Trivia / New Jedi Order

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• Executive Meddling:
  • Anakin Solo was being set up to be the main hero of the series, until George Lucas became concerned audiences would confuse Anakin Solo and Anakin Skywalker and requested a rewrite. This forced a scramble to retool Jacen into the main hero of the series and led to Anakin dying instead, though as was later revealed by editor Shelly Shapiro◊ no one was certain about who actually ordered Anakin to be the character killed off, only that it was most likely not Lucas as he never told them to kill anyone off and only approved of legacy character deaths if the subject was broached.
  • Troy Denning implied that he wanted to kill off Kyp Durron in Star by Star, but that Lucasfilm editors prevented this. Kyle Katarn's death was also written out at the last minute.
• Role Reprise: Mark Hamill recorded a voice-over as Luke Skywalker for a television ad promoting the first book in the series. This marked the first time that he did anything with the character officially in 13 years.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Believe it or not, Luke Skywalker was the character originally slated to die in Vector Prime to show that the Yuuzhan Vong meant business, but Lucasfilm put a moratorium on visibly killing him, and Chewbacca was ultimately chosen after the writers thought that killing Han Solo or Leia Organa wouldn't have the same effect. James Luceno later considered to kill off Han in The Unifying Force, but desisted.
  • While George Lucas approved the majority of the series' outline, he vetoed at the possibility of the Yuuzhan Vong being Force-users. Rumors said that they were intended to be revealed as the Sith, as The Phantom Menace had yet to be released when the series was being planned.
  • The cancelled second book in the planned Dark Tide trilogy, The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide: Siege.
  • The Knightfall trilogy: Knightfall I: Jedi Storm, Knightfall II: Jedi Blood, and Knightfall III: Jedi Fire. Some elements appeared in The Edge of Victory and Star by Star.
  • As revealed in The Essential Reader's Companion, Boba Fett was meant to appear in Hero's Trial, but was written out due to concerns about the book being overstuffed with characters.
  • Early plans had Jacen and Anakin in swapped roles - Jacen died and Anakin was captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. It's pretty obvious that the Edge of Victory duology was setting this up, as several Anakin-based storylines started, only to be abruptly ended by his death in the following Star by Star. Anakin's death came from on high - George Lucas had an Executive Veto that said that Anakin's trajectory too closely mirrored his namesake grandfather, and to avoid confusion, the brothers' roles were reversed. Contrary to popular belief, though, he never ordered Anakin killed off and it seems to have been simply done to avoid having to restructure the plot too much.
  • Star by Star was going to kill off Kyp Durron and Kyle Katarn, but Troy Denning was prevented from doing so.
  • For the series' conclusion, the planning team floated up the possibility of wiping out the Yuuzhan Vong entirely in The Unifying Force, but they ultimately considered that a merciful option was more interesting and had the Vong exiled away.

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