen. I can only imagine how much MORE intrigued I would have been with Coruscant had I already been invested in it from the novels.
With this change to continuity, there’s no reason to expect that the Story Group won’t still be pulling material from the Legends stories. I imagine we will see plenty of planets, species and concepts from the Legends universe. No, the events didn’t happen… but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few Barabel in the coming movies. And with the new story group in place, it means we could see similar creations showing up in movies, TV shows and even future novels, as well.
I can’t wait to see what gets carried over either as central aspects of the new canon or even as little easter eggs in the films, and I can’t wait to see what improvements they make in the process.
3) It’s going to take a while before we have a new universe to take its place:
So most of my reasoning comes from the perspective of an existing fan responding to the changes, but this point is for all of the potential fans wondering whether or not they should get started on the Legends books despite their lack of canon status.
The cold, hard truth is that it is going to be a long time before the new efforts of the Story Group come to fruition. It’s already been a long time and there hasn’t been a new book written yet. Of course it takes a lot of preparation and planning to undergo an effort this big…. I’m not begrudging them the ability to make this transition and to do it right; I’m simply stating that it will be a while before it gets up and running.
And then it will be another while before it is as full and vibrant as the Legends universe is today.
For most fans of the Star Wars novels, we got into them because we wanted more than watching the movies over and over (although we still do this). Many of you might be thinking the same thing and Legends is there for you, just like it was for me. Rather than waiting and waiting for the new Canon to take hold, why not dive into Legends and enjoy the ride?
Canonicity is something that I really do believe is important. The internal Canon of the Legends books will always be what draws me to them. Thousands of years of interconnected 
history in the Galaxy Far, Far Away makes for an incredible reading experience. Officially, it’s no longer canon… I get it. But if a new reader were to jump in today, it would still be great and it would still be Star Wars. Some day, when the new canon is vast and developed it may be time to say that Legends became a mystical relic of the past, but that time is not now. Now it should still be embraced as the greatest expansion to the greatest franchise we all love. It’ll help pass the time until Episode VII comes around. It’s going to be a new era for the franchise once that happens anyways.
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*Leland Chee Quotes on the Expanded Universe*
“What George did with the films and The Clone Wars was pretty much *his universe* ,” Chee said. “He didn’t really have that much concern for what we were doing in the books and games. *So the Expanded Universe was very much separate.”*
~ Leland Chee, 2017 – SYFY WIRE
——————
*“Lucas’ canon – and when I say ‘his canon’, I’m talking about what he was doing in the films and what he was doing in The Clone Wars* – was hugely important. But what we were doing in *the books really wasn’t on his radar.”*
–Leland Chee, 2018
————-
“The dual universe question comes up often. *I know George Lucas has mentioned it being two universes* , but that’s not how I see it. His vision is definitely not beholden to ours, but ours is definitely beholden to his.”
~ Leland Chee 2012
—————-
“I did not have direct contact with George about Star Wars continuity. Dave Filoni, who worked on Clone Wars, definitely did. So for me, the spirit of George’s work is what’s in the films, and it doesn’t go too far beyond that.”
~ Leland Chee 2018
—————–
Could you tell us if there will be some connections between existing comics or novels and The Clone Wars in the future (with some characters like Quinlan Vos)?
Luckily, we have several folks who worked on the series, including Henry Gilroy, working on our comics. And Dave Filoni chips in once and does some cover art. Aside from the novelization of the theatrical release of The Clone Wars, the novels are less directly tied in with the series. Because the episodes aren’t produced or even aired in chronological order, tie-ins are a bit more difficult than when working with the saga films because you don’t want to risk being contradicted in an episode that gets created in a later season. It’s much safer from a continuity standpoint to have the EU stories stand on their own.
~ Leland Chee 2009 interview
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There are a lot of comics and novels published before The Clone Wars, do you think we could consider two continuities now, an official and an other one?
As far as Licensing is concerned, there will always be one official continuity that follows along George Lucas’s vision of the Star Wars universe.
—————-
*”I didn’t have any direct contact with George about Star Wars. – I would see some notes based on the interviews or the meetings. But I did not have direct contact with George about Star Wars continuity.”*
~ Leland Chee 2018
[He never even met George Lucas.]
