George Lucas may have created Star Wars, but there are plenty of elements dreamed up by others for books, games, comics, and more that Lucas decided to incorporate into official Star Wars canon. Wondering what parts of Star Wars didn’t come from him?
“Canon,” in case you’re not familiar with the term, refers to the farthest extreme on the spectrum of how official or accepted a piece of fiction is. Fanfic would be considered extremely unofficial, while Star Wars: A New Hope is 100% canon. It is accepted by the author or creator as an authentic part of his or her story or universe. The Expanded Universe, aka the EU, lands somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
George Lucas’ own definition has long been that the films are canon, TV shows and movies and a few video games are semi-canon, and all other media (books, comics, etc.) are apocryphal. They might be accepted in “broad strokes,” but the film series is not beholden to apocryphal creations, and is free to contradict the books and comics and whatever else anytime (which creates all sorts of continuity issues for the EU).
For purposes of this article, I’m choosing to accept both the films and The Clone Wars TV series as canon, because both were made with Lucas’ direct involvement. There are other sources that could questionably be counted as canon, if we accept this rule universally, like those godawful Ewok TV films. But not everything with Lucas’ fingerprints on it is accepted as canon, nor should it be. Star Wars Holiday Special: enough said?
1. Coruscant
The first time the Republic/Empire capitol was seen or mentioned on film or TV was in 1999’s The Phantom Menace. But this wasn’t what George Lucas ever intended for the galactic capitol to be called. As far back as early drafts of Return of the Jedi, Lucas wanted to call it “Had Abbadon.” But Timothy Zahn’s bestselling Thrawn Trilogy books named the galaxy’s capitol Coruscant, and described it as a city the size of an entire planet, completely covered by layer after layer of technologically-advanced levels. Lucas abandoned his plans for Had Abbadon and decided to use Zahn’s Coruscant idea instead — perhaps due to the popularity of the novels, or maybe he just thought it was a better idea. Who knows.
A few details have emerged about Had Abbadon over the years, and we know now that it would have had some similarities to Coruscant, but ultimately was very different. It was an ancient, volatile world steeped in history and mythology. One legend even claims that the Jedi Order was born on Had Abbadon. (A few of these elements got recycled in recent years when a world called Had Abbadon appeared in a comic book series set one hundred years after the Original Trilogy.)
Lucas’ plan for Had Abbadon included not one but two Death Stars orbiting over it, along with a natural moon. This lush, green moon was called Jus-Endor, but later shortened. That’s right, the “forest moon” Endor was originally meant to orbit the capitol planet. The Emperor’s throne room was way down at the bottom levels of the planet, where it would have been surrounded by a massive lava lake. Luke Skywalker was going to engage in his final duel against his father, Darth Vader, on the shores of this lake. Although these details were changed to make Return of the Jedi more cost-effective, Lucas recycled his lava locale as Mustafar, the setting for Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s fateful duel in Revenge of the Sith.
2. Aurebesh
Never heard of Aurebesh? I hadn’t either, until now. Many Star Wars fans know that the common language spoken across that galaxy far, far away is called Basic. Aurebesh is Basic’s written form. It consists of 34 letters and several punctuation marks. Letters are written backwards to make them capitalized.
The Original Trilogy rarely showed written words, but when it did — such as words appearing on a computer screen — it was a series of random shapes that held no real meaning or translation to English. Aurebesh traces its EU origins to a 1987 guide book for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. West End Games’, the book’s publisher, took the shapes seen on screens in the Original Trilogy and gave them a proper format and assigned English letters and sounds to them.
While this did nothing to make the writings seen in the Original Trilogy films into actual words, Aurebesh became canon when Lucas employed it first in the Prequel Trilogy, and then in the DVD Special Editions of the Original Trilogy. It’s been seen countless times in the The Clone Wars, video games, and comic books, too.
