1 About

I few years ago I wrote about how the pronounciation of the Capital planet in the universe has changed over the years. I think that blog post came from something I wrote even before I posted it, probably some note in an org file somewhere. I noted, but did not go into the fan toxicity. I think we can all agree the original movies were better than almost anything else to date.

That said, I started re-reading the original Thrawn trilogy about a month ago. Even before the end of the first book, Heir to the Empire, it becomes fairly obvious that Lucas reused the hidden planet idea in the prequels and Disney reused the immortal clone idea in the sequels (though Dark Empire probably gets credit for that).

And even though the commercial branding of the pre-Disney universe in the multiverse calls everything else Legends, with the concept of "canon" versus "non-canon" which seems to drastically change like a soap opera depending on whoever is currently in charge of the most recent story. I'll give them credit for fixing the parsec mixup which I'll bet was originally a misunderstanding by Lucas.

"made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs"

There might have been additional attempt to convert Star Wars from fantasy set in space to science fiction with the introduction of midichlorians.

That said, things have changed over time. I think we can do better than the current naming conventions. So here's my take on it. It's not perfect or an exhaustive list of timlines or exclusive events, but it's not like someone actually sat down and planned the story of Star Wars anyway; they just made things up as they went along. I think we get four main timelines out of it all.

2 The Starkiller Timeline

This universe was the original story before the first movie came out. I read about this in making-of books as a kid and later Dark Horse comics published a graphic novel miniseries called The Star Wars circa 2013 or 2014. In terms of plot, it reminds me of the prequels, but with different characters.

3 The THX Timeline

This timeline, I include as an edge case for example, only includes only the original movie trilogy. There is absolutely no Special Edition. Furthermore, depending on how strict, this timeline probably has no Star Wars Holiday Special, we don't know who stole the deathstar plans (other than Leia Organa), no Qui-Gon Jinn, no Thrawn, and the galactic civil war ends at the end of Return of the Jedi. And thus, this timeline is exclusive of at least what I called the Erso Timeline, below.

4 The Katarn Timeline

In the wake of the Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, and possibly even the West End Games role playing game, Lucasfilm created a character named Kyle Katarn in the game Dark Forces who stole the deathstar plans, among other things.

Before the sequels, most fans would have considered Dark Forces part of the "Extended Universe". After the sequels and Star Wars Story movies debuted, we got a rewrite for both Han Solo's origin story and the theft of the Death Star plans. Since the Dark Forces games were definitely more popular according to my armchair thoughts than the Han Solo Trilogy, I name this timeline after the main character of that timeline.

I would also suggest that in the Katarn Timeline in its purest form, everyone pronounces "Coruscant" like we do in English, not in The Phantom Menace in Galactic Common. I'm still not sure if that was an out-of-universe mistake to pronounce Zahn's planet like that in the movies or not after years of video games and audio books; it was probably either Lucas or Neeson messing up and not wanting to admit the error later on.

So there might be an incosistency we can blame on production, possibly Jedi Outcast (informally known at the time as Dark Forces 3) which came out after The Phantom Menace, or recent rerecordings of the Thrawn audio books.

The revelation of how Darth Vader lost the hand in Dark Force Rising, by the Emperor as a punishment rather than by fighting Obi-Wan in The Revenge of the Sith, also demonstrates that this timeline does not fit well with the prequels.

And though I know of no reason for Kyle Katarn to not exist in the Erso Timline, it's also very unlikely that Jyn Erso exists in the Katarn Timeline.

5 The Erso Timeline

When Disney released Rogue One, they changed the backstory for Rogue Squadron and replaced Kyle Katarn with Jyn Erso. Production snafus aside (Erso never faced the TIE Figher!), the movie was fun to watch. I would put it in the same plot category as Seven Samurai, but closer to The Dirty Dozen or the Guns of Navarone.

To contrast the Erso from the Katarn timeline, this also includes Solo: A Star Wars Story, which as I noted previously cannot exist entirely along with the Han Solo Trilogy.

Working our way backwards from there, Solo also includes Darth Maul, who only showed up in The Phantom Menace, not in the "Extended Universe".

In addition to this, details about whether or not Leia remembers her mother or Obi-Wan never having droids are unclear. Granted Obi-Wan is a liar, in-universe, we even get a scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke confronts him about it (remember Alec Guinness is cool, but Obi-Wan is manipulative). But we never have any reason to believe Leia is a liar or given any reason to doubt her recollection.

So from there we can put all of the prequels at least inclusively into the Erso Timeline, with at least the THX Timeline and if not some or all of the Special Edition, outside the Erso Timline.

Speaking of Special Edition, going back one more step, the Special Edition trilogy which itself only makes minor changes to actions and dialogue, also at least mostly inclusively exists here as well. "Han shot first" or rather whether or not Greedo fired, Luke saying "You're lucky you don't taste very good", or Yoda saying "Feel like what?" only exist because of the many versions of the Special Edition. Lucas spent around 20 years re-editing the Special Edition from the mid 1990s thru the early/mid 2010s.

6 Other timelines

There might be a Holiday Special timeline or a distinct timeline for some or each of the Special Edition editions. Maybe some of the 1980s comics or cartoons do not fit into the above mentioned timelines either and deserve their own as well.