Five years ago, the dead talked about this past weekend. Not inside a star Wars the movie, the mind, or at least, the first time there. Even within the ancillary star Wars composite material, such as a comic book or novel. Instead, the long-awaited return of the Skywalker Saga’s main villain Sheev Palpatine came as a Fortnite special event, and star Wars The canon of books has not been extended to its strange place since then.
There are certainly a lot of wild things going on in between star Wars continuity—be it its current limitations or the Expanded Universe Past—but are, for the most part, odd occurrences in the texts themselves. Beyond the boundaries of what is continuous, there is much that is strange and, from the mere scope of star Wars‘ impact on our culture. Taken separately—the vision of Palpatine announcing his grand awakening in the galaxy as the final revenge of the Sith, the quote unquote “final” star Wars the movie would advertise itself as one of the biggest video games in the world—these things are no nonsense considering that. star Wars has been during the last almost 50 years.
And yet the veil was at its lowest on December 14, 2019, and the emergence of the goal of those two visions was Rise of Skywalker‘s Fortnite special event. If you can get it to work, you can watch (or unintentionally try to beat) a digital game of JJ Abrams talking to him. Sonic the Hedgehog‘s Ben Schwartz and the Game Awards’ Geoff Keighley to present a clip from the film. You can also see what remains, somewhat this half-decade later, of one of the two canonical sources of Palpatine’s return to the galaxy.
There is nothing wrong with the message itself. That’s right a lot Sheev Palpatine will announce that he cheated death with a large fleet of Star Destroyers and basically send the meme “I lived, nodindwa” to the entire galaxy. A man is nothing if not an amazing gamer! But the craziness remains, five years later—in that franchise love endlessly creating a context for himself—this event, and its mention within the novel Rise of Skywalkerare the only two references to such a world-building episode.
It’s already weird enough that it’s not in the movie, but, the memes are definitely funnier over the years from the aside, the actual silliness of Palpatine’s. Fortnite broadcasting that is simply lost in history. That’s a weird thing to say about something that just turned five years old, but it’s true: you can’t play this. Fortnite the event, too, is preserved only in the recording of the players. The broadcast text itself can be found at least within the novelization of Rise of Skywalker-which, by the way author Rae Carson at the time, it was given to Lucasfilm, it wasn’t made specifically either Fortnite or his book—at least, but not the same. An episode of star Wars history (mocked as it is!) exists in this strange limbo in between star Wars as a continuous text as well star Wars as a product entity, it likewise lives in an equally strange state of existence. The dead speak, but they also do not speak.
And yet perhaps it is best that this is one example, among many over the years star Wars The canon has been changed, perhaps the most prominent manifestation of the subtlety that has existed star Wars‘ “everything matters” has been the way to go for the past decade. It’s always kind of a lie from the start, despite what Lucasfilm says, that is star Wars it will continue to grow and develop with the same weight given to any book or comic release as a TV show or movie. We’re not back to the levels of broken retcons and refactoring that the old EU was, but we’ve had plenty of times where it’s modern. star Wars can’t keep up with it 10 years ago. Hey, we’re in the same situation as Palpatine’s stream right now with Marvel’s Battle of Jakku comics, which embellish a once-canon story in parts of a pre-canon video game that is no longer accessible to play, preserving history even as you overwrite it.
Nothing indeed important to star Wars It is canon out of time to do, beyond what has been established in the first series of nine films (Palpatine’s speech is substituted). But in that sense, everything therefore matters: a Fortnite the event that you can no longer play is as important to the climax of the Skywalker Saga as the film tells it’s climax, especially given the length. star Wars the media has gone five years since they came back to justify it. And maybe that’s the most important message to tell star Wars fans, as confused by the realities of their universe as they often are, like getting word that somehow, Palpatine is back.
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