While Star Wars remains a film franchise at its core, the movies have several moments that aren’t fully explained onscreen, leaving it up to the books, comics, and video games to fill in the gaps. Ever since the end of the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the premiere of The Mandalorian on Disney+, the franchise has rapidly expanded through multiple TV shows, giving more supporting characters time in the spotlight while continuing plotlines from the movies. In this way, new Star Wars TV shows follow the same model that the Expanded Universe had embodied for almost 50 years.
However, even with the TV shows continuing where the films left off, several details about moments from the Star Wars movies are still exclusive to other mediums. Whether exploring the history of previously unnamed characters, addressing bizarre plot holes, or adding greater depth to preexisting storylines, the books, comics, and games have always helped to enhance the experience of revisiting Star Wars movies. From the beginning of the prequels to the end of the sequels. 10 Star Wars stories are the most memorable for how they explain various moments in the movies.
Mos Eisley Spaceport may have been a “…wretched hive of scum and villainy,” but viewers were introduced to the wider Star Wars galaxy through the patrons of the Mos Eisley Cantina. Packed with bounty hunters, smugglers, and aliens from every corner of the universe, it was a brilliant moment of worldbuilding, and it also raised questions about each character and their history. Almost every person featured in this scene received their own short story in Star Wars: Tales from the Most Eisley Cantina, edited by Kevin J. Anderson with entries from several prolific science fiction authors.
These tales revealed how Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes ended up playing in the cantina, explored the aspirations of Wuher the bartender, unveiled the history of Greedo’s life, and more. This anthology approach expands on the Mos Eisley scenes in A New Hope by showing the same scenes from the perspective of multiple characters while making Luke Skywalker’s story a piece of several other adventures. While Tales from the Most Eisley Cantina is now branded as “Legends,” these characters were given a canon equivalent for the franchise’s 40th anniversary.
One of the first Star Wars movie moments that caused viewers to raise an eyebrow was an Imperial officer’s curious decision not to shoot at R2-D2 and C-3PO’s escape pod. The officer tells the gunner to hold his fire because there are no lifeforms aboard, but this is a flimsy excuse, as the Empire wouldn’t take chances when their actions are supposed to be secret. The real reason the officer didn’t shoot is that Luke would never have seen Leia’s message or received the Death Star plans, so George Lucas had to come up with a line to explain it.
Even so, Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View attempted to justify this moment with the short story “The Sith of Datawork” by Ken Liu. The officer in question, gunnery Captain Bolvan, tells a liaison that he didn’t fire because he would have had to fill out paperwork explaining why he fired on an escape pod, and because Imperial regulations tie an officer’s promotions to their number of kills. This still isn’t a perfect excuse, as the Imperial had already fired on other escape pods, but it’s as good an explanation as can be expected.
The opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones says that the Separatists are led by “… the mysterious Count Dooku,” and this couldn’t be a more appropriate description for his character. The movie states that he was once a Jedi who left the Order, and he initially appears to have formed the Separatists to stop Darth Sidious, who he knows has taken control of the Republic. However, the ending reveals that Dooku is Sidious’ new Sith apprentice and that they are playing both sides of the war, so Dooku’s backstory and motivations are confusing in the prequels.
These questions are addressed in the audiobook Star Wars: Dooku – Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott, which covers Dooku’s life from childhood to his decision to walk away from the Jedi. The story shows how he reconnected with his family on Serenno, his friendship with Sifo-Dyas, and his gradual disillusionment with the Jedi and the Republic. It clarifies that Dooku once had noble motivations, but this left him vulnerable to being seduced to the dark side by Sidious, which would later be explored further in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi season 1.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens reunited Han Solo with the Millennium Falcon, which he had apparently lost at some point after Return of the Jedi. The movie only confirms that the Millennium Falcon was stolen by a man named Ducain and then stolen again by the Irving Boys, sending Han and Chewbacca on a wild bantha chase across the galaxy to find it. Unkar Plutt stole the ship from the Irving Boys and took it to his junkyard on Jakku, where it was taken by Rey and Finn while they were running from the First Order.
Star Wars Adventures (2017) #18 includes a story that reveals who Ducain is and how he managed to steal the Millennium Falcon from Han. Gannis Ducain begins as a janitor working in Maz Kanata’s castle on Takodana but is hired by Han for a job on the planet Christophisis, and Ducain chooses to steal the ship while Han is away to make a name for himself as a gunrunner. He eventually decides to return the ship to Han but the Irving Boys steal it before he can, and in a strange twist of fate, Ducain ends up joining the Resistance.
