Our Star Wars journey begins in 1977, when Star Wars is released to an unsuspecting public and CHANGES MOVIES FOREVER™. It’s a surprise hit, and pretty soon we have two sequels: 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of the Jedi. Confusingly, these three films are episodes IV, V, and VI of a larger series, although I, II, and III don’t exist yet. But licensed toys and comics do, and so does a new breed of geek: the Star Wars fan.

In 1991, the saga gets its first real continuation in the form of a book trilogy. Acclaimed sci-fi writer Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy picks up where the first three movies left off. Movie versions of these stories are never made, but at the time, they’re understood to be “canon”—fan speak for anything that “actually” happened in the fictional universe.

Meanwhile, George Lucas—Star Wars’ creator and sometime tormenter–is busy tweaking his creations. He renames the first movie Star Wars: Episode IV-A New Hope and constantly tinkers with the special effects. He releases three new “Special Editions” of the movies in theaters in the 1990s. We also get a ton of new spin-off books, including series for younger readers.

Next up: a new multimedia project called Shadows of the Empire, created in 1996. Set between the second and third movies (episodes V and VI), Shadows isn’t a movie—but it is a comic book, a novel, and a video game. It’s a sort of dry run for the massive promotional effort that will come next: the prequels. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) are the first truly new Star Wars movies to come out since 1983, and they are a big deal. They are also—and I’m not going to sugarcoat this—pretty bad. The Star Wars experience hasn’t been all roses, folks. Bear with me.

In 2012, something huge happens: Disney buys out George Lucas’ Lucasfilm, making Disney the new owners of the Star Wars franchise. This has a major effect on the "canon" because Disney promptly de-canonizes the Thrawn books and a bunch of others in Star Wars’ so-called “Extended Universe,” clearing the way for them to make their own sequels to the original trilogy.

The first of those sequels is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is Episode VII of the series. It won’t be the last: Disney is planning on an Episode VIII, Episode IX, and a bunch of standalone "Star Wars Anthology" movies like the new Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

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