For more than three-and-a-half decades hundreds
of writers and artists expanded the Star Wars universe beyond the
story told by George Lucas in Episodes I thru VI. However with the
very real possibility that Episode VII would undo that Expanded
Universe, especially in the period after Return of the Jedi,
Lucasfilm announced on
25th April 2014 that all previous Expanded
Universe stories would now be known
as Star Wars Legends. In essence Legends stories now have a
non-canonical status within the Star Wars universe meaning that
their stories may or may not have happened. From that date, all
new stories, approved by the Lucasfilm
Story Group, and including Episodes I thru VI and The Clone
Wars film and TV series ("the immovable objects of Star
Wars history"), now form a new, official continuity - what this
website terms the Star Wars Saga*.
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This means that
there are now two Star Wars timelines or chronologies. The first is
the official continuity: those stories approved by the Story Group. At present it
primarily consists of visual material: namely the seven films; The Clone
Wars movie and it's six season TV series; and Star Wars
Rebels TV episodes. The second is the
Legends timeline. Since the official continuity only
constitutes stories told between The Phantom Menace (32 years
before Episode IV: A New Hope) and The Force Awakens
(34 years after) its chronology is just 66 years long. By comparison, after
37 years and around 700 published stories and with stories set as far
apart as 25,000 years before the Battle of Yavin (the destruction of
the first Death Star in Episode IV: A New Hope) to almost 140
years after it. As such, the Legends timeline is
subdivided into Eras of Adventure to make it
more manageable. |