Fanon / Star Wars

• Given that George Lucas himself has said that the only things he considers "official" Star Wars are the films and the Clone Wars cartoons, it could be argued that the entirety of the Star Wars Expanded Universe is nothing but Fanon. Some fans would argue with this point of view.
  • Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki, has a fairly complete list of fanon elements that have found their way into the official continuity, either as an intentional homage or due to the authors mistaking them for canon.
  • SuperShadow is a website dealing almost exclusively in bizarre fanon notions; its webmaster alleges that he is a close personal friend of George Lucas. Most Star Wars fans avoid the site, and discussing it in a serious forum is a good way to rankle a lot of people. Poe's Law is in full effect here; fans can't tell if the guy is serious or just making fun of other fans' bizarre fanon ideas.
  • Anakin was prophesied to bring "balance to the Force", but no one is sure what that "balance" is supposed to be. Word of God says that he was destined to destroy the Sith (which he does, by killing the Emperor and dying himself in Return of the Jedi). But many fans believe this prophesy refers to the Balance Between Good and Evil — and in the prequels, Anakin does kill all the Jedi other than Obi-Wan and Yoda, leaving two Jedi and two Sith. Other fans claim that the very existence of the Sith implies imbalance. This has caused endless arguments, with each theory plausible. Darths & Droids describes the debate in the blurb of this strip.
  • The Phantom Menace introduced the concept of "midichlorians". Are they just an indicator of Force sensitivity, or do they actually create the Force itself? Canon gives no information either way. Wookieepedia says they're just sensitivity indicators, and one theory suggests that the Force creates midichlorians (and not the other way around), but it's another source of intense debate.
  • Many fans believe that Anakin didn't believe Palpatine's conspiracy theory that the Jedi were trying to take over the Republic, but he went along with it anyway because Palpatine had something he needed. The films are ambiguous on this; James Luceno made that canon in the Expanded Universe.
  • Shmi Skywalker apparently became pregnant with Anakin despite being a virgin. The movies never explain how this happened outright, other than a vague line about him possibly being "conceived by the Living Force". Many fans latch on to Palpatine's story of Darth Plagueis, a Sith lord who could "create life"; they thus believe that Plagueis' experiments with midichlorians resulted in Anakin's conception. This was confirmed to a degree in Darth Plagueis where the Force created Anakin as in response to Plaguis's experiments. While the novel is no longer canon, element from it have shown up so this explanation is still on the table.
  • The vast Expanded Universe can sometimes be contradictory, not just with the films, but also with each other. Fanon tries to keep everything straight, but it's not that successful with that. Its canonicity was never very strong, but The Force Awakens and its sequels have been largely confirmed to override it anyway, making everything here even more dubious.
  • Another theory is that Darth Vader avoids setting foot on Tatooine because he's afraid to face anything that reminds him of his past life as Anakin Skywalker. It's never addressed in the films, but it does explain why Obi-Wan sees no problem with hiding Luke there, and why Luke never bothers to change his surname; Darth Vader would never come to get Luke himself even if he knew he was there. Luceno's Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader has Qui-Gon's spirit explicitly confirm this and even with Legends de-canonized there's nothing to really contradict this.
    • Or, of course, it could be because he doesn't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
  • Anakin in the Expanded Universe frequently calls Padmé "Angel" as a term of endearment, even though he only ever called her an angel once in the films. In Legends, he did name his customized Delta-7 starfighter the Azure Angel after her.
  • There are all sorts of strange theories regarding family relationships, including that Anakin is really Ben's father (Anakin Solo not the other one), Palpatine has some relationship with Mara, and Luke lost his virginity to Leia right after the Battle of Yavin (so before they knew they were brother and sister).
  • Fans have created all sorts of inconsistency in interpreting sexuality in this universe. The Jedi are often shown as being completely celibate (George Lucas has claimed otherwise, but also said Jedi can't "form attachments", which implies something most fans don't want to deal with). Slash fans have gone all over the place on the universe's stance on homosexuality, ranging from Everyone Is Bi to practically puritanical attitudes. Bioware caught flack for Juhani, as although she was written as a lesbian, it's not so clear in the game itself because the writers had to rely on subtext to sneak it past the censors. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, same-sex options were not available in the vanilla game, but were added in the expansions. Karen Traviss settled this with Mandalorians, at least, writing them as simply not giving a shit.
  • Most fans believe that Luke was under the influence of the Dark Side during the Dark Nest trilogy.
  • Fans have assumed that the word kriff — largely undefined in the EU — has something to do with sexual intercourse. Probably because it's usually used as a stand-in for "fuck".
  • Count Dooku's first name is often given as Yan in fanfics, since unlike other members of his family his first name was never given in Legends. Canon changed Dooku to his actual name with Serenno as his family name.
  • Several fans assume that Jaina Solo takes the title "Galactic Empress" after her husband Jagged Fel becomes the Emperor of the new Galactic Empire. We haven't seen much of Jaina and Jag's life beyond their marriage, and details about Jag's reign as Emperor are rather scarce. Most fans agree that Jaina and Jag are likely to be Royals Who Actually Do Something, since both are decorated fighter pilots, Jaina is a legendary Jedi, and she learned a lot from her mother Leia's example, and she's not likely to sit on the sidelines while her husband runs the Empire.