3. The 501st Legion
Quite possibly the world’s biggest fan organization, the 501st Legion is a group of Star Wars fans who enjoy cosplaying as bad guys from the Star Wars universe, most notably Stormtroopers. They appear frequently at Star Wars-themed public events, conventions, and charities. Charity work is one of their most important functions, as they help out numerous childrens’ charity organizations year round.
The 501st was founded by a man named Albin Johnson in 1997. Seven years later, Timothy Zahn honored them in his Star Wars novel, Survivor’s Quest. They also played a lead role in the bestselling video game, Star Wars: Battlefront II. But their true canonization came in 2004’s Revenge of the Sith. Their battalion name was never spoken in the film, but all marketing materials, credits, toys, etc. referred to the troop of Clone Troopers that assisted Anakin Skywalker in his raid on the Jedi Temple as the 501st.
Since then, the 501st has appeared in comics, video games, and The Clone Wars TV series.
4. Quinlan Vos
The EU has this tendency to take every teeny, tiny element from the films — be it a planet, a weapon, a vehicle, or as in this case, a character — and create elaborate stories out them that explain who or what they are. Sometimes this leads to some insanely dumb stuff, but sometimes it works out better.
In the case of Quinlan Vos, the latter seems to be the case. Vos’ very first appearance was actually in The Phantom Menace, though he was nothing but an outdoor extra in Tattooine’s Mos Espa — an extra that most viewers probably didn’t even notice. A year later, writer John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema debuted Vos in their Star Wars: Republic comic book series. Having scoured The Phantom Menace for a background character they could use, they sought Lucas’ approval to use an extra from the film with dark dreadlocks and a yellow stripe running across his eyes and face, and they got it.
They christened him Quinlan Vos and created his entire character, debuting him in issue #19 of their comic book series. He had quite the tumultuous start, too: he awoke with no memory of who he was. Ostrander and Duursema made him a Jedi Knight (though his presence on Tattooine at the same time as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn has never been explained), albeit one who occasionally dabbles in the Dark Side.
After the character gained popularity among fans, appearing in numerous comic books beyond his lengthy run in Republic, George Lucas took a shine to the character and canonized him by writing him into Revenge of the Sith, though his scene was cut in rewrites. But his name, “Master Vos,” is still mentioned by Obi-Wan in the film’s dialogue.
Vos later appeared on screen in 2010, in a Season 3 episode of The Clone Wars, fighting alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi during a manhunt for the abysmal Ziro the Hutt.
5. The Nightsisters of Dathomir
The Nightsisters are a coven of witches who tap into the Dark Side of the Force to power their magic, and they come from a world named Dathomir. Both Dathomir and the Nightsisters debuted in Dave Wolverton’s 1994 novel, The Courtship of Princess Leia, though at the time, the Nightsisters were known only as the Witches of Dathomir.
The Nightsisters went on to appear in numerous comic books and novels, though their primary canonical appearance comes from multiple episodes of The Clone Wars, where it was revealed that Dark Side assassin Asajj Ventress was born into their order, though her life took some unfortunate detours after a series of tragedies.
Their home world Dathomir eventually went on to take on added significance when The Clone Wars revealed that Darth Maul was born on Dathomir as a “Nightbrother,” a group of male Zabrak warrior slaves bred and kept by the Nightsisters.
6. Level 1313
This waaaaay deep-below-the-surface level of Coruscant traces its influences all the way back to Star Wars: Underworld, the live-action TV series George Lucas has wanted to produce for years (but hasn’t been able to due to its expectedly hefty budget). We have no idea if 1313 itself was included in that series pitch by name; I think it’s most likely it wasn’t.
But after years of the series never getting off the ground (or above it, har-har), Lucasarts co-opted the “criminal underworld of Coruscant” idea into a video game they called Star Wars: 1313. This was the first time Level 1313 was mentioned by name, and it was designated as the center of Star Wars‘ various criminal empires. The game got pretty far along in development — even appearing at last year’s E3 to tantalize us with some killer graphics and gameplay — but Lucasarts was sold to Disney as part of the Lucasfilm sale late last year, and Star Wars: 1313 was canceled. But the story doesn’t end here.
