It was as though the entire Star Wars fandom rejoiced in celebration as the announcement of the one of the most popular villains in the Star Wars expanded universe received a place as canon in the 3rd season of Star Wars Rebels. Thrawn isn’t going to be the man we remember from Legends, but it is being said that he’ll be even better for one massive reason. Which is that the Legends disciples don’t want to listen to of even admit to is the truth, but the Thrawn original was NEVER actually canon, not even close, but he was on a level that could be re-written by Lucas at any second.
Ever since Lucas waved his hand over the realm of Star Wars and reset the canon to a set level across the board, Star Wars fans were bound with a very confusing canon hierarchy. Right at the top was G-canon, which was basically all the media that Lucas was directly involved with. Then there was all the T-canon stuff for all the television shows, and then C-canon which was reserved for the Expanded Universe. The Legends “canon” was two levels below the movies, which if Lucas had made his vision of Episode VII and put in there that “there was never a chance Grand Admiral” would pretty much erase Thrawn completely. Thrawn almost didn’t survive due to the fact that this is the way the old canon levels operated under.
But now that Lucas has hit the reset button on us, everything is basically G-canon now, which means there are no canon levels (there is no spoon Neo). The Story Group that everyone loves to hate on are the ones making sure that all of this is fitting into the tangled Star Wars web that’s being weaved. Now though, Thrawn is making his appearance in Rebels and Zahn’s book is 100% bonafide canon now, and he’s going to be way better than the C-canon Thrawn ever was. All thanks to the new system that Lucasfilm will be operating under. Which also means that his character isn’t going to be over-written by any kind of decision being made on the lowly G-cannon level.
So Thrawn fans, be thankful.
