Well, Dumping All Those Novels Sure Simplified Things

I confess, I have never been a big defender of the Star Wars "Expanded Universe." A fan? Yeah, I guess.

I mean, there's good stuff in there, but about halfway through "The New Jedi Order" (which I read every word of), I realized how much of what I was reading was filler, or uninspired. I mean that's nothing new, there have been Star Trek novels for years and years, but those were, specifically and without fail, regarded as "not canon." I pretty much just care if the story I'm reading is good or not, anyway, so I'm not overly concerned if Spock's son in Yesterday's Son is "real" or not. It's a good novel, and that's enough.

But, once George Lucas made it clear that there would be no movies past Episode VI (Return of the Jedi for those keeping score), suddenly these novels took on vast importance as the authorized continuation of the Skywalker story. In addition, they started to get swamped under in their own navel-gazing interconnectedness. I mean, Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn Trilogy" was a pretty decent diversion as a way to see what happened after. It's certainly not bad, but it's also vastly overrated among the fan community.

Bottom line, I am overjoyed that Disney and the Lucasfilm brain trust have made it very clear that The Force Awakens, and all Star Wars movies/TV/whatever going forward will be free of having to honor the EU material. Of course that doesn't stop our lovely fanbase from grousing ("Thrawn better be in there!!"), or claiming it's all a scam (Kylo Ren is a code name for Jaicen Solo!!!), because they can't let go of what they've read.

Anyway, here's the infographic Geekologie put together to track what "counts," and what doesn't going forward. I do have a gut feeling it's not entirely accurate, the placement they have of the Han Solo Anthology film would make the character about 25, and they're saying he'll be late teens. Also, the Battlefront game seems to be set in a pretty wide range of eras, so putting it in one spot seems a bit off.