Thanks to a little inter-office synergy, Level 1313 was canonized long before the game was ever intended to arrive. The final story arc of the last season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars featured Jedi Ahsoka Tano falsely accused of bombing the Jedi Temple and on the run as a fugitive. During one episode of this story arc, Ahsoka escaped to the underbelly of Coruscant while trying to evade the authorities and prove her innocence. Level 1313 was one of the parts of Coruscant she visited — and its design on the show was based on the work done on the game — making this long in-the-works setting a very real part of the Star Wars universe.
7. Aayla Secura
Like Quinlan Vos (see above), Aayla Secura is another EU character later integrated into Lucasfilm canon. Also like Vos, she was created by Star Wars: Republic scribe John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema. She made her mysterious debut just two issues prior to Vos, and was later explained to be his Padawan.
George Lucas is said to have liked the painting of her seen here, by Jon Foster, and he decided to include her in the Geonosis battle sequence in Attack of the Clones. She went on to appear in Revenge of the Sith, where she met her untimely demise on Felucia when Order 66 was given. She has appeared in comic books, video games, and The Clone Wars TV series.
8. Force Speed and Force Grip
Force Speed debuted in West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, but it made its real debut in Star Wars continuity as part of the 1997 video game Star Wars: Dark Forces II – Jedi Knight. Likewise, Jedi Knight also birthed the Force Grip power, where victims are not only choked but also suspended from the ground.
George Lucas canonized Force Speed by having Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn use it in an early scene in The Phantom Menace, enabling them to escape from Destroyer Droids. Force Grip first appeared in the Star Wars universe proper when Count Dooku used it to lift Obi-Wan Kenobi into the air and choke him in Revenge of the Sith.
9. Rishi
Timothy Zahn’s second Thrawn novel, Dark Force Rising, introduced the planet Rishi as a new base of operations for smuggler Talon Karrde and his second-in-command, Mara Jade.
Attack of the Clones canonized Rishi by setting the oceanic world Kamino near an area of space called the “Rishi Maze.” Though the movie never explained what the Rishi Maze is, we know now that it’s a small, satellite galaxy orbiting the primary Star Wars galaxy, and that several inhabited worlds exist there, including Rishi itself, the planet for which it is named.
If nothing else, all this proves that George Lucas isn’t opposed to borrowing from the EU for the storyline of the upcoming Episode VII.
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Loved the article, except for one very small detail of grammar: in the section dealing with Coruscant, the author refers to the planet as the empire’s “capitol” several times. The problem is that “capitol” is a building in Washington D.C. where the U.S. congress meets, not the city or region where the seat of government of a region or country is located. That last one would be a “capital”, as in “London is the capital of England.” I know… it’s a small and pedantic observation, but true nonetheless.
HK-47 needs to be canonized. Just saying!
I want to point out that, although he didn’t lift his victim off the ground, Vader uses the force grip in the opening scenes of A New Hope. That was a Lucas creation, re-vamped by EU, then accepted back into cannon.
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“There’s this notion that everything changed when everything became Legends.
And I can see why people think that. But, you know, having worked with George I can tell you that it was always very clear — and he made it very clear — that the films and the TV shows were the only things that he considered Canon. That was it.”
Dave Filoni interview on ‘The Star Wars show’ [41.40 mark]-
https://youtu.be/hcNXPNXOv2A?t=2500
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“I get asked all the time, ‘What happens after “Return of the Jedi”?,’ and there really is no answer for that,” he said. “The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that’s where that story ends.””
