How do you think the stories of Old Republic era characters would change in canon?

[MonkeySage]

One of the big reasons that I feel so resistant to the new canon, other than the very obvious changes made in the new movies, is that many of my favorite stories took place during the old republic era, which is now technically non-canon. This includes one of my favorite characters, Revan.

Should they be reintroduced in the new canon, what changes do you think we could expect to their stories?

[BWR]

The new canon is bad and should be removed, but that doesn't mean everything in the old canon was good. In the case of Revan, KOTOR 1 and 2 were excellent and all the events there should remain canon. The Revanaites on Dromund Kaas, the whole 'free then kill Revan' storyline of the four flashpoints and the Shadow of Revan story arc from SWTOR was pretty lame. Finding out what happened to Revan after KOTOR 1 was fine but they should have left it at that he failed and was killed by Scourge.

[Zevox]

One of the big reasons that I feel so resistant to the new canon, other than the very obvious changes made in the new movies, is that many of my favorite stories took place during the old republic era, which is now technically non-canon. This includes one of my favorite characters, Revan.

Should they be reintroduced in the new canon, what changes do you think we could expect to their stories?
The Old Republic era is ancient history, so I'm fairly sure it could be re-introduced with no changes if the people in charge felt like doing that. Nothing that far back ever had a tangible effect on the movie eras during which basically everything else is set.

If they were going to make changes just for the heck of it, who knows? There's been so many baffling decisions with the new canon that I can't imagine how you'd predict what odd choices they'd make with that.

[Knaight]

There's always the option of blowing off the entire concept of canon entirely. The characters and stories you liked from the old canon don't depend on that canon for quality. Revan is interesting because Revan is interesting, not by some sort of interest-inheritance from totally separate works related by canon. Sure, there's some level of shared setting that they all rely on to some extent, but even that setting doesn't really depend on the canon in any way.

As an example, look at older works. There's no way that a single coherent canon can be made out of the King Arthur legends. They make Star Wars canon at its most convoluted (various ranks that establish how to handle contradictions) look neat and orderly. Yet people still manage to tell stories that pull from those legends and work partially because of familiarity with those legends just fine, with all sorts of different twists.

The same thing applies here. To some extent Star Wars is better understood as a phenomenon with the body of legends model than the coherent canon model. To start with, that means that the whole idea of them "changing" a story or character to fit the new canon is a questionable method of understanding. Instead think of them as a retelling, the same legend as seen by different storytellers. Given that there are multiple new storytellers telling very different styles of stories (Rogue One is not Solo is not Episodes VI or VII) it's hard to predict the changes, though I'd expect drastic trimming of the elements that were basically just there to reference the broader body of canonical* works.

*With all the weaknesses implied by that term as compared to the body of legends model.

[Cikomyr]

I kind of agree there. Star Wars should move away from its "its one big interconnected galaxy" status and embrace a future existence where everything can happen, has happened, will happen.

For an example, make a story about the death of the last jedi at the hands of the Sith. "When is it set?" Who cares? The point is the story, not the story's context within the entire framework.

Feel free to make tales that outright contradict other Star Wars stuff; the crazier the better in the end. Because the more explained and catalogued you make your universe, the less "magical" it turns out to be.

The most detailed event of KOTOR is the game The Old Republic, and there aint no magic there. Its cookie-cutter.

[Reddish Mage]

I kind of agree there. Star Wars should move away from its "its one big interconnected galaxy" status and embrace a future existence where everything can happen, has happened, will happen.

..because that worked out so well for DC.

I don’t think people know where Disney-stuff is going yet with the canon, and you want them to just go with some wild stories that mean nothing and the fandom won’t like just because?

Sounds like an Ewoks movie, they had “magic” in them.

[Knaight]

..because that worked out so well for DC.
It's busy working great for Sherlock Holmes, which has a bunch of different adaptations that all benefit from not being constrained by each other by some sort of centralized canon. Elementary is stronger for not being connected to Sherlock, or the Great Mouse Detective, or whatever else, as are the rest of these disconnected series.


I don’t think people know where Disney-stuff is going yet with the canon, and you want them to just go with some wild stories that mean nothing and the fandom won’t like just because?

Stories don't need to be part of some elaborate continuity to mean something. If anything that elaborate continuity tends to hurt them - there's a reason beyond literary snobbishness that large scale shared universe stories have a tendency not to show up on great-book lists.

[Mechalich]

It's busy working great for Sherlock Holmes, which has a bunch of different adaptations that all benefit from not being constrained by each other by some sort of centralized canon. Elementary is stronger for not being connected to Sherlock, or the Great Mouse Detective, or whatever else, as are the rest of these disconnected series.



