10 Pieces of Star Wars Lore Created for George Lucas’ Final Project

When Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, it left a lot of projects in limbo. Among them, Star Wars: Underworld, a live-action TV series that would bridge the gap between Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: A New Hope while focusing on the seedier side of the galaxy. Fans who were looking forward to Underworld and its companion video game Star Wars: 1313 were understandably disappointed when the projects were abandoned, but to paraphrase Luke Skywalker, nothing is ever really gone.

Star Wars has a long history of recycling ideas from canceled projects, and in true franchise fashion, several elements from Underworld eventually found their way into various animated series, books, and even a film or two. Here is a list of 10 concepts from Star Wars: Underworld that were reused for other projects.

1) Saw Gerrera’s Live-Action Debut

Before his standout role in Star Wars: Rogue One and Andor, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) showed up in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (voiced by Andrew Kishino). Saw is far from the only Star Wars character to get his start in animation before making the leap to live-action, but unlike Ahsoka Tano and Bo Katan Kryze, Saw was supposed to be flesh and blood in the first place.

George Lucas initially created the Rebel extremist for Star Wars: Underworld, but when the series was abandoned, he asked Dave Filoni to incorporate the character into The Clone Wars.

2) Director Krennic Was Originally Working With Jyn Erso and the Rebels

Like Saw Gerrera, Rogue One‘s Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) was also supposed to make his debut in the abandoned Underworld. Apparently, the outline for what would eventually become Rogue One was developed during pre-production on the show, with one big difference: Krennic was supposed to be a Rebel spy.

In the earliest drafts of Rogue One, Orson Krennic was also a double agent, working for the Imperial Security Bureau and secretly leaking intel to Jyn Erson. While this might have been a cool concept in theory, after watching Ben Medelson gleefully chew the scenery as Rogue One‘s resident villain, we prefer the version of Krennic we have now.

3) Han and Chewie’s Bromance Was Supposed to Start Earlier

Say what you will about Solo: A Star Wars Story, but the movie did a good job telling the origin of Han Solo’s (Alden Ehrenreich) friendship with Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo). If George Lucas had his way, however, the pair would have met a lot earlier than 2018. While the two best friends would have still hooked up around the same time chronologically, the story would have been told through the live-action Star Wars: Underworld series rather than a one-off anthology movie.

Considering how many iterations Solo went through before it hit theaters, there’s a good chance Han and Chewie’s first meeting would have played out differently on the small screen. Unfortunately, fans will probably never know for sure unless Lucasfilm decides to publish the 50 or so Underworld scripts that were written before the project was cancelled.

4) Lando’s Most Humiliating Defeat Would Have Been Must-See TV

Another bit of long-time Star Wars lore that Solo made canon was Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) losing the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo during a card game. Much like Han’s introduction to Chewie, the infamous Sabaac game, where Lando gives up his favorite ship, was planned to happen in an episode of Underworld.

It is unknown whether the two events would have occurred in one Han Solo-themed episode of Underworld or separate episodes. Given how George Lucas and Dave Filoni structured The Clone Wars, though, it’s highly likely that Underworld would have had a Han Solo origin arc at some point, spread out over several chapters.

5) Palpatine Finally Gets a First Name

It’s hard to imagine millions of Star Wars fans losing sleep over not knowing the Emperor’s first name, but we’re sure someone was curious. Those handful of fans were no doubt ecstatic when author James Luceno included that bit of trivia in his 2014 novel Tarkin. Luceno, however, will be the first to tell you that he didn’t create the moniker “Sheev” —George Lucas did, and he originally planned to unveil it to the world via Underworld.

It’s anybody’s guess how long Lucas had been sitting on Sheev before 2014, but Luceno suspects the creator had the name in his back pocket for a long time, probably before Underworld was even a thought in his mind.

6) John Williams Returns to A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Fans were divided over most aspects of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but one thing everyone agreed on was that John Williams’ score slapped. While Disney’s decision to bring the maestro back for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a good one, if producer Rick McCallum had his way, Williams would have returned to the franchise even sooner. McCallum, who worked closely with George Lucas on the prequels, had initially played with the idea of asking Williams to return as composer for Star Wars: Underworld before the project was abandoned.

Underworld would have marked the first time Williams composed anything Star Wars-related for the small screen. With the show never making it past the planning stage, fans would have to wait until Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) to hear the composer’s first contribution to the Star Wars on television.

7) The Church of the Force Gives Non-Force Sensitives a Taste of Jedi Life

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo officially introduced the Star Wars fandom to the Church of the Force, an organization made up of non-Force users who worship the Force and study the ways of the Jedi. While technically, the Church was represented in The Force Awakens through member Lor San Tekka (Max Von Sydow), the group’s name is never mentioned onscreen. Hidalgo would reveal during an episode of the Star Wars Book Worms podcast that the Church of the Force was supposed to be a part of Star Wars: Underworld, though he suspects George Lucas came up with the general concept even earlier than that.

8) The Pyke Syndicate Was Central to Underworld

With a name like Underworld, it only makes sense that the series would focus on Star Wars’ various outlaws. Chief among these would have been a brand new gang of cutthroat miscreants, the Pyke Syndicate. George Lucas envisioned Underworld‘s Pykes as one of the galaxy’s biggest criminal empires, a role they eventually fulfilled when they showed up in the fifth season of The Clone Wars. Lucasfilm would finally fulfill Lucas’s initial vision of a live-action Pyke Syndicate with 2018’s Solo before giving them an even bigger role in 2021’s Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett Disney+ series.

9) Even Kratos Is Powerless to Resist the Influence of Star Wars

Perhaps the weirdest project to rise from the ashes of Star Wars: Underworld is 2018’s God of War reboot. According to the game’s director, Cory Barlog, the seeds of what would eventually become God of War were planted during his tenure at Lucasfilm when he was allowed to read some of the scripts that had been written for Underworld.  “It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced.” Barlog told VentureBeat in 2016.

The director went on to describe a script depicting a young Palpatine’s fall from grace that particularly tugged at his heartstrings. “They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this [expletive] heartless woman. She’s this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this.”

We don’t know how that story specifically inspired Barlog to resurrect the then-dormant God of War series, but gamers everywhere should be glad it did.

10) The Return of Boba Fett

Fan favorite character Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) was always destined for greater things. When George Lucas unceremoniously fed him to the Sarlaac in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, fans refused to believe that was the end of the character. The fans would be proven right when Lucas resurrected the character for Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, although not in the way they expected. Instead of the armored warrior with the stones to stand up to Darth Vader, Fett returned as a little kid (Daniel Logan) who basically got all of his cool stuff from his dad. It wouldn’t be until Star Wars: The Mandalorian that fans would finally get to see the Boba Fett they remembered in action, and boy was it worth the wait.

Had Star Wars: Underworld not gone the way of the dodo, however, fans would have been treated to the return of Boba Fett much sooner. While Underworld’s Boba Fett would have been closer to the little kid version — Daniel Logan even started training with Darth Maul actor Ray Park to prepare for the role — we can assume Fett would have gotten to do a lot more than he did in Clones. Luckily for fans, most of Fett’s Underworld arc was later incorporated into The Clone Wars with Daniel Logan reprising the role, albeit not in the way he expected.