– George Lucas, Flannelled One, May 2008, “George Lucas: ‘Star Wars’ won’t go beyond Darth Vader”, interview with Los Angeles Times
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“And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn’t at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, the Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get married.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, 2008
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”The novels and comic books are other authors’ interpretations of my creation. Sometimes, I tell them what they can and cant do, but I just don’t have the time to read them. They’re not my vision of what Star Wars is.”
~ George Lucas 2004
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“I like to refer to the Interview with Lucas in the Special Editions.When asked about the novels and what not, he simply says:
”Those are another author’s interpretation of what I’ve created, and not to be taken seriously, as far as what is really going on in the Star Wars world.”
~ George Lucas
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“I don’t read that stuff, I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try and keep it consistent. The way I do it is they have a Star Wars encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it and see if it has already been used. When I said other people could make thier own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have TWO universes: My Universe and than this other one. They try to make THIER universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”
~ George Lucas, August, 2005
https://ibb.co/Km1CcNs
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“There are two worlds here,” explained Lucas. “There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books.”
~ George Lucas, Cinescape, 2002
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“Q: What do you think of the Expanded Universe of books?
A: “The books are in a different universe. I’ve not read any of them, and I told them when they started writing I wouldn’t read any of them and I blocked out certain periods.”
~ George Lucas 2003
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“Howard Roffman [President of Lucas Licensing], He once said to me that there are two Star Trek universes: there’s the TV show and then there’s all the spin-offs. He said that these were completely different and didn’t have anything to do with each other. So I said, “OK, go ahead.”
~ George Lucas 2008
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“This is Star Wars, and I don’t make a distinction between [The Clone Wars] series and the films.”
~ George Lucas, SciFiNow, October 2011
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“TVGuide: Yet novelists have written “Star Wars” sequels using the same characters and extending their stories.
“Oh, sure. They’re done outside my little universe.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, November 2001 – TV Guide interview
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“Q: Do you supervise the development of all the off-movie stories? After all, Star Wars exists in books, comics.
A: “You know, I try not to think about that. I have my own world in movies and I follow it.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 2002 – From a The Force.Net
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“I’m not going to do it. I’m too old. I’ve got other movies I want to do. And I don’t want anybody else to do it, so I’ve locked it up so Nobody can ever do it. There may be TV offshoots from people, but the saga itself, the story of the Skywalker family, is over!”
~ George Lucas, Entertainment Weekly #785 interview September 24, 2004
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“There is no Episode 7.”, says Lucas. ‘Interviewer interjects “Not even for someone else to come up with’?
“Well its possible that maybe an offshoot movie somewhere, about an offshoot character in that world, but not about Luke Skywalker, not about that group of people [Han, Leia, Chewie, etc.]. Or the struggle to bring back democracy to the Galaxy.”
~ George Lucas Interview, 2005
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“George Lucas says there has never been any war between the Jedi and the Sith in his Star Wars Canon” – An excerpt from StarWars.com‘s oral history of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace:
Everybody said, “Oh, well, there was a war between the Jedi and the Sith.” Well, that never happened. That’s just made up by fans or somebody. What really happened is, the Sith ruled the universe for a while, 2000 years ago. Each Sith has an apprentice, but the problem was, each Sith Lord got to be powerful. And the Sith Lords would try to kill each other because they all wanted to be the most powerful. So in the end they killed each other off, and there wasn’t anything left.
“But anyway, there’s a whole matrix of backstory that has never really come out. It’s really just history that I gathered up along the way. It’s all based on backstories that I’d written setting up what the Jedi were, setting up what the Sith were, setting up what the Empire was, setting up what the Republic was, and how it all fit together I never really got a chance to explain the Whills part.”
‘George Lucas’ vision of the galaxy’s ancient times is clearly different from the Expanded Universe. Many wars between Jedi and Sith in the Old Republic era were told in games, books and comics. The current Lucasfilm’s canon didn’t explore this era yet.’
https://naboonews.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/george-lucas-says-there-has-never-been-any-war-between-the-jedi-and-the-sith-in-his-canon/
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“I don’t even read the offshoot books that come out based on Star Wars.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 1999 – Film Night interview
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Q: Can you quote any good story other than the movies?
