Star Wars Canon stories not in the movies
 

For my wife, so she can understand some of the plot: other than the animated clone wars, rebels, or video games, what should she watch or read to get a good idea of what happened before the prequel or in between etc? Any books or streaming series would be perfect for her.

Thanks
Matthew

Here's a good guide to the new canon books; Rise of the Empire era is what you're looking for: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/...-books-comics/

As for streaming, Clone Wars and Rebels is about it for the prequel era.

Disney claims that some of the books are no longer canon but apparently Disney ripped off a lot of ideas from the "Legends" books - such as Grand Admiral Thrawn who had blue skin and glowing red eyes. He would have fit in better than Hux IMO.

In most some cases you just have to change the names of some characters and the plots are eerily similar. Leia and Han had twins. The Emperor came back via cloning, etc etc. The only positive was that Luke didn't quit in disgust, got married and had little Force kiddies like his sister. Anakin showed up as a force ghost. Major characters did die - but not nearly as many as those who died in the movies.

The EU was a rich tapestry of stories better than most of what Disney has come up with. But George Lucas took too much of a hands-off approach to it resulting in it becoming a bit unwieldy.

As such, Disney was right to de-canonize it for the sake of consistency, but to ignore it and do their own thing with mostly inferior stories was unwise.

What about "Star Wars Holiday Special"?

I blame Disney for that as well.

Thx y'all :)