The common theory when Lucasfilm decided to turn “The Expanded Universe” into “Legends’ and write their own future was to make ‘Star Wars’ into a new blockbuster cinematic franchise. That seems to be working though we’ve just learned from an insider to the company that isn’t why it actually happened! In fact, the main reason for the Extended Universe being sidelined seems to fully have to do with Chewbacca being killed in the books.
The news came from Leland Chee who runs ‘The Holocron’ which is Lucasfilm’s ‘official “Wookieepedia”.’ He shared the following in a recent interview:
“For me, it came down to simply that we had killed Chewbacca in the Legends — a big moon had fallen on him. Part of that [original decision] was Chewbacca because he can’t speak and just speaks in growls, he was a challenging character to write for in novels. Publishing had decided they needed to kill somebody, and it was Chewbacca.
But if you have the opportunity to bring back Chewbacca into a live action film, you’re not gonna deprive fans that. There’s no way that I’d want to do an Episode VII that didn’t have Chewbacca in it and have to explain that Chewbacca had a moon fall on his head. And if we were going to overturn a monumental decision like that, everything else was really just minor in comparison.”
I mean, we all know that other reasons came into play which were mentioned above. However, it is interesting to find out more of the reasons which the creative team pushed for this to happen. Of course, this does mean that instead of losing Chewy, we lost Han Solo, so it is hard to say which loss was more significant to fans.
Do you feel that bringing Chewy back from the dead was enough of a reason to push ending the continuity of “The Expanded Universe”? Were the “Legends” the real deal for you or are you happy to see new stories being told both on the page and on the big screen? Share your thoughts below!
