Andor is what Rebels should’ve been. Grittier, more grounded, and with all the Jedi characters dead, turned to the dark side, or otherwise incapacitated by the end to properly explain their absence from the OT time period.
Ignoring the prequels+, I run with the idea that Force-sensitivity is much like immortality in the Highlander franchise; some people are just born different with no obvious rhyme or reason why. Force-sensitivity can be passed on matrilineally (in the case of species where females bear young; different terminology would apply to hermaphroditic/asexual species, obviously), but this is due to the fetus developing in the Force-rich aura of their parent, not genetics.
Filoni managed to polish the turd that was the Prequel Trilogy. Most anyone could’ve done that. I knew this new emperor had no more clothes than the last when Rebels aired for the first time, introducing such ingenious concepts as the spinning lightsaber which doubles as a one-person helicopter.
“Sheev” is a lame name. The various fan/rumoured names, from Dantius to Ethril to Frank, were all better. But I dunno, I find it amusing that that’s the name of a malevolent archmage who managed to conquer a galaxy.
Darths before Bane. Whomever created Darth Rivan should be bludgeoned with a sturgeon, and so should Drew Karpyshyn and the others who perpetuated that nonsense.
Ironically, George Lucas likely meant for Bane to be first Darth. Statements from Lucas and the wording of the TPM novelization suggest that the pre-Bane Sith were short-lived and didn’t pose a serious threat to the Jedi. I believe that Lucas meant for the Sith Order started by Darth Bane to be the one that ruled the galaxy 1000 years before the movies.
Yeah, there’s always been a wide gulf dividing Lucas’ canon and official canon, even when there were tiers with Lucas’ ostensibly being the top one. Which makes it all the more absurd when obvious jokes like “Conan” being Motti’s first name and “Stewjon” being Obi-Wan’s homeworld were canonized just 'cause Lucas was the source.
The art is mostly fine. It’s mostly in 90’s styles but it’s fair. There’s only one issue or so where I thought the art was poor. David Roach’s art in The Saga of Nomi Sunrider Part 2 and Chris Grosset’s work in the Redemption arc were my favorites. The aesthetics of the series was perfect.
Agree 100%. Roach’s art is outstanding and I wish he’d returned for future arcs. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I think Dario Carrasco’s linework was competent, but it was muddied by atrocious inking, making The Sith War/Golden Age of the Sith Empire/Fall of the Sith Empire my least favourite arcs to revisit.
I think KJA did an alright job on the series after Veitch left. It’s probably his best writing on SW, full stop. I dislike how condensed the events of the Great Hyperspace and Sith Wars are, though. I don’t know if this was a creative choice on his part or if there was a mandate from on-high forcing him to tell the whole story within a few finite miniseries, but it makes these wars feel smaller and less impactful than they should’ve been.
I prefer prequelisms to stay within the prequel era. It’s the only place I can tolerate them.
Darths before Bane. Whomever created Darth Rivan should be bludgeoned with a sturgeon, and so should Drew Karpyshyn and the others who perpetuated that nonsense.
Speaking of Karpyshyn, his Darth Bane trilogy sucks. It’s like he went out of his way to take away most everything that made Bane a distinctive character – the purple lightsaber, the orbalisk armour – to make him just another generic Sith. Also each one of those books has a side quest of Bane seeking out a holocron – each one. Wow. So creative. Much variety.
From what I’ve read about The Rise of Skywalker (I refuse to watch that movie), Abrams cranked up the whole evil entity to a ludicrous level.
One would think that Palps couldn’t get any more ludicrously evil than in ROTS, but if anyone could find a way to do it, it’d be Jar Jar Abrams.
I’ve come across a few posts from folks who claim that K. W. Jeter’s The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy references the Clone Wars. Specifically, that the majority of Mandalorians disappeared from the known galaxy at the end of the wars, their fleet making a blind hyperspace jump into the unknown. None of them cited their sources, though, which is frustrating.
That’s the coolest idea ever. So naturally, it didn’t happen in any canonical material.
In one of the Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson strips, the builders of the Massassi Temples were shown to have left Yavin IV for another galaxy, leaving the Night Beast behind in stasis. As TOTJ would later reveal, the Night Beast was a mutated Massassi warrior created by Exar Kun, meaning it was his Sith followers who left for another galaxy. I can easily imagine these Mandalorian refugees ended up fleeing to that very same galaxy and encountering the descendants of Kun’s Sith, perhaps joining forces.