————
“Understand, that the *Holocron’s primary purpose is to keep track of Star Wars continuity for Lucas Licensing* , and to some degree Lucas Online. To my knowledge, it is only *rarely used for production purposes.”*
~ Leland Chee 2005/6
[Lucas was in Production]
—————-
*”The G/C/S-level canon stuff is a construct specifically for the Holocron. Non-Holocron users would have no idea what this stuff even means* and I would say most of the people who use the Holocron don’t use the field, instead looking specifically to the source of the material. Individual entries are not broken down by canon level.”
~ Leland Chee 2005
*[What this means is that whole ‘canon tier’ he made up, that wasn’t policy that was a filing system protocol like the Dewy Decimal system. It had no baring on actual canon or anything outside of his office.]*
————
*”Star Wars continuity, even EU continuity, does not rest on my shoulders.* Understand, that the Holocron’s primary purpose is to keep track of Star Wars continuity for Lucas Licensing,* and after that, if the editors or developers have any questions, they pass it along to me to check for continuity. At the same time, I am constantly on the lookout to make sure that any new continuity being created gets entered in the Holocron. *With regard to the the films and The Clone Wars, I am not involved in continuity approvals* though I have often
been asked to provide reference material.”
~ Leland Chee
[This is the worst one of them all. Wow, just wow.]
————
*”No, GWL has not given directives as to how things are entered in the Holocron.”* (12-17-04) ~ Leland Chee ~ 2004
*”…applies only to the Holocron, but is not the same as their standing in LFL’s canon hierarchy.”* ~ Leland Chee ~ 2005
*”I’m unclear as to the definition of LFL in this case. I know of no other internal hierarchy currently in use.”*
~ Leland Chee ~ 2004
———
“Dave Filoni is better equipped to relay Lucas’ true feelings about the EU.”
~ Leland Chee
“There’s this notion that everything changed when everything became Legends. And I can see why people think that. But, you know, having worked with George I can tell you that it was always very clear — and he made it very clear — that the films and the TV shows were the only things that he considered Canon. That was it.
“So everything else was a world of fun ideas, exciting characters, great possibilities, the EU was created to explore all those things.And I know and I fully respect peoples opinions about it that some of the material said ‘the next canon part of it’ [It wasn’t canon]…. But from the filmmaking world I was brought into, *the films and TV shows were it”.
~ Dave Filoni speaking about working with George Lucas
This is the actual video of when Dave Filoni said the above quotes during an interview on ‘The Star Wars show’ [41.40 mark]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcNXPNXOv2A&t=16s
‘In 2014, Disney declared the Expanded Universe was no longer canon. It became ‘Legends’. What do you think of this, seeing all of your work suddenly become non-canon?’
“Those of us writing the EU were always told, all along, from the very beginning (have I stressed that strongly enough?), “Only the Movies are Canon.” Sure, it was disappointing.”
~ Kathy Tyers, EU author [Truce at Bakura, Balance Point] Interview, 2018
http://starwarsinterviews.com/various/authors/kathy-tyers-author/
—————
Podcast Interview with Steve Perry, Author of Shadows of the Empire from the Expanded Universe –
Interviewer – ‘So what are your thoughts about your book and all the ones that came other than this last year are no longer part of the Official Star Wars Canon ever since Disney took over?
Steve Perry – “Ohh they never were! Nothing was ever canon other than the movies.”
The Ritual Misery Podcast with hosts Amos and Kent, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2569&v=opbMcVJolSA&feature=emb_logo
..
“And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn’t at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, the Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get married.”
~ George Lucas,Total Film Magazine Interview, 2008
https://ibb.co/x5q1RrQ
..
“I get asked all the time, ‘What happens after “Return of the Jedi”?,’ and there really is no answer for that,” he said. “The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that’s where that story ends.””
– George Lucas, Flannelled One, May 2008, “George Lucas: ‘Star Wars’ won’t go beyond Darth Vader”, interview with Los Angeles Times
..
“I don’t read that stuff, I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try and keep it consistent. The way I do it is they have a Star Wars encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it and see if it has already been used. When I said other people could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have TWO universes: My Universe and than this other one. They try to make THEIR universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”
~ George Lucas Starlog Magazine Interview, 2005 – https://ibb.co/Km1CcNs
..
“There are two worlds here,” explained Lucas. “There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books.”
~ George Lucas, Cinescape, 2002
..
