It Turns Out Some Star Wars Memes Exist In-Universe

Game ZXC

Star Wars

By Dan Conlin

Published Mar 31, 2024

Highlights

Star Wars fans' long-running gags have become canon within the franchise.
Book "The Legend of Luke Skywalker" integrates well-known Star Wars memes into official lore.
Author Ken Liu incorporates fan theories and jokes into the book, adding humor to the series lore.

What are legends if not memes plus time? Several Star Wars fans were recently shocked to discover that a number of running gags among the series fandom have crossed the threshold into a bizarre sort of canon. Apparently, they've been around long enough to bleed into the franchise itself.

Many Star Wars fans will remember certain infamous moments like when Chewbacca finally got his medal of honor in Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. The thing is, the only reason it even happened was due to those same fans having spent the past 50 years in mock outrage about the tall fuzzy hero being the only member of the core cast to not receive a shiny award at the conclusion of the first Star Wars movie. It's just one instance of Star Wars fan theories or jokes becoming so prevalent that the filmmakers themselves have no choice but to acknowledge them. The thing is, that may not be the oldest piece of real world culture around the movies to make its way into a galaxy far, far away.

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Fans on the Star Wars subreddit recently rediscovered a particular book published only a few years ago. The Legend of Luke Skywalker by Ken Liu tells a number of stories from the perspective of several children, and the book just so happens to include some well-known Star Wars memes like "Han shot first" as in-universe conspiracies. That's right, the joke seen on countless ratty t-shirts in every convention from here to that other place officially exists as part of genuine Star Wars lore. But as if to rise to the challenge, others manage to be even more cheeky about it.

The framing device of the book involves a group of youths traveling to the casino world of Canto Bight. On their journey, they share stories about the legendary Luke Skywalker, all the while debating whether he's actually real. The bit about Han shooting first refers to the long-running push back against George Lucas' big change in the Star Wars Special Editions, which makes it so that Han no longer simply guns down Greedo when the bounty hunter finds him on Tatooine. Instead, he's now depicted as only firing after Greedo gets a shot in himself (and somehow misses from 3 feet away). Fans have disliked Lucas' reasoning which was stated as an effort to make Han more "heroic" since the new scene's first appearance, and their frustration is humorously reflected in the book.

Other fans in the comments recalled how the book mentions other similar memes canonized into conspiracies. This includes one where something must be up with the original Death Star's destruction because the explosion apparently looks different in different holorecordings. This is yet another jab at the Special Editions, which elected to add a sort of halo effect to the blast which had previously remained untouched since its climactic moment in 1977's A New Hope. A third fan then pointed out another delightfully goofy bit from the book, claiming that Admiral Ackbar was actually a droid, spawned from the character's real-life animatronic head.

It's not clear whether author Liu had some genuine beef with the Special Editions or simply wanted to have a laugh with decades of Star Wars memes from fans. Either way, it's nice that creators are still able to have fun with the franchise. Hey, maybe another book can finally confirm one particular fan ship from Ahsoka. There's nothing wrong with having a dream.

Star Wars

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise originally created by George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd with the 1977 motion picture. The science fiction franchise follows the adventures of characters (both humanoid and alien) in outer space including those who can wield a mystical power known as the Force. Since the release of the original trilogy of movies, the franchise has expanded to include multiple films and branched out to other media like comics, video games, tv shows, theme park attractions, and more. The IP and Lucasfilm were sold to Disney in 2012.