  • It's often assumed by Jedi haters that the Jedi philosophy is about rejecting all emotions when it's actually about controlling one's emotions. The films imply, and the EU makes it clear, that Jedi are not intended to be emotionless robots-they just focus on restraining themselves so that they can act without the passions and attachments that characterize the Sith.
    • Additionally, those same fans love to assume that Jedi have absolutely no emotional connections other than Master and Padawan, when countless EU works show friendships between age-mates, informal Master-Padawan relationships, the occasional adolescent crush, and plenty of Jedi/non-Jedi professional relationships and friendships. In fact, it's almost impossible to find a story with Old Republic Jedi that doesn't show relationships beyond just Master-Padawan. In the films themselves, Obi-wan's friendships with Yoda, Mace, Cody, and Dexter Jettster point to this.
  • Very popular terms in fanfiction include "grandmaster" and "grandpadawan" (ie the Master of one's Master, or Padawan of one's Padawan). These terms never appear in any official work. ^note And at any rate, in the context of the Jedi, "Grand Master" denotes the head of the entire order, rather than a Padawan's master's master, as the word means the leader of a knightly or fraternal order
  • Due to the relative lack of official information on the characters' backgrounds, many Rogue One fanfics lift from the actors' backgrounds when writing their respective characters, especially for Cassian, mostly because he happens to be one half of the film's almost-couple. Cassian's home planet of Fest is almost always rendered into a snowy Fantasy Counterpart Culture version of Mexico, Diego Luna's home country, the Festian language is just Mexican Spanish, and Luna's offhand remark in a press junket about Cassian being a great cook whose personal specialty is chilaquiles (which just so happens to describe Luna himself) is practically taken as fact in fanfic.
  • Tatooine slave culture is an extensive worldbuilding background originally created by Fialleril and used in several of her fanfic series, including Double Agent Vader and Heretic Pride. It has since been taken up by many other authors on Archive of Our Own. The culture features Amatakka, the secret language of Tatooine slaves, their private rituals, and the legends of Ekkreth (the Sky Walker), the shapeshifting trickster god who teaches slaves how to survive and escape Depur (the Master).
• The idea that Anakin and Padmé's marriage is such an Open Secret that it is a general question of who doesn't know something is on. In canon there are quite a few characters who figure it out or are hinted to know something (Obi-Wan, Rex, Bail, Yoda, Rush Clovis, Thrawn, Ahsoka, Mon Mothma), but they tend to be close to one or both Anakin and Padmé or are really sharp room readers in the case of Thrawn. In fan works practically half the senate and Republic military and navy, every clone in the 501st, and practically the entire Jedi Order knows or suspects something. This is typically Played for Laughs.
• Among fanfic writers, lazy replacement of "God" with "Force". "Oh, Force," "For Force's sake," "Force-dammit," "Force, this is good," etc. The Force is most often referred to with the definite article, and while it is effectively the God of the Star Wars setting, it is not sworn on or against in the way gods on Earth are.
• Relatedly, swearing in general. The movies are pretty mild in terms of profanity, but what they have is much like what we have (chalk it up to Translation Convention), with the above-noted exception. Obi-Wan says "damn" in A New Hope, Han says "I'll see you in Hell!" in The Empire Strikes Back, and Andor marked the first use of "shit" (and would have included a "fuck", but the studio refused). Sometimes "Hell" is referred to specifically as "the Corellian Hell," implying Corellians are the only ones who still believe in Hell, and/or that the Corellian Hell is particularly nasty/infamous (Han Solo, a Corellian, first mentioned Hell). A great many other swearwords are simply made up. Notably, the novelization for A New Hope has Vader snap "Chaos take your mission!" to Leia, indicating "Chaos take [X]" roughly means "To hell with [X]" or "I don't give a shit about [X]." "Blast" also seems to be a mild swear word, with Luke and Obi-Wan using it a few times. ("Blast it, Biggs, where are you?")
• Exactly what titles and honorifics should be used when addressing a Jedi. The only ones appearing in the films are "Master" and "Padawan." Jedi will address any other Jedi of senior rank, as "Master [Last Name]," regardless of if they are actually a Jedi Master or the master of the Padawan addressing them. (Ahsoka addresses all Jedi as "Master [Last Name]," and Anakin is addressed as "Master Skywalker" by more than Ahsoka, despite not being a Jedi Master.) Meanwhile, "Padawan" is a catchall term either for any Jedi not yet Knighted or for one's student, even if there was not a formal relationship (such as how Yoda says in AotC that "the Padawan is right" or refers to Dooku as his Padawan, when in Legends Dooku was his informal student). Slightly more formal, and used mostly by non-Jedi, is "Master Jedi," no name, and seems applicable even to Padawans (hence the friction when Padme tells Sio Bibble Anakin is just a Padawan after Bibble addressed him as "Master Jedi"). In Legends, the term Initiate is used for young Jedi not yet taken as someone's Padawan. In fanon, "Padawan [Last Name]," "Jedi [Last Name]," and "Knight [Last Name]" are all common, and Jedi not yet Padawans may be called students, acolytes, initiates, neophytes, or whatever else the author thinks sounds cool. This dates back to The Thrawn Trilogy, where C'baoth routinely addressed Luke as "Jedi Skywalker."
