One of the founding hypotheses of this website is that even in a post-reboot landscape, readers of the Expanded Universe are uniquely positioned to recognize the pitfalls and possibilities of continuing the main story of Star Wars beyond Return of the Jedi—and that understanding that landscape makes our insight valuable in the Sequel Era even if our beloved stories no longer “happened”. As staff writer Alexander Gaultier put it in the first of his six-part series A Case for Starting Over:
“…it is beyond any doubt that the galaxy far, far away will have undergone a great number of significant changes [in the thirty years since Jedi]. The Rebel Alliance will likely have restored the Galactic Republic, or at least founded a successor state of their own. Luke will have reestablished the fabled Jedi Order and begun training a new generation of Jedi Knights. Our heroes will have children, who now go on to face their own challenges. All these things have occurred at one point or another in the Expanded Universe that has been growing since the day A New Hope was released.”
Over the following several months, Alexander would break down the framework of the EU from many different angles, highlighting what worked, analyzing what didn’t, and suggesting all sorts of new avenues by which we might at arrive at even the most foregone of conclusions. He added:
“Given the complicated nature of the early development of the Expanded Universe, I don’t think its vision of the galaxy after Return of the Jedi is a bad one. I do, however, believe that we are fully capable of doing better, and that the sequel trilogy offers us the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that.”
Each part of the series can be reached below, or you can click the link at the top of this post to view the entire category.
