Star Wars fans began 2026 with a late Christmas present in the long-awaited announcement: Kathleen Kennedy will be stepping down as president of Lucasfilm. She will be replaced by a co-presidency with Lynwen Brennan overseeing business strategy and Dave Filoni overseeing creative strategy, an expansion of his previous role as Chief Creative Officer. For the uninitiated, or those under the proverbial rock, Kennedy was bequeathed the helm of Lucasfilm after the landmark sale of the studio to Disney in 2012. Not only has she been a Hollywood mainstay the past several decades, she has also been a long time friend and collaborator of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Simply put - she knows Hollywood.
Despite Kathleen Kennedy’s deep experience in Hollywood, many fans felt early decisions reflected a disconnect from the Star Wars franchise. The cancellation of The Clone Wars in March 2013 was the first major signal that Lucasfilm under Disney would not simply continue existing trajectories. Though this blow was later softened with the debut of Rebels and legitimate final season of Clone Wars, the damage was done as fans still felt the decision disregarded legacy.
That perception intensified with the closure of LucasArts in April 2013 surrendering development rights to Electronic Arts. You can read more about the history of Star Wars gaming since then here. Just a year later, the reclassification of the Expanded Universe as “Legends” signaled further departure from what fans loved about Star Wars. For longtime fans, these decisions meant more than mere corporate restructuring - they represented a severing of continuity with decades of stories that had helped define the galaxy far, far away.
This reclassification has since caused a schism that exists to this day. Fans continue to argue whether or not the “Disney canon” is true canon and that the old EU is the true record of events of the galaxy. Fans felt vindicated in their stance when Kennedy doubled down on the Legends reclassification in 2019 to Rolling Stone stating that “There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don't have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything other than passionate story tellers ….”
While this reclassification and disregard for decades of revered stories and characters is subjectively a poor decision, it makes sense logically and narratively. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to usher in a new era with a clean slate to allow maximum creative freedom. Despite this logic, it does seem over a decade after the dice were rolled that the gamble has not paid off - many aspects from Legends were canonized anyway to varying success (looking at you Thrawn and Boba Fett).
Another justification, and where I personally fall in the great canon debate, lies in the very structure of the franchise. We must first look at what a “legend” is - a story coming down from the past, especially one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable. The very first thing an audience member sees in (almost) every Star Wars film is the iconic blue text - “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The iconic tagline suggests what we’re about to witness, like a legend, is a historical record passed down through the ages without the burden of verification. With this definition and framing in mind, it can be thought that certain aspects of the EU could very well have happened, but nobody really knows if it did.
This is further reasonable when we notice that many aspects of the EU extend thousands of years to the past and hundreds of years into the future. After all, real-world historical accounts from hundreds or thousands of years ago are often incomplete or debated. Thus, if we immerse ourselves into the narrative and lore, we can still enjoy aspects of the EU as canon if we want, because to the citizens of the galaxy, much of what is now classified as Legends are exactly that - legends.
Fans still enjoy Legends content. KOTOR is still regarded as some of the best storytelling in Star Wars. As elusive as it has been, KOTOR is still slated for a bona-fide remake at some point, and if court documents are anything to go off of the same can be said for its legendary (wink wink) sequel. KOTOR love is so alive and well that Fate of the Old Republic, a spiritual successor, was announced just last year. That enthusiasm is just a small example of how much fans are still enjoying Legends content.
Of course, all Legends content is still available and accessible, though with an added Legends banner to delineate from canon. Nobody is saying the content isn’t good, or that you can’t enjoy it, but like an actual legend in our world, they can still be considered as such literally in the narrative of Star Wars. Disney canon is canon. That may be to your chagrin, it may not be. But the point stands that Legends remain meaningful precisely because they function as legends—stories passed down, interpreted, and cherished across generations. In that sense, Star Wars itself has always been a legend, retold and reimagined each time it is shared.