In articles and v-logs passed I’ve referred to the retcon (retroactive continuity) as the most dangerous weapon in a writer’s arsenal. Used correctly it can build upon a world and make characters and worldbuilding more interesting, or fix mistakes and plot holes that are capable of being filled. Used incorrectly and it destroys characters and ruins worldbuilding, causing mistakes and plot holes that can’t possibly be fixed without calling it a lie or a misremembering of events. Guess what we get more of these days, as retcons are used to recreate the world in the new writer’s vision rather than the original creators, or reflect their current worldviews since they don’t want to let go of a previous property that made them money. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, according to whatever AI Duckduckgo uses in their search engine defines retcon thusly:
- The depiction of fictional events, as in a television series or comic book, that entail a revision of the narrative presented in an earlier installment.
- A situation, in a soap opera or similar serial fiction, in which a new storyline explains or changes a previous event or attaches a new significance to it.
A good retcon builds on what came before. A bad retcon destroys what came before and not only ruins a character or past storyline from then on, but retroactively (hence the name) ruins the character when you go back to the older story. For example, when Marvel Comics turned every post WWII appearance of Dum Dum Dugan into a robot (life model decoy for the geeker fans–yes, I know what it is) and told us the original Nick Fury would blow up planets to keep them from banging into Earth (or was it whole multiverses?), it’s hard to go back and see those characters as originally intended ever again. It didn’t enhance them, it ruined them as part of the legend of the Marvel universe 616.
That brings us to this article from Screen Rant lead writer Lewis Glazebrook. “Star Wars Is Officially Retconning The Sequel Trilogy” makes the claim that…well, it’s in the title. The idea is that the Disney+ shows and upcoming films will alter the sequel trilogy by altering the previous two trilogies. I’m not sure how that works, but read the article for yourself, then come back here (the link opens another tab or window depending on your settings and device) and see if you agree with me that he might not be using the term “retcon” correctly.
Six years after the Star Wars sequel trilogy ended, it is clearer than ever that the franchise is somewhat retconning the three films. As far as the ranking of Star Wars movies goes, the sequel trilogy is an interesting case study. Some appreciated the sequels and their expansion of Star Wars, while others deem them the worst in the franchise.
Upcoming Star Wars movies will be hoping to forego the divisive nature of the sequels and be more generally well-received than the three Disney-era movies were. The wish to avoid the controversy the sequels caused has likely been the reason for Disney’s Star Wars TV shows, which have increased in quantity since 2019.
I hear their friendship was actually downgraded in live-action.
“Increased”? I don’t have Disney+ but since reviews of The Mandalorian went down in the later season, which is still gives them a season or two more positive reviews for most Disney+ Star Wars shows, I kind of doubt it. Ashoka didn’t exactly wow people as Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy fight over which of their “daughters” will take over the franchise from the Skywalkers, The Book Of Boba Fett never got any praise that I’ve heard, and The Acolyte is still the biggest joke in the franchise not counting The Rise Of Skywalker. Sure, Andor and Skeleton Crew get praise if anyone actually watches them despite not really keeping the tone of the franchise any better than the sequels, and I said good things about Young Jedi Adventures, which is probably the only time anything in the High Republic time period has had good things said about it by a classic fan. Everything else is memed and ratioed to extinction.
The many Star Wars TV shows have been building up to a story that many wanted to see from the sequel trilogy initially. Via this, and several other upcoming projects, Disney may actually be retconning the Star Wars sequel trilogy in the best way.
You mean a proper passing of the torch and a last chance reunion of our favorite OT characters by their actors? I doubt it. For the record, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and Book Of Boba Fett take place before the sequels, Andor is a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and follows that film’s barely-Star Wars tone and look prior to the first ever movie, and I don’t know where Skeleton Crew is. The Resistance cartoon takes place during or just before events of the sequel trilogy while Rebels is between the prequel trilogy and The Clone Wars and the original trilogy. The Acolyte takes place before every other show and movie mentioned in this article thus far and required one, maybe two, characters to be retconned as immortal to do it.
Most of the Disney+ shows released by Lucasfilm have been set in Star Wars‘ New Republic era. These shows are nestled between Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the franchise’s timeline, telling stories about the aftermath of the Galactic Civil War. The sequels, being set 30 years beyond Episode VI, did not do this.
Why would they? That’s not retcon so much as filling in the blanks. Retcon involves actually changing the past, not building on it. None of it changes what happened in the movie, just explains the parts that took place in the middle of trilogies.
The term “retcon” often gets misconstrued, with audiences assuming it means removing something from canon. Instead, it simply means retroactively changing canon, either by adding context to stories, adding completely new ones, or changing pre-existing ones completely.
In this case, Star Wars has done the second and retconned the sequel trilogy by adding massive stories to the timeline set before it, yet after the original movies.
The only thing in the High Republic that tried to be Star Wars at all. Or make the Jedi back into the good guys.
Emphasis his, by the way. Now you know what definitions we’re both working from. I’m not going to fight him on the specifics of the definition, but one commenter said it best: “Retcon means something specific & it’s what comes to everybody’s mind when ya say it. The people who click this article aren’t thinking about some technical cop-out definition.” Yes, these are retroactive additions, but the usage of the term refers to changes to the lore beyond simply building on it. These aren’t changes. They’re building upon bad ideas, sometimes with other bad ideas and making things worse. Someone else pointed out that the sequels and the shows trying to “fix” it are also retconning things people liked about the agreed upon canon, adding new Force powers that were never seen in any continuity (though “Force Healing” makes a bit of sense for a Light Side Jedi to use versus the Sith’s “Force Lightning” at least), Rey just being able to use advanced powers without any formal training and not even being shows to have a Jedi’s temperament and control, Finn’s character arc going nowhere, Poe being lessened as a character, and a host of other problems caused by poor planning, a desire to replace the original characters so strong that they ended up ruining their return.
