The Expanded Universe Explains
Reboot or no reboot, this site is founded in part on the premise that the Expanded Universe, by dint of breadth and longevity, represents a master class in the Star Wars universe, and the different things that can be done within it. To that end, my series The Expanded Universe Explains is meant to serve as a chronicle of the EU’s answers to many frequently-asked questions from casual fans—many of which came straight from my friend Pearl. In the wake of the Legends announcement, latter-day entries have begun to focus on individual throwaway references in the films that the EU subsequently explained in multiple, usually contradictory, ways; earlier entries tended to jump around a lot, so for ease of navigation, I’ve included sample questions in the list below.
- Vol. I – How do lightsabers work?
- Vol. II – Where did the Millennium Falcon come from?
- Vol. III – What if Luke died or turned evil on the Death Star?
- Vol. IV – Rebels Edition – Are stormtroopers clones?
- Vol. V – What happened to the Imperials at Endor?
- Vol. VI – Did Vader let Luke go at Cloud City?
- Vol. VII – What’s Artoo-Detoo’s backstory?
- Vol. VIII – Han and Lando
- Vol. IX – The Shuttle Tydirium
The Minority Report
Diversity in Star Wars (both human and alien) has always been an important subject to me. While the first year or so of ETE diversity pieces ran the gamut from Michael Lind’s exhaustive Go Figure articles to one-off opinion pieces like this one on the cast of Rebels, once the reboot wiped the slate of canon characters all but clean, it seemed like a good opportunity to start fresh and rebuild the diversity status quo—what’s going well, what could be improved, etc—from the ground up; thus was born The Minority Report, which from now on will function less as a cohesive series and more as a catch-all for our assorted ruminations on the subject, somewhat akin to So You Think You Can Internet.
The Pitch
The only true group series in our bag of tricks, The Pitch was born from our Not A Committee format; basically, group pieces revolving around a single question or topic. Many are more general, but often the “question” would be along the lines of “describe a book/comic/premise/whatever you’d like to see”, and those formed this series. While bordering on fannish, I admit, Pitch pieces are some of my favorite things to coordinate with the staff writers; it’s a great way to keep people involved even when they don’t have time for longer pieces, and it’s always exciting to see what they come up with. We’ve got an especially entertaining one coming next week, in fact.
- Novels Humbly Requested by Eleven-ThirtyEight
- Darth Vader TV Specials
- We Fancast Episode VII For You—Deal With it
- Walking the Razor’s Edge – The Staff Revisits Infinities
- According to My Design – The Staff Re-Revisits Infinities
- Marvel Star Wars, The Next Generation
- Rebels Bottle Episodes
- Hire These Women
That’ll do it for today; Merry Christmas if that’s your bag, and be sure to come back tomorrow, when I bring this thing in for a landing with perhaps our most successful series of all, What Star Wars Can Learn From.
