Lit Are there any EU what-ifs that interest you?

Maybe a certain story never being written or a certain author never getting involved? Maybe something being written differently?

 

Ysards Revenge being more a lead up to Dark Empire

SWOTOR not being a thing and instead getting KOTOR 3 as a continuation in the vein of KOTOR 1 and 2

Despite not really caring maybe just outright acknowledging TCW was it's own thing but whatever.

I will write more if I think of them.

 

For what if stories, I would have liked to have had another Coruscant Nights book after The Last Jedi to find out what happened to Jax Pavan and I-5YQ.

For things being written differently, I would have had the post NJO focus on passing the torch to Jacen and Jaina as the main heroes going on smaller scale missions across a galaxy that's dealing with the aftermath of the Vong War. The new High Republic era starting soon sounds a bit like this actually, but before the movies instead.

 

- Either Zahn, Veitch, or Anderson never enter the picture.

- Lucas okays the Vong being dark side users.

- Chee doesn’t tell Denning to integrate Abeloth with Mortis

- KOTOR III doesn’t become TOR.

 

Question about the First one...Personal dislike of Zahn Veitch or Anderson or just something you'd like too see.....I recently listened to a podcast that said that without Anderson, the EU would not have been as interconnected as we know it today.

 

Not personal dislike for any of them. It’s just those three people were so influential in establishing the EU that the EU would be completely different if any one of them wasn’t involved.

 

FOTJ setting up the Fel Empire more directly. For those who have read the series, particularly the last book, will know the context of my statement.

 

Rather those three over Denning in the later EU.

 

True but it would be interesting...if those three didn't create the backbone of the EU (With Stackpole and Allston) then who knows what the EU would look like...Vastle different.

 

I’m not saying good or bad. I’m just saying different.

Anyway:

- What if KOTOR I was set in 2000 BBY (with Revan being the character who eventually became known as Ruin) and KOTOR II was set during the Republic Dark Age?

- What if TCW was from the beginning declared a separate universe from the EU?

- What if Veitch stayed involved with TOTJ until its completion?

- What if TCW was set during the Dark Times or the Galactic Civil War instead of during the Clone Wars?

- What if Lucas and Filoni created an Old Republic show before Lucas sold to Disney?

 

Or, you know, getting any lead-up to Dark Empire at all.
Ideally in the form of a Darth Sidious novel that also uses the Imperial Court to some effect... not that I ever realistically hoped for any of that. But after Plagueis, that would have been the Next Big Awesome Thing for me.

 

The ultimate what-if for me will always be "what if after Revenge of the Sith, Del Rey dove headfirst into exploring the twenty years between ROTS and ANH, eventually making for a nice bridge/progression from prequel era media to Bantam Era media."

Zahn sort of did this with the Outbound Flight/Survivor's Quest duology where he works hard to merge those two corners of the Star Wars universe - you have Jorus C'Baoth interacting with Obi-Wan and Anakin and adjudicating a Corporate Alliance dispute, Thrawn running into a Trade Federation battle group and being introduced to the Palpatine/Sidious conspiracy, Mara Jade and Luke Skywalker battling a droideka, etc. On a smaller level you also had Elusion Illusion from Michael Stackpole where his characters like Nejaa Halcyon and Ylenic It'kla interact with Aayla Secura, get involved in the Clone Wars, and along the way show you how Coreilla's reacting to it. I could have used a lot more of that, spread out through the Dark Times era.

Things from the Bantam era that deserved to have their early stories written:
* The glory days of Jorj Car'das, Flirry Vorru, and Booster Terrik.
* The early days and rise to power of Prince Xizor, Talon Karrde, and Mirax Terrik.
* Rostek and Hal Horn being cops by day and Jedi Underground Railroaders by night.
* Pellaeon, Rogriss, and Voss Parck's rise through the Imperial Starfleet.
* Bria Tharen and Winter Retrac's lives as commandos/spies of the early Rebellion.
* Garm Bel Iblis' days in the Senate before he was "assassinated."

It's a little harder to find things from the prequel era that deserved to have their later stories written, simply because so many of the characters die in ROTS or otherwise go undercover. But if nothing else -
* Bail Organa and Mon Mothma's stories in the Imperial Senate - which would intertwine with Garm Bel Iblis; man, imagine James Luceno writing that story. Best of all if they don't jump right to the "setting up the Rebellion" moment, and instead show years of them trying to find ways to sabotage the Empire or preserve pieces of the Republic in other more political ways before finally giving up.
* I never really cared much for Traviss' Mandos and clones, but a lot of people did, so continuing to write those all the way to the Rebellion era would have been an obvious choice.
* Boba Fett growing into the job and taking over Jango's mantle. (Also the decay of the Bounty Hunters' Guild to the sad state we find them in in the BHW trilogy).
* Speaking of scum and villainy - I know he's not a main character, but more Vilmarh Grarkh would have been nice. He kind of filled the niche in the Legends timeline that Hondo Ohnaka does in the Disney timeline.
* And speaking of Vilmarh Grarkh - Quinlan Vos. I liked the happy ending he got in the comics, I don't want him crusading around the galaxy, but one or more small-scale stories like Obi-Wan got in Kenobi just to check in on how he and his family are doing in the new era would have been nice.