”The novels and comic books are other authors’ interpretations of my creation. Sometimes, I tell them what they can and cant do, but I just don’t have the time to read them. They’re not my vision of what Star Wars is.”
~ George Lucas Magazine Interview, 2004
..
“I like to refer to the Interview with Lucas in the Special Editions.When asked about the novels and what not, he simply says:
”Those are another author’s interpretation of what I’ve created, and not to be taken seriously, as far as what is really going on in the Star Wars world.”
~ George Lucas
..
“Q: What do you think of the Expanded Universe of books?
A: “The books are in a different universe. I’ve not read any of them, and I told them when they started writing I wouldn’t read any of them and I blocked out certain periods.”
~ George Lucas, 2003
..
The Star Wars Universe has expanded far beyond the movies. How much leeway do the game makers and novel writers have?
Howard [Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing, in charge of the EU] tries to be consistent but sometimes he goes off on tangents and it’s hard to hold him back.He once said to me that there are two Star Trek Universes: there’s the TV show and then there’s all the spin offs. He said that these were completely different and didn’t have anything to do with each other. So I said “OK, go ahead”.
George Lucas Interview – Total Film.com Magazine, 2008
https://ibb.co/MRy8TVz
..
“TVGuide: Yet novelists have written “Star Wars” sequels using the same characters and extending their stories.
“Oh, sure. They’re done outside my little universe.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, November 2001 – TV Guide interview
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“Q: Do you supervise the development of all the off-movie stories? After all, Star Wars exists in books, comics.
A: “You know, I try not to think about that. I have my own world in movies and I follow it.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 2002 – From a The Force.Net
..
“George Lucas says there has never been any war between the Jedi and the Sith in his Star Wars Canon” – An excerpt from StarWars.com‘s oral history of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace:
Everybody said, “Oh, well, there was a war between the Jedi and the Sith.” Well, that never happened. That’s just made up by fans or somebody. What really happened is, the Sith ruled the universe for a while, 2000 years ago. Each Sith has an apprentice, but the problem was, each Sith Lord got to be powerful. And the Sith Lords would try to kill each other because they all wanted to be the most powerful. So in the end they killed each other off, and there wasn’t anything left.
“But anyway, there’s a whole matrix of backstory that has never really come out. It’s really just history that I gathered up along the way. It’s all based on backstories that I’d written setting up what the Jedi were, setting up what the Sith were, setting up what the Empire was, setting up what the Republic was, and how it all fit together I never really got a chance to explain the Whills part.”
George Lucas’ vision of the galaxy’s ancient times is clearly different from the Expanded Universe. Many wars between Jedi and Sith in the Old Republic era were told in games, books and comics. The current Lucasfilm’s canon didn’t explore this era yet.’
https://naboonews.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/george-lucas-says-there-has-never-been-any-war-between-the-jedi-and-the-sith-in-his-canon/
..
“The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the Expanded Universe influence the movies?
“As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” and that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU.”
– “Marc Xavier”, November 2003, “The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy (report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)
..
Audience: You got a rapid fan base, it seems like nowadays the way Disney handles Star Wars canon, very well controlled, very tight, but back in the ’90s when it’s a blueprint of books and games and other things, how did … Do you internally manage —
“That was one of my mandates, when I began the spin off publishing program it was a sacrosanct rule that everything had to relate to each other, be consistent with each other and be consistent with the movies ‘which were canon.’
We were pretty religious about doing that, our biggest problem was a guy named George Lucas, because he didn’t buy into the spin off fiction and the game program and all the ‘alternate universe’ we were creating.”
We wanted it to be one universe, we felt strongly that that’s what it needed to be, but George as the filmmaker didn’t want to be beholden to somebody else’s creative vision.
So we would have very interesting skirmishes because we had a bunch of stuff that became, for the fans, ‘pretty much canon‘ [head-canon] about what happened after Return of the Jedi, what different places in the galaxy were called, lots of different things and if he was proposing to do something in the prequels that contradicted that we would have long debates which usually ended at least after the first session with “I don’t care this is what I’m doing”,and maybe after the 4th or 5th session sometimes “Alright ‘maybe’ we can change it this way”
Now that everything is controlled by one central committee [Lucasfilm Story Group] we can have canon that applies to everything.
Messing with a Classic — Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing under Lucas and in chare of the EU- Lucasfilm, 2017 interview. –
[12:40 mark] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMKHgwH-gY4