The First Order and the Resistance sought the last piece of a map to the first Jedi Temple to find Luke Skywalker, but the Jedi Master used something else to locate “…the most unfindable place in the galaxy…” Luke found the planet Ahch-To using an ancient device called a Jedi star compass, similar to the Sith wayfinders that revealed the path to Exegol. The Jedi star compass can briefly be seen in Luke’s hut in Star Wars: The Last Jedi among many other Jedi artifacts he collected in his years of traveling across the galaxy.
The Jedi star compass was introduced exactly one month before The Last Jedi hit theaters in the story campaign for Star Wars: Battlefront II. Luke travels to one of Emperor Palpatine’s observatories on the planet Pillio, where he encounters Del Meeko of Inferno Squad, who has been ordered to destroy the observatory following Palpatine’s apparent death. Luke and Meeko team up to survive against the wildlife, and despite his orders, Meeko allows Luke to keep the compass as thanks for saving his life. Luke takes the artifact, not knowing that he will one day use it to go into exile.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker introduced a lot of new backstories for the sequel trilogy but didn’t have time to explore everything in detail. One of the most fascinating reveals was how Lando Calrissian and Luke Skywalker were tracking a Sith Loyalist named Ochi of Bestoon, which would have led them to Rey and Palpatine years before the sequel trilogy. Unfortunately, the two never found Ochi or learned the secrets he kept for the Sith.
Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher is the definitive backstory for this aspect of the sequel trilogy, explaining why Luke and Lando were tracking Ochi in the first place. The book also follows Rey and her parents as they flee from Palpatine and attempt to stay one step ahead of Ochi, making their inevitable deaths even more tragic. By the end of the story, readers fully understand how these characters ended up where they are in the sequels while fleshing out their development and motivations.
In one of the most heartbreaking scenes of The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker recounts how Ben Solo destroyed his Jedi temple and slaughtered most of his students. However, neither The Last Jedi nor The Rise of Skywalker revealed what happened to the handful of Jedi students who disappeared with Ben, whether they were alive or if they now served the dark side. Many fans assumed that Luke’s missing students joined Ben and became the Knights of Ren, but this became unlikely after he killed them without much hesitation at the end of The Rise of Skywalker.
Charles Soule and Will Sliney answered all these questions in the four-issue comic book miniseries Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren. The Jedi students were Voe, Hennix, and Tai, who were off on a mission while Ben was destroying the Temple, and when they return to find their home in flames, they vow to pursue him and bring him to justice for his crimes. All three students were killed by Ben and the Knights of Ren, and after bleeding the kyber crystals from their lightsabers to make his red blade, Ben declared himself Kylo Ren.
Darth Vader’s “I am your father” scene is the most iconic moment in Star Wars, but the movies have made it confusing as to when exactly Vader learned Luke was his son. Vader refers to Luke as “Skywalker” at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, implying that he knows Luke’s true identity, but during his conversation with Palpatine, he seems puzzled at the idea of having a son. Lucas made this change for the 2004 DVD release because Vader thought he had killed Padmé Amidala and her unborn child in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
Star Wars (2015) #6 by Jason Aaron and John Cassaday offers some much-needed clarification, showing that Boba Fett tells Vader Luke’s last name shortly after A New Hope. Star Wars: Darth Vader (2015) #6 by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca expands on this by having an infuriated Vader tempted to confront Palpatine for lying to him, but he instead chooses to bide his time while planning to convert Luke and claim the Empire for himself. This means that Vader is likely playing dumb in The Empire Strikes Back so that Palpatine won’t realize he already knows the truth about Luke.
Rather than create a new “I am your father” twist for the prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace reveals that Anakin Skywalker has no father. While his mother, Shmi Skywalker, is unable to explain how this happened, Qui-Gon Jinn speculates that it was the will of the Force and that Anakin was conceived by the midi-chlorians. The Jedi accept this since there is no other explanation, but the old Star Wars Expanded Universe revealed that there was more to the story.
The full story of Palpatine’s Sith Master was told in Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno, a man obsessed with influencing the midi-chlorians to learn how to cheat death. The book reveals that Plagueis attempted to create life through the Force, but in a surprising turn of events, he speculates that Anakin was created by the Force in response to Plagueis and Palpatine meddling with the dark side. Funnily enough, George Lucas originally intended to include this in Revenge of the Sith, with Palpatine telling Anakin that this almost makes him his father.