A: “No, I don’t think so. (laughs).”
~ George Lucas
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“Q: in that vein, is it possible we’ll see more Star Wars TV product?
A: Because I”m retiring from this part of my creative life, I’m open to more TV Product. but not more feature films. The story is complete and any other story wouldn’t be my philosophy and views, the books are not the same philosophy as the movies.”
~ George Lucas 2003
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“The movies are Gospel, and everything else is Gossip.”
~ George Lucas
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“The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the Expanded Universe influence the movies?
“As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” and that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU.”
– “Marc Xavier”, November 2003, “The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy (report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)
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“So if we’ll never see it onscreen, what does happen to Princess Leia and Han Solo after they fall in love?
”Han and Leia probably did get married,” Lucas conceded. ”They settled down. She became a senator, and they got a nice little house with a white picket fence. Han Solo is out there cooking burgers on the grill. Is that a movie? I don’t think so.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, May 2005 – MTV interview
“That explains the fates of two of the most beloved characters in that galaxy far, far away..”
http://www.mtv.com/news/1501522/what-happened-to-han-and-leia-how-about-jar-jar-star-wars-emperor-lucas-speaks/
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“I feel very satisfied that I have accomplished what I set out to do with ‘Star Wars,’ ” he told CNN. “I was able to complete the entire saga and say this is what the whole story is about.”
– George Lucas, Flannelled One, May 2005, CNN interview
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As far as Coruscant goes, it should be noted that the idea for such a planet existed long before the Star Wars universe. Just as Tatooine is a ripoff of Dune/Arrakis from the Dune novels, Corscant is a ripoff of Trantor from the Foundation novels. – the planet city capitol of the Galactic Empire. oh yeah, the Galactic Empire existed in the Foundation novels too. Just sayin’.
Didn’t Luke use “force speed” to evade the carbon freezing chamber on Bespin during his duel with Vader?
Coruscant was present in the West End Games Star Wars RPG prior to the release of he Thrawn Trilogy. Timothy Zahn was told to use the RPG for source material by Lucas.
R2-KT…. built by the R2 builders group to protect and keep company to Albins daughter katie, who was battling a brain tumor.
sadly she was taken from us on august 9th 2005, but R2-KT has gone on to raise awareness and money for many many charities and has been included in the Star Wars franchise with a role in the clone wars and imortalised in her own hasbro action figure
Good one!
no love for the Rebel Legion? :(
The Rebel Legion wasn’t written into the Star Wars story. I’ve talked to others in the RL about this (I’m a member of both RL and 501st) and said this was at least partially due to the generic name. There already is the Rebel Alliance, so it how would you incorporate a “Rebel Legion” into the story? Whereas the 501st Legion’s backstory of being Vader’s personal legion of troopers (created by Albin Johnson) was easy to incorporate into the story.
Perhaps the Rebel Legion could have been founded by ex-stormtroopers who defected after witnessing Imperial atrocities / war crimes. Storywise it could have its own agenda and leadership separate from the alliance.
Revenge of the Sith was released in 2005, not 2004 as noted in #3.
The role-playing game by West End Games also had a story in one of the sourcebooks, which related the story of Obi-Wan leaving Anakin for dead on the side of a volcano (or volcanic planet – it’s been awhile) after their lightsaber battle. That was at least 8 or 9 years prior to Phantom Menace.
I’m not sure that qualifies… There’s plenty of evidence that Lucas always had a volcanic duel in mind when imagining what turned Anakin into Vader.
in the novelization of IV it mentions that Obi-Wan had badly injured Vader and thrown him into a lava pit or something similar. it’s been decades since I read it, but I clearly remember reading that and it blowing my little mind.
Force grip was canon in The Empire Strikes Back, did you forget Vader throwing force gripped scenery at Luke???
