There’s a strange sense in which the Mandalorians killed the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Star Wars has always been a transmedia franchise the first tie-in book, Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was published in 1978 –before the release of The Empire Strikes Back. But this so-called Expanded Universe only really became a hit in the 1990s in the aftermath of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. The Star Wars franchise soon expanded across mediums including New York Times-bestselling novels comics and computer games.
And then, as the decade came to an end George Lucas returned to make the prequel trilogy. Lucas didn’t want to be boxed in by the Star Wars Expanded Universe although he took ideas he liked (such as the galactic capital Coruscant created by Zahn but introduced on the big screen in Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace in general he had no qualms about contradicting ideas from the EU. Lucas film adopted a tiered approach to canon Lucas own productions were G-level God-level or George-level) absolute canon, and anything in the EU could be retconned rewritten, or dropped entirely based on Lucas stories. This naturally led to a great deal of tension in the fan base but an uneasy status quo gradually developed. This would last through most of the 2000s until the Mandalorians became a canon busting problem.
The Mandalorians Became A Crucial Part Of The Star Wars Expanded Universe
A British author hailing from Wiltshire Karen Traviss became fascinated by the idea of exploring the Mandalorian culture. This led to a popular series of novels focused on the clone troopers during the Clone Wars who were shown embracing their Mandalorian heritage. Traviss followed in the footsteps of some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers designing a new language and a rich, layered society. The books were best-sellers and Traviss soon joined other writers in penning arcs set after Return of the Jedi with a Mandalorian resurgence.
Traviss wasn’t universally admired. She clearly loved the Mandalorian culture she had designed far more than anything else in Star Wars and couldn’t help contrasting the Mandalorians with the Jedi with the Jedi tending to come up short in the comparison. Traviss was unusually active in Star Wars forums too and could be harsh and abrasive to those who weren’t as enamored with the Mandalorians as she was. She became increasingly controversial as the years went on and then Star Wars changed once again when George Lucas came out of retirement to work on Star Wars The Clone Wars.
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