Stories don't need to be part of some elaborate continuity to mean something. If anything that elaborate continuity tends to hurt them - there's a reason beyond literary snobbishness that large scale shared universe stories have a tendency not to show up on great-book lists.

Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. Prior to the 20th century there was nothing like modern IP law and essentially everything entered the public domain the moment it was published. Therefore shared-author continuity was impossible.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a single continuity for a universe shared across multiple authors versus having myriad continuities. For a character-based mythos, like Sherlock Holmes, it makes sense to have multiple contuities since you can drop the character into as many situations as you can conceive of. For a setting based mythos, like Star Wars, a single continuity has great benefits because it serves to make the setting stronger and allow stories that would otherwise be marginal to expand on intriguing aspects of the setting. It also makes it easy for the fans to keep the setting straight when there is only a single continuity.

Regardless, Star Wars had a single continuity - what is now labelled Legends - for over three decades. Breaking up that continuity devalues many works within it that relied heavily on elements from outside an individual work - the most obvious example being Crosscurrent, a novel which uses a time-travel-esque device to bring KOTOR Era characters into contact with the post-ROTJ era ones. Having a single continuity allowed for the blending of historical events in a way that otherwise would not work, making entire series like the Legacy comics run possible in a way that they otherwise simply would not have been. Breaking the continuity apart had real artistic consequences for Star Wars, though Disney had legitimate reasons for doing so in order to produce the ST (though they made poor use of the writing freedom they created, seriously, you had Han's son fall to the dark side again?)

At this point the best solution is probably to keep the legends continuity as is - its final story will complete when TOR concludes - with only the first six films and TCW as crossover points and simply build the new canon from there in a new discrete continuity. The damage has, after all, already been done. If they choose to make a new Old Republic era in the new canon they can and should do something completely different than previous material for that era.

[Psyren]

Didn't the new canon bring back Thrawn? I think it's premature to conclude nothing from the old canon is coming back.

[Outrider]

If anything from the old cannon should come back it should be the Old Republic IMO. It has little to no impact on the current era stuff they are doing and could be left as is without changing it. I find the Old Republic much more interesting.

[Xyril]

The Old Republic era is ancient history, so I'm fairly sure it could be re-introduced with no changes if the people in charge felt like doing that. Nothing that far back ever had a tangible effect on the movie eras during which basically everything else is set.


One area where it remains kind of relevant is that some of the Old Republic stuff discusses some of the "science" of the Force in a way that might not be consistent with potential new canon. Then again, there have been inconsistencies within the old EU, and those could probably be explained away by arguing that all of the EU third-person works were non-omniscient and that musings on the Force come almost exclusively in the form of in-universe sources that are themselves imperfect.

There's also one interesting aspect where I've always felt the EU departed from canon in a big way, and the movies later shifted to accommodate canon: Palpatine's xenophobia. In the original trilogy, it never occurred to me that Palpatine was anything less than a true-believer in the Empire's anti-alien, human-supremacist ideology. Maybe there are some details I missed, but I don't recall any hints in the movie that Palpatine was anything short of space-Hitler with magic powers. It wasn't until Zahn and Thrawn that I really considered the possibility that Palpatine might have merely been taking advantage of bigotry among his base, while secretly respecting--and exploiting--the abilities of non-human sentients, and the Old Republic stuff really cemented the fact that human-supremacy was not a Sith value by presenting the non-human origins of the Sith. Whatever else was wrong with the prequel trilogies, it did a great job bringing movie canon in line with what had developed in the EU by showing how Palpatine was opportunistic in exploiting existing undercurrents--whether it was anti-human sentiment in some human members of the Republic or the anti-imperialist, quasi-libertarian leanings in the outer systems--to advance an agenda that really had no ideological beliefs beyond a desire to create an ordered galaxy with himself at the top.

[Reddish Mage]

If anything from the old cannon should come back it should be the Old Republic IMO. It has little to no impact on the current era stuff they are doing and could be left as is without changing it. I find the Old Republic much more interesting.

If they leave it as is, then they really can’t write a lot of stories in that era, since all those stories were already told.

Disney wiped the slate clean because they wanted to rewrite the universe around the movies (and because Lucas insisted the Clone Wars TV show) and didn’t want that stuff getting in the way.

The most one can hope for is that they’ll take the characters and events from the canon and reintroduce them more or less like they were before. DC and Marvel have rebooted their universes several times (ok Marvel did it just once) doing more or less that.

[Yora]

Well, Kylo Ren is already wearing Revan's outfit.