George Lucas never cared at all about lore, which makes Star Wars fandom’s obsession with it all the more ironic. Lucasfilm’s latest release, The Acolyte, was controversial before it even came out; but matters only worsened as each episode dropped, with frequent claims it had somehow broken canon and lore. Some argued that Osha and Mae lessened the significance of the Chosen One prophecy, while others debated such esoteric points as the age of Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi.

Leaving aside the question of motives, it’s fascinating to note the angle popular YouTubers took to attack this latest Star Wars Disney+ TV show. While some discussed The Acolyte on its own merit – debating the writing, narrative momentum, and performances – the main focus was always on the lore. This paid off; many videos netted YouTubers a tidy profit, with millions of views. But why is the Star Wars fandom so obsessed with lore?

George Lucas Couldn’t Care Less About Lore

The creator of Star Wars considered lore to be a distraction for a storyteller

Lightsabers are such an iconic part of Star Wars lore, but you may be surprised to hear that the original drafts called them “lazerswords.” Lucas didn’t like the name, though, because he felt a reference to lasers would lead to some viewers debating the scientific accuracy of it all. He wanted to tell a science-fantasy story, not a science-fiction one, meaning he wanted the rules to be much more flexible. And so lightsabers were born – because Lucas didn’t want people distracted by asking how lightsabers work. That’s how little he cared about consistency.

Fast-forward to production of The Empire Strikes Back, and it’s notable how willing Lucas was to retcon everything he’d done before. Because that’s what the iconic “I am your father” moment really is – a retcon, revealing that everything Obi-Wan told Luke about his father was a lie. The idea that Leia is Luke’s sister in Return of the Jedi? That’s a retcon too, and it even necessitated changing Leia’s age to make her Luke’s twin. Lucas didn’t care about continuity if it got in the way of his story.

I’ll never forget a tale from Dave Filoni, Lucas’ protégé, in which he discussed working with Lucas on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. At one point, Lucas decided he wanted a small ship to essentially be a stealth fighter, complete with a cloaking field. Filoni, well aware of the lore, objected that no ship this size should have a cloak due to power constraints. “This one does,” Lucas insisted, and that was that. That’s how little lore mattered to Lucas.

Star Wars Fans Have Always Been Focused On Lore

There are good reasons for this interest in lore, even if it’s flawed

Star Wars fans, of course, have always taken a very different view. I think there’s a good reason for this; their love for Star Wars means they want to immerse themselves in the world(s) that Lucas created, and that’s much easier to do when you have a consistent set of rules and a history that allows you to place things in it. It’s worth remembering that fanfictions and RPGs have always been a massive part of the franchise, and these take advantage of that consistency.

Making matters even more complicated, though, is the sense of entitlement that some parts of the fanbase have cultivated. Again, I think there are reasons for this; it’s hard for modern viewers to imagine, but there was a time when Star Wars seemed to be dead, when there were at most a few comics, and certainly no upcoming Star Wars movies on the horizon. At that time, the franchise essentially did belong to the viewers, and they soon developed a sense of ownership.

This, of course, is one major reason the fanbase clashed massively with Lucas himself when he returned to make the prequels. I was part of the fandom back then, and I well remember how we discussed and debated the finer points of the latest movies to figure out how to make them work with the EU. Many seemed to take this as an almost personal slight, because they had forgotten one simple truth; George Lucas owned Star Wars, they did not, and he didn’t really care about their lore.

Lucas’ Attitude To Lore Is Healthy

But it still shouldn’t be pushed too far

George Lucas wasn’t really invested in the worlds he was creating, in the rules and histories that tie everything together. No, he’s a storyteller first and foremost, and he wanted to tell his story. He didn’t care if that meant contradicting something that had gone before, whether it was established in his own movies, a random CD-ROM or an RPG sourcebook. For Lucas, the story was what mattered first and foremost.

This feels like a much healthier approach to storytelling. Too often, canon and continuity can feel like chains on a writer, limiting them rather than liberating them to tell exciting stories. And yet, I can’t help feeling there are limits to it, retcons that aren’t wise because they completely invalidate something that has gone before. I’m thinking of Star Wars: The Bad Batch‘s premiere here, which directly contradicted some excellent Kanan comics, or of Tales of the Jedi erasing LGBTQ+ characters from E.K. Johnston’s novel Ahsoka.

Notice what those two examples do, though, that is different to – say – Lucas’ cloaked ship. In the case of The Bad Batch, it shrinks the galaxy, because it just means everybody is connected somehow to everybody else. In Tales of the Jedi, characters and ideas are actively erased, a narrative choice made even more frustrating because these characters give some much-needed diversity to the galaxy. On reflection, I think there are two approaches we can take to lore when it comes to retcons like this, if you’ll forgive me borrowing some terms from the field of geography:

• Accretionary retcons: These retcons add something to the galaxy, establishing new concepts and ideas that can be further explored at a later date
• Erosionary retcons: These retcons diminish the galaxy, removing something or diminishing it

There’s still something very subjective to this, of course. To circle back to The Acolyte‘s backlash, I personally didn’t see anything about Osha and Mae that diminished the Chosen One in the slightest; they were consciously created by Force-sensitives using a Force power that’s inferred in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the SIth, whereas Anakin was created by the will of the Force itself. In general, I think the best approach is one that gives the benefit of the doubt, actively looking to see what is added rather than removed.

One thing’s for sure. George Lucas himself wouldn’t even care about this level of thought; he’d simply want to tell whatever story he’d come up with in a given moment, and pretty much anything could be rewritten because of a spur-of-the-moment decision. Maybe Star Wars fans should at least try to take the heat out of this debate, recognizing the truth that a story is not a Wikipedia entry (or a Wookipedia bio), and… let people tell their stories.