I knew I wanted to blog about Star Wars.
I knew that much for sure, but Star Wars is such a broad topic.
Where was I going to start? What was my first topic going to be about? The following conversation happened inside my head when debating where to start:
Where the hell am I going to start? I picked such a big topic. I love Star Wars but there’s just too much. Wait….take a breath. Let’s start with the books! There’s so many books I could write about! Let’s look into that first!
So into the books I went. I looked up every book in the Star Wars Universe and decided I was going to read every Star Wars book in chronological order, and present an organized history of the Star Wars Universe, in a way no one had ever done before.
HOWEVER
I ran into one particular issue….
Canon.
According to google, Canon is defined as “a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine.”
So basically, what belongs in the Star Wars Universe? What just gets thrown out?
The easy answer is that anything in the movies, from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars feature film and tv series, and anything published after April 25, 2014.
But it’s more complex than that, and also a lot more interesting if you are as much invested into Star Wars as I am.
So if you are interested in Star Wars, and the intense amount of material surrounding it, this is for you.
Lucasfilm Magazine, in its first issue, decided to take on the task of defining canon: “‘Gospel,’ or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas’ original stories, the rest are written by other authors….The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history-with many off-shoots, variations and tangents-like any other well-developed mythology.”
Star Wars is meant to be enjoyed as a series of works written by various different authors. These works are understood to be a documentation of past events, where some are more reliable than others, but all are still part of the history. With these stories, they cannot be taken as pure truth. Just as every story has at least two sides, these historical accounts also have multiple sides. They also have multiple authors with their own unique perspectives on these events, so there will be many differences between authors. It is quite simple to say that Star Wars Historical Canon can be compared to Greek or Roman Mythology.
In Star Wars, there are two types of canon: Old Canon and New Canon. New Canon was established about a year after the Disney acquisition of Star Wars, and resulted in the “throwing out” of the old canon and placing in this new canon. This “throwing out” was the making of old canon into the “legends” series, making them no longer part of canon. The only previous canon that remained in the new canon were the 6 Films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars film and tv series, and Part 1 of the Blade Squadron series.
Now to dive into Old Canon!
The only true ABSOLUTE canon are the films themselves (The True Star Wars Story). Even the novelizations of the films are part of the Expanded Universe, because they contain some of the author’s interpretations. The farther and farther away authors go from the films, the more speculation and interpretation come into play. Another interesting part of speculation and interpretation is how they come into play with different media forms. Lucasfilm and Lucasbooks and the Star Wars “entity” seem to maintain this analogy that every piece of published material is a “window” into the Star Wars Universe. Some are foggy, others are abstract, but they all hold a piece of truth into the universe.
To keep track of everything in the Star Wars Universe, Lucasfilm needed someone in charge. In 2000, Lucasfilm appointed Leland Chee to make a continuity-tracking database, to be called the Holocron Continuity Database. It followed Star Wars previously maintained standards, but now it had levels on canonicity, and it allowed Chee to analyze individual parts of the stories, as well as the stories themselves. Of course, the top level of canon was the George Lucas Canon (or G-Canon).
G-Canon encompassed the 6 films, as well as any statements by George Lucas about the Star Wars Universe. The tricky part of G-Canon is that anything originating from the films (novelizations, reference books, etc) was considered G-Canon, but if the authors “created” something in these sources, that element was part of a separate level of canon. Another trick in the G-Canon is that newer versions of the films will always replace the older versions in the canon. So the original versions are no longer canon, but the newer versions that have slight changes are now canon. Fun Fact (on top of the other numerous fun facts): Deleted Scenes that do not contradict what happens in the movies, and don’t contradict what George Lucas has said, are also considered to be part of the G-Canon.
Next comes the Tv Series, in the realm of T-Canon. T-Canon is a pretty basic level of canon, because it basically just includes the Star Wars: The Clone Wars feature film and the tv series. Had there been other tv series created after the Disney Acquisition, they would have fallen under this level of canon. Sadly, no other tv series have been made, leaving T-Canon alone with the Clone Wars movie and series. The main purpose of this level of canon was to provide a level higher than the Continuity Canon for the Clone Wars but below the Film Canon.
The biggest section of canon (BY FAR) is the C-Canon, or Continuity Canon. It included all recent works (as well as several older ones) that fall under the name of Star Wars. This includes novels, comic books, cartoons, games, non-theatrical films, etc. The special trickiness with the games is that, for the most part, the story itself is mainly the only part of C-Canon. The game mechanics and statistics are often non-canon. Fun Fact: If a C-Canon element from a novel or other source appears in one of the Star Wars films, it is then elevated to G-Canon, while the remainder of the novel or source will remain in C-Canon.
The stupidest level of canon is the S-Canon, or Secondary Canon. This level of canon only existed with information that authors or artists could use or ignore as they wanted. This was also the home of several older Star Wars works. When continuity-minded authors would include some S-Canon material into a C-Canon work, then that element would rise to C-Canon, but this was not a very common occurence.
The second-lowest level of canon is the Detours Canon, or the D-Canon. It’s only purpose was to provide a home for the Star Wars Detours material.
The lowest level of canon (that I don’t believe is needed) is the N-Canon, or Non-Canon. This includes the What-If Stories and anything contradicted by a higher level of canon. Deleted scenes that were contradicted by the canon films were included in N-Canon. The only way to make Non-Canon material into Canon Material was to have it mentioned by material that was already Canon.
Of course, none of the level of canon truly matter anymore because of the Disney acquisition, so all that reading was pointless. (You’re Welcome). With the Disney reboot, the new Star Wars execs stated that the Sequel trilogy they were going to create was not going to follow the Post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe, thus making the Holocron Database no longer functional. Like I mentioned in the “easy answer” to what belongs in canon, The only remaining Canon Material after the April 2014 press release were the films, the Clone Wars film and series, and part 1 of the Blade Squadron series.
Honestly, it’s really sad that Disney “threw out” so much material created over such a long period of time. I kind of wish they could have kept more of the material, making it less of a world-shattering event. Perhaps Disney could have kept a lot of the previous historical stories, such as the Dawn of the Jedi stories which supposedly take place WAY before the Old Republic. That could have been REALLY COOL!! (I still plan on reading these books….let me know if you want a review of them!)
HOWEVER
Hope is not lost. With the Disney acquisition, Disney and Lucasfilm execs said that they had a lot of plans for new works. There was, of course, the sequel trilogy that had been released in 2015-2019, Rogue One, Solo: A Star Wars Story, the Rebels tv show, The Mandalorian, The new 7th season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, several novels and comics, as well as the game Battlefront II. (I have played Battlefront II and it is EPIC!) So there have already been several new works, and there is no sign that Disney and Lucasfilm will be slowing down. Especially because, in February 2020, a new line of novels and comic books were to be released under the name of The High Republic. These works will be published starting in August 2020, and will take place about 200 years before the events that take place in The Phantom Menace. So everyone can sit back, relax, and take in all this new Star Wars material.
But this brings up several questions: Are we going to get a new Holocron Database? Is there going to be a way to track all this new material? How is Disney or Lucasfilm going to account for all of the new material they are putting out, in a way that makes sense to readers everywhere?
Nothing is for certain, and there is now way to predict what is going to happen. For now, let’s just enjoy this thing we call Star Wars and see what is to come. If you made it all the way to the end, thank you so much for reading! I have listed my sources down below if you want to check them out! Thank you all so much!
SOURCES:
Grace in progress 
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