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Characters from Star Wars games who are now canon

A list of characters from 30 years of Star Wars games who are now canon. In 2014, Disney decanonised the original Expanded Universe; declaring all the books, comics and games as non-canon. Only the six cinema films and the animated Clone Wars survived. All new Star Wars content from 2014 onwards would be automatically considered canon, and because of this a surprising amount of characters from video games have been written back into official Star Wars canon.

Grand Admiral Thrawn

Grand Admiral Thrawn is probably the one EU character fans were keen to see ratified in the new canon. I’ve done a video about Thrawn’s EU origin in the TIE Fighter PC game. Thrawn is a ruthless military commander and in TIE Fighter, his tactical brilliance was used to strengthen the Empire’s grip, with minimal contact with the Rebel Alliance. The Rebels cartoon changes this significantly, but everything else about the character is absolutely perfect.

Dash Rendar

When LucasArts came to make Shadows of the Empire, a new Star Wars episode set between Empire and Jedi, they needed a cocky smuggler cowboy to replace the currently-in-carbonite Han Solo. Enter one of the most divisive characters in Star Wars history, Dash Rendar. Dash is the lead role in the 1996 PC and Nintendo 64 game Shadows of the Empire. Whilst Disney have never declared him officially canon, Dash’s modified Corellian transport, the Outrider, can be seen edited into the background of the 1997 Special Edition of A New Hope. So no questions, that’s CANON.

Delta Squad

Star Wars: Republic Commando was as a dirty, gritty, shooter featuring a crack-squad of clone troopers. Over ten years old, RepCom is still one of the best Star Wars games, and actually still a pretty decent shooter. Republic Commando introduced us to heroic clones before Captain Rex or Commander Cody were on the scene. Boss, Fixer, Scorch and Sev from Delta Squadron are forever cemented into canon due to their appearance in an episode of Dave Filoni’s Clone Wars cartoon. It feels like Dave Filoni and the guys creating Star Wars Rebels are trying to re-canonise as much of the old EU as they can. We’ve seen Thrawn and a tremendous amount of material from the Old Republic timeline sneaking in.

Darth Revan (almost)

Few Star Wars characters have proven so influential or enduring as the fallen Jedi, Darth Revan. Originally appearing in Knights of the Old Republic, Revan’s been all over the EU and was almost ALMOST canonised in an episode of The Clone Wars cartoon that got canned before it was aired.

Weirder characters from Star Wars video games who are now canon

The next two are dead weird. Hindane Darcc first appeared in Ensemble Studios’ Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Just made up for the game, serving on Moff Tarkin’s flagship, the Executrix. For no real reason he’s namedropped in the Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide as captain of the Executrix and so pop, he’s canon. The same can be said for Sian Teev. Teev first appears in the X-Wing PC game and also appears in another Star Wars strategy game, Empire at War. Sian Teev is mentioned in the Battlefront novelisaton, Twilight Company. And just like two some random blokes from some old PC games are more real than Galen Marek.

It doesn’t matter anyway. These days the old “head canon” is more important than ever. Kyle Katarn will always be the guy who stole the Death Star plans for me, and that’s fine. If that’s wrong then I don’t want to be right.

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