To further prove that Star Wars is retconning the sequel trilogy by adding a major storytelling event before it, the franchise is returning to theaters. 2026 will see the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu, a feature film spinning off from the story of The Mandalorian. The film will see the two titular characters facing off against Imperial remnants in the New Republic era.
Returning to theaters is a retcon? You really don’t know what the word means, do you?
It is expected that the story of this movie will tie into the story of Ahsoka, another New Republic project, which saw Grand Admiral Thrawn return to the galaxy in an attempt to reinstate the Empire’s rule. Dave Filoni, the creator of Ahsoka, is said to be directing a Star Wars movie that will conclude these disparate stories in an Avengers-style movie.
Above anything, this proves that Star Wars is retconning the sequels by focusing intently on a huge story that The Force Awakens never referenced.
You could make the same claim with The Old Republic period that was tossed out when Disney took over, with games, novels, and comics going to the Star Wars galaxy’s history prior to characters in The Phantom Menace even being born. Even Disney’s approved history, the High Republic, does the same thing. Just adding stories doesn’t make it better, as anyone who prefers Old or (for some odd reason) High versions of the pre-Palpatine Republic will tell you. They have to be good stories that fans accept in their headcanon at least, while as it stands classic fans are having trouble accepting most of these as official canon.
Moreover, Dave Filoni’s Star Wars movie is shaping up to be the Episode VII that audiences wanted to see instead of The Force Awakens. The first sequel to George Lucas’ original trilogy was a book series by author Timothy Zahn. Despite not being considered true canon by Lucas himself, fans of Star Wars at the time hoped that these stories could be adapted into any potential sequels made.
The book series, released in the 1990s, has become known as the Heir to the Empire trilogy. The trilogy focused on Grand Admiral Thrawn as Palpatine’s Imperial replacement, as he fought against Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo in an effort to reinstate the power of the Empire after Return of the Jedi.
Um…I’m going to say “no”. The Thrawn of Disney Star Wars is not the Thrawn of “Heir To The Empire”, which was yet another complaint by fans of that book. I’ve read it thanks to the local library. Thrawn was a fascinating villain who did his homework, planned schemes that would make Batman jealous (or maybe Bane), and wasn’t seen as incompetent as Disney’s version did. The book was thrown out in favor of a rebuilt version of Thrawn, who got his own book apart from his original “Legends” incarnation which is canon to Disney Star Wars. Disney Thrawn has tried to ride the coattails of Legends Thrawn. Like so many other attempts to use the popularity of excised lore to somehow prop up replacement lore to be lazy and impatient, this has failed to please the fanbase.
Despite all of this proving that Disney is retconning the sequel trilogy by adding in an entire Star Wars era that was not mentioned in The Force Awakens, the New Republic era is still managing to improve the actual sequels themselves. Perhaps the biggest criticisms of the sequel trilogy come from The Rise of Skywalker, namely the rushed resurrection of Emperor Palpatine.
Finn didn’t need to be a Jedi to be a great character. Just better writers and directors.
Or unnecessary. Rian Johnson, who doesn’t know what a trilogy is, took out Snoke and Phasma while trying to set up Kylo Ren as the real big bad, a role he wasn’t created for whether you like him or not. Snoke was never really as threatening as Palpatine, I grant you, but that’s the fault of Johnson and J.J. Abrams, who never made him nearly as imposing. If Snoke had been the one in the Clone vats, and this was his plan that somehow involved taking over Rey’s body, it still would have been lame. Palpatine was a last-minute replacement for Snoke and was an attempt to use nostalgia in a last-ditch effort to save the trilogy. Classic and Disney period Star Wars fans finally agreed on something: they both hated it and thought it made no sense for him to come back.
In The Mandalorian season 3, however, this was revealed to have been in the works decades earlier. The show highlighted a meeting of Imperial remnants, with Project Necromancer being mentioned. Project Necromancer was then referenced in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, set even before the original trilogy, making Palpatine’s resurrection something that has been planned, rather than a rushed plot point.
And nobody cared. I’m still not seeing how it’s making things “better”. The idea of bringing back Palpatine via his old Clone Wars project was still bad in concept. It wasn’t the fact that it was a rush job to cover up Johnson’s mistake in killing Snoke off, it’s that nobody liked the idea of Palpatine returning in the hopes a sort of “Nostalgia Mind Trick” would solve anything. It didn’t. Building on a bad concept rarely makes it a good one. The concept itself was ill-conceived.
Had the story been set well after the days of Rebellion, featured a new attempt at conquest of the galaxy, and not destroyed previous characters’ growth in the mistaken belief that damaging the old characters was needed to make the new ones accepted, they might have had a better chance at what they wanted to do, and had more breathing room to play in with history, like the Old Republic period or the shows and games set after the events of Order 66, when the Clone Troopers turned on the Jedi thanks to being organic droids. Losing the tone of George Lucas’ movies didn’t help. Conflicting directorial directions was also an issue, and not planning out how to fix the problems that caused made it worse. They didn’t try to rebuild, they tried to replace, which is the actual retcon–done to the Original and Prequel Trilogies, not the Sequel Trilogy. They aren’t making things better. They’re making things worse. Whether this fits the definition of “retcon” or not, it’s still the most destructive tool in storytelling in the wrong hands. These are definitely the wrong hands.
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