• The concept of "Gray Jedi." It started back in the West End Games d6 Star Wars RPG, where certain Force powers (like Force Lighting) gave you a Dark Side Point every time you used them; 6 Dark Side Points and your character fell to the Dark Side and became an NPC (unless you were playing a Dark Side campaign). Players who wanted to use flashy powers but not get beat with the morality stick tried to define a "Gray Jedi" who could use the Dark without being Dark. This saw a resurgence in prominence after the Prequels were released and much attention was paid to the Prophecy of Anakin "bringing balance to the Force." Many assumed this was Balance Between Good and Evil, even when Word of God clarified that the Force itself was balance, the Dark Side was a corruption, a "cancer" in the Force. Not helping matters was that a Central Theme of the Prequels was that the Jedi Order had grown arrogant, complacent, and flawed; many fans saw them as just as bad, if not worse, than the Sith. Gray Jedi became popular as the "middle ground" between the extremes of Light and Dark, basically applying the Golden Mean Fallacy, and it almost became official when the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic videogame duology showcased characters defending this exact interpretation (albeit not necessarily proving it was correct). It is common in fanfic, and reviews of the films delving into the nature of the Force, to claim that Light and Dark are two sides of a coin, and true understanding of the Force requires understanding the coin in its entirety, when really the closer analogy is that the Force is the coin, the Dark Side is rust, corrosion, and patina that makes it difficult to see the coin for what it is. Notably, Palpatine actually uses a classic bit of "Gray Jedi" rhetoric in Revenge of the Sith: "If one wants to understand the Great Mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the narrow, dogmatic view of the Jedi." While Palpatine is correct in that the Jedi he's speaking about have become narrow and dogmatic, that this is Palpatine saying it pretty thoroughly torpedoes the concept of "Gray" being the True Path. Nevertheless, fans of Gray Jedi will unironically latch onto the same logic, if not this exact line, to support their view that everything else the films say about the nature of the Force is wrong.
  • This almost became canon with the Potentium introduced in the New Jedi Order novels, which claimed that there was no Dark Side, in terms of an external corrupting force, it was only the darkness within that needed to be understood and conquered. George Lucas himself pretty quickly stepped in and said "That's not how the Force works," establishing the true Jedi regard the Potentium as heresy, and it was revealed (or retconned) into a tool of the Sith to seduce Jedi to the Dark Side.
  • In-universe, the only person to describe themselves literally as a "Gray Jedi" is Jolee Bindo from the mentioned Knights of the Old Republic, who left the Order and stopped training when he was a Padawan—not exactly the exemplar of someone who is very knowledgeable about the Force. Kreia, from the same games, also considers both Light and Dark Sides to be part of the same cycle in which the Galaxy is trapped, although she doesn't describe herself as Gray or as something equivalent - if anything, she might be considered an Anti-Gray Jedi because she believes both sides are equally bad. Qui-Gon Jinn is the only other individual who is typically thought of as being "Gray," but he was always very firmly rooted in the Light and just disagreed with the Council in terms of orthodoxy and politics. A couple of other organizations are said to be considered to be "gray" by the mainstream Jedi but this is never commented on in-universe, meaning that the term itself has almost no in-universe validity.
  • What validity it does have is similar to that of the equally-oxymoronic term "Dark Jedi." Basically, both are a quick way of saying "someone who uses the Force and carries a lightsaber like a Jedi, but is not actually a Jedi," with the difference being a Dark Jedi is evil, a Gray Jedi may or may not be evil (or on their way to being evil). The granularity of meaning is useful, as both Jedi and Sith are specific religions within the Force that adhere to their own tenets and codes and have their proprietary teachings, thus Gray Jedi and Dark Jedi are both neither Jedi nor Sith (and may belong to their own orders or traditions with their own tenets, codes, and proprietary teachings). But to most, the differences between Jedi, Gray Jedi, Dark Jedi, and Sith are largely academic.
• Schrödinger's Canon is in play with anything that Canon hasn't explained yet: if Canon has not outright said or established something that makes an element from Legends impossible, like a different death or living longer, fans will typically apply the Legends version of events until Canon renders it completely impossible to fit.
• Before the new Canon gave Palpatine the first name "Sheev", there was a widely held misconception that his full name was "Cos Palpatine". This is due to a very early draft of the script for A New Hope naming the Emperor as "Cos Dashit", as well as due to the Darth Plagueis novel, where Palpatine's abusive father was named Cosinga Palpatine, yet Palpatine himself disliked his own name enough not to use it (which implied that his name might be Cosinga Jr). However, this was never used in any of the actual movies or Expanded Universe. Ironically, the medium where the name Sheev was given was written by the same author as Darth Plagueis.