Star Wars: Jon Favreau Teases Legends Stories and Characters Becoming Canon Again

Jon Favreau is one of the key voices charting the course of Disney’s Star Wars universe, and he’s just the right age that the original “expanded universe” content was key to developing his vision for the franchise. Favreau, 56, was 16 when Return of the Jedi came out, and spent most of his young-adult years with no new Star Wars content on the screen. That didn’t mean there was nothing, of course; comics, novels, and games all brought new characters and concepts to life, deepening the lore of the galaxy far, far away. When Disney bought Lucasfilm and announced Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they also decided that they needed to remove virtually all of those old stories from canon, in order to give the creatives in charge of the new films and TV shows more flexibility. 

Still, there have been elements of the old stories that have been creeping back in — and Favreau does not seem entirely opposed to bringing some of the old stuff into the new universe. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi, he broke it down a bit.

“Growing up with the original [films], Return of the Jedi was the end,” Favreau told EW. “But then you’re always like: But what happens next? And then when Episode VII was set so many years later, when I was a kid, I never would’ve thought it would’ve been that much later, but it made sense. It created an opening where you go, ‘Wow so a lot of the things that we knew before are probably in there. How do we excavate that?’”

Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy also told the magazine that there are “a lot of sources [Favreau is] drawing from to see where we’re going.”

“When I was younger, we didn’t have movies, but there were comic books, there were novels, things that are encompassed in the [expanded universe] or Legends,” Favreau added (“Legends” are what Disney re-classified the old expanded universe content). “Clearly, there are decisions that have to be made to fit it all together, but for us, I think one thing we’re in agreement about is that the characters — as special as they are — the story has to drive what characters are.”

He doesn’t have specific examples at hand — why would he? They obviously want to keep those surprises as long as possible! — but it does seem like they’re taking some long, hard looks at some of the Legends content.

“We joke that it’s like we’re playing with action figures, like, ‘What’s in the box? Let’s play with what’s in the box!’ And that’s what you do when you’re playing and you’re a kid,” Favreau joked. “As we are getting deeper and deeper into this, you start to have to really map things out and figure out what that story is, and then have those characters fulfill what their growth cycle is and what their mythic hero’s journey is. Those things have to fit together well. Otherwise, it won’t feel like Star Wars.”