Right after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, there was a move made to scrap decades worth of expanded universe material. As it turns out, that wasn't always the case; and a member of the Lucasfilm family thinks that the EU was scrapped because they wanted to erase the death of one character—Chewbacca.
In an interview with Syfy's Fandom Files podcast, Lucasfilm's Leland Chee (who runs The Holocron) gives his idea on why Disney decided to reboot everything. He says:
"For me it came down to simply that we had killed Chewbacca in the Legends — a big moon had fallen on him. Part of that [original decision] was Chewbacca, because he can't speak and just speaks in growls, he was a challenging character to write for in novels. Publishing had decided they needed to kill somebody, and it was Chewbacca. … But if you have the opportunity to bring back Chewbacca into a live-action film, you're not gonna deprive fans that. There's no way that I'd want to do an Episode VII that didn't have Chewbacca in it and have to explain that Chewbacca had a moon fall on his head. And if we were going to overturn a monumental decision like that, everything else was really just minor in comparison."
Chee stresses that this is just his personal opinion, and that he had no power in the decision to scrap the EU. In my opinion, I think it was great that they rebooted everything from the ground up. Sure I'm going to miss some parts of the old lore, but it opens up the world to explore new things and offer more surprises. To be honest, the way the expanded universe was, it was already filled with plot holes and questionable decisions.
Then again, a lot of fanboys prefer to stick to the old lore instead of this new canon.
With Chewie alive again, we have more chances to see him onscreen. His next appearance will be in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and it's set to come out May 25.
See Also: Kevin Smith Thinks Episode IX Will See The Loss Of The Millennium Falcon
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