2008’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars often contradicted the Legends continuity during its original run in both theaters and on television. The Clone Wars is a fan-favorite series that introduced original characters like Clone Captain Rex and Ahsoka Tano to the Star Wars mythos, but it also regularly changed lore from older Clone Wars-era material. This has led to heated discussions about canon integrity, but comments from Dave Filoni might explain the discrepancies between The Clone Wars and Legends.
While the Star Wars franchise is best-known for its pop culture-defining films, it also includes decades of comic books, video games, novels, TV shows, and spinoff films. From 1977 to 2014, the non-movie material, originally called the Expanded Universe, was treated with equal legitimacy to the films, as was often confirmed by Lucasfilm creatives. Key moments from Legends-era material, such as Chewbacca’s death in 1999’s The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, were even covered extensively by media outlets at the time. When the continuity was rebooted in 2014, the only previous material to join the new canon were the original six saga films and The Clone Wars.
From its 2008 beginnings, The Clone Wars contradicted numerous elements of the Legends continuity, with its discrepancies becoming more overt as the series went on. In the summer of 2012, an issue of Star Wars Insider included an interview with Dave Filoni, where he revealed that he never considered the Expanded Universe to be part of the same timeline as his show. Filoni said the following in regards to George Lucas’ movies, Legends material, and The Clone Wars:
“There is no more clear illustration of the difference between the Expanded universe and the Star Wars created by George Lucas. The EU is a well of ideas, and there’s what’s on screen. They don’t live in the same universe.”
Filoni’s comments accurately reflect The Clone Wars’ treatment of Legends material and the live-action saga films, but they don’t quite describe the reverence that Lucasfilm had for the once-Expanded Universe before The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm officials consistently stated that the Star Wars franchise’s non-movie material was held to the same regard as the movies themselves. This is why character deaths and certain storylines were often mandated or vetoed, sometimes by George Lucas himself, to maintain consistency with the films.
While The Clone Wars deserves its fan-favorite status, the series has no place in the Legends timeline. Dave Filoni never considered it part of the same continuity as the Legends-era material of the time and simply used the previous stories as inspiration for new ones, not unlike the sequel trilogy’s habit of reimagining of Legends-era characters and storylines. Star Wars: The Clone Wars fits perfectly into the canon timeline, but it was never meant to exist in the same timeline as the original Clone Wars multimedia project, so viewers should consider it a property that is entirely separate from canon.
