It’s been five years since Disney Parks introduced the brand-new Star Wars themed land, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, at two of their theme parks, but its once strict timeline has since felt unclear. The planet Batuu was created for Galaxy’s Edge, where guests become travelers in Black Spire Outpost. The story that pairs with this setting is meant to take place between the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Disney has since introduced characters such as Din Djarin, Grogu, and Ahsoka Tano to Galaxy’s Edge – seemingly breaking this timeline.
Lucasfilm’s Matt Martin, however, has since confirmed to Gizmodo how viewers should look at Galaxy’s Edge in terms of Star Wars continuity. As a Lucasfilm employee who specializes in overseeing continuity among books, comics, and more, Martin assures Star Wars audiences that Galaxy’s Edge takes special care in not breaking canon. Rather, they “try and look at the area each character is in as that exists where they are,” and that “Walt Disney Imagineering has a pretty good way of ensuring that those characters don’t intrude on each other.” That way, characters who don’t exist simultaneously will never cross paths.
Essentially, what Martin is saying is that the characters of the Star Wars Disney+ TV shows only make appearances in parts of Black Spire Outpost that don’t interact with the sequel trilogy timeline. For example, as the first non-sequel trilogy characters to appear in Galaxy’s Edge, Din Djarin and Grogu began their first appearances at Disneyland and Walt Disney World just outside the Outpost’s marketplace. In this area, there are no identifiable “landmarks” – no Millennium Falcon, no TIE fighters, nothing that ties their surroundings to the sequel Star Wars trilogy.
These characters can wander, but they don’t go far. This area is in between the Rise of the Resistance attraction, where the secret Resistance base resides, and Smuggler’s Run at the Millennium Falcon, which is near the First Order’s own outpost. This in-between area allows these specific characters to wander without encountering Resistance or First Order personnel or symbols, and thus it prevents them from breaking canon, as it portrays them wandering in a version of Black Spire Outpost that very well could have existed in their own timeline.
The schedule of these characters is also the opposite of the sequel trilogy characters, who only emerge when other sequel trilogy characters are out and about. The only true threat to this continuity was when the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser immersive experience was still operating at Walt Disney World, which would have allowed passengers traveling specifically in the sequel trilogy era to spot Din Djarin and Grogu at Black Spire Outpost. Following the Galactic Starcruiser‘s closure, however, this is no longer an issue, and Star Wars has fully solved any potential continuity problems at its theme parks.
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Source: Gizmodo