So many possibilities, and we end up with Jar Jar Binks and Leia Poppins.
We need a sequel to The Crystal Star, with Waru returning to the GFFA with an invasion force of fellow Warus seeking to destroy the Force and replace it with the Anti-Force of their universe to facilitate colonization. Use the opportunity to introduce the greater SW Multiverse, with an entire fleet of Death Stars, Darksabers, Starkiller Bases, and Suncrushers gathered from every timeline to fight the extradimensional slabs of giant scaled meat.
(jk – or am I?)
I think the terms “light side/dark side” create confusion themselves, if we’re to understand the light side as being THE Force and the dark side as misuse/abuse of the Force. Saying the Force has “sides” implies an intrinsic dual nature.
I’m sure you’re aware of this but this is why the term “light side” is never actually used in the movies, original or prequel.
The “good side” is mentioned, though. Semantics? You be the judge. I still think use of “dark side” is a misnomer if the Force isn’t meant to be analogous to Yin/Yang. Lucas could’ve found a better way to describe the opposing philosophies of the Jedi/Sith.
I think the terms “light side/dark side” create confusion themselves, if we’re to understand the light side as being THE Force and the dark side as misuse/abuse of the Force. Saying the Force has “sides” implies an intrinsic dual nature.
These are some cool ideas I might incorporate in my Prequel rewrite.
Owen was Obi-Wan’s brother.
Then why does Owen hate Obi-Wan so much?
Resentment over Ben leaving the family to become a Jedi + blame for Anakin’s death/fall (whichever Owen believed to be the case) + jealousy, perhaps?
Vader was already in the suit when the Empire began, he rose the through the ranks as damaged goods (mainly through being Tarkin’s henchman).
When did the Empire begin? What put him in the suit before he fought Obi-Wan?
In Heir to the Empire, Pellaeon muses on having served in the Imperial Starfleet for fifty years. 9 ABY - 50 years = 41 BBY, if we assume Pellaeon wasn’t also including time spent in the Republic Starfleet.
As for Vader being in the armour by 35 BBY, I don’t believe this is necessarily the case. The most which can be said with certainty is that he’d assumed the identity of Vader by that time, but the injuries which put him in the suit could’ve still occurred later.
I mean i’m glad the Old EU Aka Legends has been left alone they haven’t gone back and given darth names to all the non Darth Sith Lords, or retroactively gave them all red lightsabers. And they didn’t edit the timeline or backstory Zahn had in his trilogy about the old Empire, the Clone Wars, they didn’t correct the ideas of the Jedi pre prequel to homogenize them with Lucas.
Well, not in those original stories, thankfully. Didn’t prevent them from, say, homogenizing the lightsabers of all prequel-era Jedi into single shades of blue/green even when they’d been depicted with other hues beforehand, the Dark Woman being the most egregious example.
I’ve come across a few posts from folks who claim that K. W. Jeter’s The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy references the Clone Wars. Specifically, that the majority of Mandalorians disappeared from the known galaxy at the end of the wars, their fleet making a blind hyperspace jump into the unknown. None of them cited their sources, though, which is frustrating.
From the Dark Empire Sourcebook:
Damn, that’s at least two generations of Boda women getting away with having children and raising them as Jedi with the Council being none the wiser. How did they ever manage, lol.
I think the notion of gray Jedi can work – if such characters are clearly portrayed as antiheroes/antivillains with questionable morality.
If that’s a temporary state. Eventually you should have to pick a side, because that’s how the dark side works.
I mostly agree. Guess it all boils down to what picking the dark side entails. I’m not a fan of every darksider being a 2-dimensional sociopath who craves UNLIMITED POWA!!! for the sake of UNLIMITED POWA!!!
This character, andyvotty, has links to spam inserted in both their posts:
I’ve reported both, but the mods haven’t seemed to have taken notice.
I think the notion of gray Jedi can work – if such characters are clearly portrayed as antiheroes/antivillains with questionable morality.
I’d like to suggest Storyteller from Star Wars Tales #19. It came out in like '05 or so but has no prequel references whatsoever and it’s just a neat little story anyway. (I recommend it to everyone who sees this comment!)
Yeah, it’s a neat coda to the SW Universe. I generally eschew 1999+ EU, mainly because it’s a headache trying to parse through it, but there’re quite a few Tales stories which can slot in my canon with no problem.
