Star Wars’ “Legends” Rebrand Was A Mistake – But We Know What Way Would Have Worked

The Star Wars franchise underwent a partial reboot a decade ago, with most of its material being rebranded with a new designation that does a disservice to the older properties. Since its 1977 debut, Star Wars has been a transmedia franchise, with its initial movie – now known as A New Hope – being adapted to print form and growing the Star Wars universe with original stories shortly after the film’s release. The plethora of comic books, novels, video games, TV shows, and even spin-off movies comprised what was once called the Expanded Universe, which has since been renamed Legends.

The Legends continuity includes nearly all Star Wars content from 1977 to April 2014, with a few exceptions. The 2008 TV show Star Wars: The Clone Wars was not intended by showrunner Dave Filoni to fit into the established Expanded Universe continuity, but it is a key part of the modern Star Wars canon and thus should be considered exclusive to it. The Star Wars original and prequel trilogies are part of both timelines and a few properties released after April 2014 are part of the Legends continuity, such as the 108th issue of Marvel’s classic Star Wars comics.

Why Lucasfilm Chose To Rebrand The Expanded Universe As “Legends”

The Rebranding Allowed The Sequel Trilogy & Future Stories To Have More Freedom

Although George Lucas treated the Star Wars franchise’s non-movie material inconsistently, Lucasfilm executives and creatives established quite definitively that the Expanded Universe was officially canon. Creative teams ensured that their works aligned with the movies and used retcons to smooth out continuity errors, striving to make every property count as much as the six saga movies themselves. Two years after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, however, the recently established Lucasfilm Story Group opted to relegate the Expanded Universe to an alternate timeline to maximize the sequel trilogy’s creative freedom during its development.

On April 25th, 2014, the Expanded Universe was officially renamed “Legends.” Re-releases of old Expanded Universe properties – particularly books – would include a Legends banner, and new materials in the Legends continuity have been few and far between since the rebranding. Lucasfilm seemingly chose the name Legends as the Expanded Universe’s new designation to allow for a degree of wiggle room in the modern canon, with viewers and creators preserving elements of the previous timeline when they could (or wanted to). Indeed, Legends has often inspired elements of modern Star Wars canon materials.

“Legends” Became An Insult To The Old Expanded Universe

The Term Reduces These Stories To Nothing More Than Folklore

Unfortunately, naming the previous continuity “Legends” and referring to the newer one as “canon” is intrinsically disrespectful to what was once the official Star Wars timeline. The name Legends can reduce the Expanded Universe stories and lore to in-universe folktales and reframe the decades of material as never having mattered to the franchise in the first place. This might not have been Lucasfilm’s intention, however, as the term Legends also allows creators, viewers, and readers to cherry-pick their favorite parts from the original continuity and perceive them as being part of the modern timeline, if they are not contradicted.

Whatever the intentions might have been, the new names, ultimately, do a disservice to the Star Wars franchise. By calling the Expanded Universe “Legends,” the franchise knocks the old continuity down a peg to prop up the new one, only to import story beats, concepts, planets, and even characters from the now-bygone continuity. Meanwhile, Legends kept an overall tidier continuity in 37 years than the modern canon has in a decade, though the modern continuity is far more mainstream and recognized, thanks to higher-profile properties like the sequel trilogy and Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian.

Star Wars Needed To Take A Leaf From DC & Marvel

A New Continuity Could Have Been Started Without A Name Change

In hindsight, Lucasfilm should have taken a different approach to the Star Wars franchise’s partial continuity reboot. The DC and Marvel comic franchises frequently establish new continuities and regularly have partial or complete reboots in the former’s case. Yet DC and Marvel’s older continuities are never given disparaging new titles. Silver Age DC stories were part of “Earth-One” while their Golden Age predecessors were part of “Earth-Two,” and while the former was the new mainstream DC Universe, there was no revisionist view of DC that treated the latter like it never mattered because both continuities are legitimate.

In the Star Wars franchise’s case, the two timelines should have been treated the same way. Both canon and Legends are equally legitimate continuities, with the latter having been the official canon before 2014’s partial reboot. Rather than give the old Expanded Universe a new name that intrinsically labels it as inferior, Lucasfilm should have given the two timelines designations akin to DC’s Earth-One and Earth-Two, acknowledging and honoring both the older Star Wars timeline and its modern successor.

All Star Wars movies and TV shows are available to stream on Disney+