 

Maybe after NJO finished, which was what around ROTS release, they went back to focus on the era between the Prequels and the Originals instead of going beyond NJO, at least for a decade or so. I'd honestly have preferred that.

 

I would have liked that too, but that era was under a moratorium at the time because of the then-upcoming live-action series.

 

The comic license never shifted back to marvel and we could have seen the Dark Times comic series properly finished. A shame it got left with an open ending, and we never found out what ultimately happened to the characters.

 

What if Lucasfilm said to Zahn, “You either reference Dark Empire in the Thrawn trilogy, or we cancel the Thrawn trilogy”?

 

Tales of the Jedi animated series scheduled back-to-back with the 90s animated Conan series. The Tales of the Jedi animated series would/could have delved into all the periphery anecdotes mentioned in the comics.

 

The Hundred-Year Darkness, the Sith Holocaust, the creation of the amulet message, Nadd’s life, Sadow’s fear of the amulet Dark Lord, etc.

 

Yes, all of those

 

-Good explorations of the New Sith Wars, especially the New Sith Empire and its history.

-Exploring the end of SWTOR and how it segues into the NSW, though hopefully we can still see this.

-Seeing Spar and the Mandalorian Protectors fight in the Clone Wars.

-Have some sort of series retell and connect the early literature surrounding the OT, esp. the Marvel comics and newspaper strips.

 

- What if Ulic’s and Exar’s stories weren’t fused, and instead Exar’s story was set before the Sith Holocaust?

- What if the pre-Anderson portions of TOTJ didn’t mention the Sith, and they made Exar Kun the first Dark Lord of the Sith?

 

I thought of this a few years back...Zahn should have had a true heir to the Imperial throne. Palpatine had a daughter about 6 years before Yavin and had her taken into hiding. Thoroughly educated in academics as well as trained in the Force by a Hand. But she never lived up to what Palpatine was looking for in an heir. During the Thrawn duology she shows up on Pellaeon's Star Destroyer and proves her identity to him but they keep it from everyone until the end. She is part of outing the scam that is being by Disra and take control of the Empire just before the treaty is signed.

 

Let's also not forget that we now have the sub-license to IDW. The sublicense could shift one day away from IDW.

 

I would have liked if Ken Palpatine's character wasn't abandoned by Bantam and they actually developed him during the Jedi Academy era, maybe Jacen and Jaina would have looked up to him as a senior Jedi figure, and later he becomes a supporter of a much more pacifist stance on the Vong War, serving as an extreme Kyp despises.

Maybe he would have changed his last name just like Rey did in TROS, to avoid being looked as an enemy by the New Republic, and it would have come up when an enemy revealed it to the public, like in Bloodlines with Leia.

I feel there was potential there, if only they didin't pretend those books didin't exist just because they were silly as hell.

 

What if instead of Dark Nest, Del Rey had instead decided to various small scale or bottle episode stories in the post NJO-at least for five years or so(RL years). Character development, some worldbuilding, a slower pace, and no galactic crisis. A LOTF equivalent would not have been done until say 2009 or so. After the PT had faded somewhat from public attention.

More Vong war era stuff. Its a criminally underdeveloped period. Beyond the main series and Invasion comics, what else occurred there? Games, comics, RPGS, more novels would have been great.

Denningverse-for all its problems, the Denningverse does have some interesting concepts setting wise, an increasingly militarized GA, with restless worlds, crises and tension in the unknown regions, unrest and remilitarization in Hutt Space, Sith plotting, and Jedi schisms. If the post NJO had been handled in a more collaborative fashion-the galaxy could have been explored and actually interesting ideas of the DNT-LOTF-FOTJ-C era developed and expanded on.

More New Sith wars content-Jedi Lords, Jedi supreme chancellors, a book about Lord Kaan. Not to mention Ruin and the Dark Underlord really deserve novels in their own rights.

Second Galactic Civil War-one of the interesting Denning era concepts. Its a shame we actually see relatively little of the war itself. Novels and comics and games dealing with confederate soldiers, GA special forces, fleet battles, and so on, that don't focus on the skywalker drama but on the ground fighting would have been good.

Legacy novels. Legacy is admittedly very much a visual experience, but the era was never explored in print and there are limits to what you can do with comics in terms of character and worldbuilding.

What if Matthew Stover and Luceno had co written some sort of post NJO trilogy? the content ignored, the authors involved would have made it amazing regardless.

New blood-Tim Lebbon and Christie Golden were new authors to the old EU that came into it in the latter days of its existence. What if instead of working with a small group of authors, Del Rey and Lucasfilm had been willing to sign on more authors. This would have led to greater literary and stylistic variety, not to mention it would have countered trends of one or two people having all the influence. They should have done this in the post NJO period.

More temporally remote content-Dawn of the Jedi comics and novel. Part of the SW universe but vastly removed from the movies and the periods immediately following and before them. This would have allowed a lot of greater freedom and also challenged both authors and readers as to what SW could be.

These are just a few what ifs, but more of a wish list on my part.