Yes, technically Vader used the Force to grab (or “grip” if you prefer) those items and hurl them at Luke, but that’s not Force Grip by the definition that I mentioned in the article. In this case, “Force Grip” was defined as choking a victim while lifting them up off the ground. We’d seen people Force Choked plenty of times, but never lift them up so they dangled in the air while choking. That particular version came from Jedi Knight the video game, and wasn’t seen on film until Revenge of the Sith.
Force grip did not lift anyone off the ground in DF2 Jedi knight. They remained on the ground. They did not lift off the ground until the next game, Jedi outcast.
I think you’re forgetting about A New Hope. You might want to Google the name “Conan Antonio Motti”.
Also in A New Hope Vader force grips a rebel to get information after boarding the Tantive IV.
That is a manual grip, not a force grip.
I looked up this “manual grip” and found nothing, so therefore, I was correct.
IGNORE ME I’M AN IDIOT! I posted these late at night and I couldn’t remember anything from Star Wars.
Nice article, Robin! Thanks! I’m not here to show how smart/geeky I am, but there’s one instance of the floating force choke that showed up in the video games even earlier than the Dark Forces franchise. At the end of one of the campaigns in Star Wars: TIE Fighter, we get a short scene of Darth Vader getting his hands on a Imperial defector (Harkov) who tried to chip in with the Alliance. I remember as a kid going “Whoa, I didn’t know he could do that.” http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/b/bc/Harkov-ForceCrush-TIEFighter-Cutscene.png
I always thought that the Rishi Maze was like the Maw. Hard to navigate and harder to find. This was where the Empire started construction of the Death Star.
I’ve read before somewhere that the sorceress Charal, who appears in 1985’s “Ewoks: The Battle for Endor” was supposed to have been one of the Witches of Dathomir. It goes unmentioned in the movie itself but if indeed the idea was that she WAS of Dathomir then it shows the visual evolution between then and the Nightsisters appearance on Star Wars/ The Clone Wars.
I read about Charal in my research for this article. Charal appeared in the Ewok movie you mentioned long before the Nightsisters were ever conceived. But apparently Lucasfilm has since retconned her, explaining that she was a Nightsister even if she was never identified as such in that movie.
1. Where did you get the idea that “George Lucas’ own definition has long been that the films are canon, TV shows and movies and a few video games are semi-canon, and all other media (books, comics, etc.) are apocryphal.“
2. Allen, Lucas guided TCW and he and Filoni were very clear on its standing alongside the films. It is inappropriate to ignore that based on your own confusion of role versus rank.
The Clone Wars TV series (the one not made by Genndy Tarkovski) cannot be canon. The series takes place between episodes II and III. In it, Anakin is a master because he has a padawan. However, in episode III, it states, quite clearly, that Anakin is NOT a master.
You don’t have to be a Master to have an padawan. He was only a Jedi Knight during the Clone Wars. Any Knight can have a padawan.
Allen, one can take on a padawan once one has become a Knight. The ranks are as follows; Youngling, Apprentice (basically an older jedi that has never had a teacher choose them), Padawan, Knight, Master… and then we have counsel that you must be a Master to get elected to. The counsel is constantly changing out it’s members and therefore is not integrated in the ranking system.
It is like the Captain of a warship.
Anakin is a master as far as his padawan is concerned but is a knight in rank in the same way that the master of a ship is a Captain when really they could hold any rank from Sub-Lieutenant up through to Captain. Its a courtesy thing.
Mace Windu was a character in the West End Games source book, Galaxy Guide Mos Eisely first, before the Episode One. I believe it is a six year difference.
Mace Windu was the name of the main protagonist – an early version of a Jedi in the very first Draft of “The Star Wars: Adventures of the Starkiller” by George Lucas in the early 1970’s, so he did come up wit that one.
Terry Cooper, you are definitely correct, what Big Mike says is an example of misinformation.