The Star Wars Expanded Universe Contracts
 Lucasfilm (a division of Disney) announced today what most Star Wars fans knew was coming -- that the Expanded Universe is no more.
For many of you, that probably means... "what?"
Well, a long time ago in a county far far away -- okay, it's Marin County in California -- George Lucas wasn't really sure what he wanted to do with Star Wars. He was sitting on an empire, people still loved his characters, and The Phantom Menace was not even a gleam in his eye. Well, maybe.
Plenty of people wanted to tell stories set in the Star Wars universe. Fans begged to know what happened to Luke, Leia, Han and everyone after the Jedi returned. And even when the first trilogy was in the midst of filming, tie-in books didn't exactly fill in gaps so much as take off on flights of fancy. (Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye throws so much gas on the fire of Luke/Leia as a couple that we all have to pretend it just never happened.)
At the time, Lucas didn't seem hot on making Episode VII, no matter what Mark Hamill said. So he allowed novels to continue the adventures, he allowed games to be developed, and he allowed Dark Horse to make comics.
Pretty soon they weren't just continuing the adventures of the main characters; these books, games, comics and, of course, toys, were jumping all over the history of the Jedi Knights, just as Lucas' original "Journal of the Whills" had intended. Under the eye of a continuity coordinator at Skywalker Ranch, writers and fans were given pretty free rein to play in the Star Wars universe.
Some characters became pretty well known even though they'd never been on film. Mara Jade, Admiral Thrawn, the Solo Twins, Prince Xixor of the Black Sun... they all have their fans. And it's not necessarily like they're gone for good; it just seems unlikely given what has officially been pronounced
 As of today, the "canon" consists of Star Wars Episodes I-IX, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the upcoming series Rebels. Our own Ric Bretschneider opined, "...so Jar Jar and Watto are canon, but Mara Jade and Thrawn are not? Thanks, George Lucas." It's still possible that those characters could reappear, but Episode VII is set thirty years after Return of the Jedi, and right now it doesn't look like Disney is interested in exploring those decades.
But we had to know it was coming, because Lucasfilm (owned by Disney) needs to be free to create new characters that can also be (owned by Disney). And as we've mentioned before, Dark Horse did a great job with Star Wars, and Marvel needs to be free to create comics unencumbered by the shadow of that quality.
So take a deep breath everyone. Those books still exist, though what Del Rey will be able to do with them as a back catalog seems up in the air at the moment. You can still enjoy those characters.
Let's look at one other bright side: in the Expanded Universe, they killed off Chewbacca. But it is at least a 90% certainty that actor Peter Mayhew has pulled on the furs again to play everyone's favorite Wookie in Episode VII, so he's alive again to celebrate Life Day for many years to come.
On the down side, this also means that our very own Mish'al Samman has been wiped from continuity. Several years ago he joined the 501st and impressed artist Jan Duursema enough that she wrote him into the Star Wars: Legacy comic produced by Dark Horse, where he became forever enshrined as a character, "Captain Meeshal." Hopefully you all got a good look at him in the illustration above.
Below is a video Lucasfilm released to pay tribute to the fallen Expanded Universe, and I've gathered links to a few of the best known books if you really want to know why people are upset today.
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