In A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Second Edition, Ben and Anakin’s birth years are given as 60 BBY and 55 BBY, respectively. That would’ve made them twenty-five and twenty in 35 BBY, the year given as the end date for the Clone Wars. Though who can say what Lucas had in mind in 1977. Ben may’ve been in his nineties or even older, given some of the dialogue.
Well, completely ignoring the PT, I get the following.
Luke. In ANH we find that Vader hunted down the Jedi. Luke’s father died (in ANH there is nothing linking Anakin and Vader). So we can come to the conclusion that the events where the Empire rose were not earlier than Luke’s conception. Anakin knew of Luke’s at least impending birth before he died.
Leia. Kenobi severed her father in the Clone Wars. This doesn’t tie specifically to Leia’s age, but does pin down her father being of the generation of the Clone Wars.
Kenobi. He speaks of the Jedi, before the Empire, before the Dark times. There is no clear link between what he says and the Clone Wars, only that he and Anakin both fought in the Clone Wars. So Kenobi, Anakin, and Leia’s father were all in the clone wars in some capacity.
All of that agrees with the PT.
In TESB we get a more firm timetable of the Empire with Vader being Luke’s father. We do hear Luke thinking Dagobah is very familiar, but we don’t get any reason why. From the context of the film it was most likely a force vision.
In ROTJ we find out that Luke and Leia are twins. This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.
We still have no indication of when the Clone Wars took place. It could be a month before or a decade before.
From the actors it is also hard to guess. Alec Guiness was was 63 when ANH was released. Sebastian Shaw (true he wasn’t cast yet) was almost 72. Phil Brown was 61 and Shelagh Fraser was 56. So Alec, Phil, and Shelagh were contemporaries and from the dialog in ANH, Sebastian was cast to show how the Dark Side had aged and warped him. Anakin was Kenobi’s student. When you look at the ages in Attack of the Clones, the relative ages of Kenobi, Owen and Beru are not that different, 31, 27, and 18) from the ANH cast (63, 61, 56 about 30 years older). So Anakin was young enough for Kenobi to train (also remember that Yoda said Luke was too old in TESB, so Anakin would be younger than Luke… by a lot). So Sebastian’s advanced age much have had a reason beyond Anakin actually being older than Kenobi.
So from the casting and the dialog just in the OT, the Clone Wars had to have taken place somewhere between 30 and 20 years before ANH. Officially it was 22-19 years before. So all the timings of the PT fit with what we see in the OT, except the age of the actors. But there is also nothing in the movies indicating how long the Clone Wars lasted so adding in another 5 to 10 years of war doesn’t break anything. Also, Ahsoka appears to have grown up considerably more than 3 years, and she is introduced when the Clone Wars are well underway (Anakin was still a Padawn when they started). So the official timeline seems too short and doesn’t really fit with the ages of the actors cast in both the OT and PT.
As a side note, Jimmy Smits was much older than the others in AOTC, but he was contemporary by the time he appeared in Rogue One (he was 61 when it was released).
^ based on the above ,an idea popped in my head …it seems logical to me that Anakin should have been 15 years old at the start of the prequel trilogy . That would have made him fairly substantially younger than Luke at the start of his journey in the OT , without straying into the kiddie territory with Anakin being 9 years old in episode 1 as released . I wonder if Lucas had the thought that making Anakin 15 at the start of the PT would be straying too close to Dune ,what with Paul Atreides being 15 in the first book and being part of a chosen one prophecy in the sense of Paul being a prophecized messiah . Maybe he realized how much he borrowed from Dune in the OT already ( among many other sources ) , looked over at his son who was a toddler at the time , and decided on placing Anakin at 9 years old as a happy medium between 9 and 15 so that it wouldn’t be too on the nose derivative of Dune . Probably a stretch ,but I find it fun to think about . I would still like to have had Anakin start out at 15 in episode one anyway . I vote 30 to 25 years before ANH as the start date of the Empire .
I recall reading an interview where Lucas said he initially planned to make Anakin 12, but bumped it down to 9 to make his separation anxiety over Shmi greater.
Alright, I’ve decided to commit myself to a personal canon. God have mercy on my immortal soul.
There’re various & sundry other stories in the pre-1999 EU that are compatible with my personal canon, but I exclude them for the sake of brevity.