Star Wars Legends

Star Wars Legends, formerly known as the Expanded Universe (abbreviated EU), encompasses every one of the licensed and background stories of the Star Wars universe, outside of the original six Star Wars films produced by George Lucas and certain other material created before April 25, 2014, excluding the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It is derived from and includes most official Star Wars books, comic books, video games, spin-off films, television series, toys, and other media created before that date. This material expands and continues the stories told in the films, taking place anywhere from over 36,000 years before The Phantom Menace to 136 years after Return of the Jedi.

On April 25, 2014, Lucasfilm announced that in preparation for the upcoming sequel trilogy, the Expanded Universe would be rebranded as Legends and no longer adhered to; past tales of the Expanded Universe would be printed under the Star Wars Legends banner, and a new continuity would be established that consisted only of the original six films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and all future material from that point onward. Though the majority of the Expanded Universe media was not brought into the new canon, it still remains a resource for future Star Wars materials to reference, thus bringing these older elements into the new continuity. Today, the only Legends products that are still being consistently released are expansions and updates for the video game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The Expanded Universe had a continuity with few wrinkles. The general rule was that nothing in the Expanded Universe was allowed to contradict any other part of the Expanded Universe or the films. For the most part, retcons were created to fix contradictions when any discrepancies arose.

The Expanded Universe is actually older than the films themselves, as the novelization of the original film was published six months before the film was released. In in-universe chronology, the earliest work is the short story "Eruption", which is set millennia before the films, while the latest are the Legacy comics, which are set about one hundred and thirty years after Return of the Jedi.

Text and facts from the “Star Wars Legends” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.