Star Wars Canon

Introduction

The Star Wars canon is a pretty expansive topic due to the franchise switching owners and each owners having different definitions of canon. The following page will be discussing how the Star Wars canon fits and works.

The Pillars

The pillars of canon were something originally used for Star Wars before Disney acquired the series.

The Original Pillar

The Original Star Wars Universe

• G-Canon: George Lucas canon. This is the canon of the series that overrides all other tiers of canon, with the exception of Orwellian retcons such as Han Shot First, it cannot be contradicted or retconned by any other form of canon. The media featured in G-Canon would be the original six films, Star Wars: Episode I - Episode VI, as well as their novelizations.

• T-Canon: Television show canon. This is the canon of the series second only to G-Canon, which can only be overridden by it. George Lucas is directly involved in this tier of canon, and thus it is most closely tied to his original works. This includes only the television show, The Clone Wars (2008)

G-Canon and T-Canon are consistently noted in interviews and by George Lucas himself to be both of the canons he envisions as the canon form of Star Wars:

"T-canon in its entirety is not supposed to be considered part of the EU pillar, but part of the Lucas pillar."

"The clarify this point just a little bit further, The Clone Wars will not be considered Expanded Universe. They'll be ranked up there with The Movies."

"The three pillars that George Lucas refers to has a first pillar that is the part of the Star Wars universe that George follows and has direct control over, namely the movies and the television series. The second pillar includes the portions of the Star Wars universe created by Lucas Licensing that includes the videogames, books, and toys that George exhibits less direct control over. Both the first and second pillars are treated as official Star Wars continuity. The third pillar is anything generated by the fans, referred to by some as fanon (short for fan canon)."

"I am the father of our Star Wars movie world - the filmed entertainment, the features and now the animated film and television series. And I'm going to do a live-action television series. Those are all things am very involved in. I set them up and I train the people and I go through them all. I am the father that's my work. Then we have the licensing group, which does the games, toys and books and all that other stuff. I call that the son - and the son does pretty much what he wants. Once in a while, they ask a question like "Can we kill off Yoda?" Things like that but it's very loose. Then we have the third group, the holy ghost, which is the bloggers and fans. They have created their own world. I worry about the father's world. The son and the holy ghost can go their own way.

Interviewer: "Do you consider "The Clone Wars" canon or part of the Expanded Universe? Is the old Cartoon Network show canon? How do the two relate and where do the two series fit in the Star Wars Universe?"

Filoni: "That's one of the biggest debates in Star Wars, what counts? The idea of what is canon? When I talk to George I know that he considers his movies, this series and his live-action series canon. And yet as a fan, I bring him a lot of information that is in the Expanded Universe and say, well this was done and this was done too. I get that information in front of him to see how he wants to use it or review it. I'll try to add little touches and things that I know that the fans that are well versed in the Expanded Universe will know; what we can work in from the Expanded Universe really does gel. But there's never an implicit connection between the micro-series that Cartoon Network did previously and the series that we're doing now. I personally as a fan never think of it as discrediting any of the other material, it's just that other material is from a different point of view, a different look at the war and take on the war. It's an ever-Expanding Universe in a lot of ways."

"We could come up with ideas and present them to him immediately, so there was no concern as to whether or not it "was" Star Wars. This series at least to George is NOT EU, it is a part of Star Wars as he sees it. I think if anything there was a period where Henry and I had to learn exactly what it took to be a part of George Lucas' Star Wars, and tell the Star Wars story his way. We had to learn how to look at the Galaxy from his point of view and let go of some of what we considered canon after we found out the ideas were only EU. Really we had to "unlearn what we had learned" and go back to the movies as the defining source material."

"I haven't limited myself with what stories I've wanted to tell; this is Star Wars, and I don't make a distinction between the series and the films. It's just a different format and a different delivery. But the fact of the matter is that our improved processes for the stories have allowed us to tell consistently bigger stories. Our teams are constantly pushing the envelope, so that the standard keeps raising itself higher and higher. And we keep asking for more than can be delivered, so we're always reaching and the show is always improving. Each week is a Star Wars feature, boiled down to 22 minutes."

"G' canon and 'T' canon comprise George Lucas's vision of the Star Wars universe. 'C' canon and 'S' canon comprise the vision of the Star Wars universe held by Lucas Licensing that goes beyond George Lucas's vision. This material is collectively referred to as the Expanded Universe."

"Common questions are: How "real" are these stories? Do they count? Did they really happen?"

"The most definitive canon of the Star Wars universe is encompassed by the feature films and television productions in which George Lucas is directly involved. The movies and the Clone Wars television series are what he and his handpicked writers reference when adding cinematic adventures to the Star Wars oeuvre."

"But Lucas allows for an Expanded Universe that exist parallel to the one he directly oversees. In many cases, the stewards of the Expanded Universe—editors within the licensing division of Lucasfilm Ltd. who works with authors and publishers—will ask for his input or blessing on projects. Though these stories may get his stamp of approval, they don't enter his canon unless they are depicted cinematically in one of his projects."

The Expanded Star Wars Universe

• C-Canon: Continuity canon, or Extended Universe (Legends) canon. This is the canon of the series below the projects worked on by George Lucas, and has thus been stated by him to have taken place in an alternate, parallel universe. This covers all content written as continuations of the original story without Lucas involved, such as Dark Empire, the Thrawn Trilogy, and some video games, such as The Force Unleashed. It also notably includes the television shorts, Clone Wars (2003)

• S-Canon: Secondary canon. This canon is, aside from the non-canon material, the least authoritative pieces of material that cannot override or retcon anything above it. This includes much of the older non-Lucas content, such as the Marvel Star Wars comics.

The C-Canon and S-Canon are merged together to form the "Second pillar" in many cases, officially being referred to as the "Expanded Universe", later being called "Legends" by the Disney Canon:

"G' canon and 'T' canon comprise George Lucas's vision of the Star Wars universe. 'C' canon and 'S' canon comprise the vision of the Star Wars universe held by Lucas Licensing that goes beyond George Lucas's vision. This material is collectively referred to as the Expanded Universe."

Fanon Pillar

• N-Canon: Non-Canon. This is all material that holds no authority in the series whatsoever, usually being spin-offs, adaptations, or what-if series. This content contains a wide variety of material, from the LEGO games, to toys, to what-if endings in video games, to the Infinities comics. It also is said to include fanfiction, which shows how low of a canon this is.

• P-Canon: Prototype canon. These are stories from early draft, conceptualized or unpublished versions of Star Wars, that are made by the employers with its IP, with George Lucas's early drafts for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope being prime examples of this named as The Star Wars. These also include early concepts of stories for comics, novels and games during the writing process. It should be noted that this canon isn't singular, due to having multiple stories that exist as its own prototype for the official story to be established.

Both of these are purely fanon pillars, neither is a singular "canon" universe but rather myriads of different continuities that don't connect.

Outside the Pillar

Disney Pillar

• Disney Canon: Disney canon. This is all material created after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and the Star Wars brand in 2012, where the company stripped all other material from their canon and built things from the ground up. This contains all material made after 2012, such as the Star Wars: Episode VII-IX, the Star Wars Story films, the newer Star Wars video games, as well as some television shows like Kenobi, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett.

The Disney Pillar falls outside of the other forms of canon tiers within Star Wars as they created their canon and removed the canon tiers, referring to anything not deemed to them as canon as "Legends".

The canon before Disney's acquisition was split into 5 separate levels, though some of the levels are combined to form their canon universe.

Conclusion

The Star Wars canon has been shifted a lot over the years, but this is the most current version of the Star Wars continuity.