LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy's writers discuss the Alternate Universe

There have been several rewrites of Star Wars canon over the years. The Star Wars Infinities comics of the early 2000s introduced us to Imperial Leia, Jedi Leia, and a Rebel Alliance Darth Vader. Jan Ors of Star Wars Legends shares many similarities to Jyn Erso in stealing the Death Star plans. There has been a lot rewritten about my personal favorites, the X-wing pilots.

In the four-part miniseries LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, audiences will see what happens when there's a complete reformation of the universe. Gizmodo explains, "Using the same Lego bricks, the series' planets vehicles, and technology are dramatically reshaped into kid-bashed mash-ups of preexisting designs and concepts." Neither villains nor heroes can escape the effects of this "brave new world," and writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit discussed the process with the site.

When asked about the higher-ups putting the kibosh on ideas, Samit said it was not something that never really happened. "It's just a playful celebration of all things Lego Star Wars. And that sort of involved having fun with any and all characters that we could." Hernandez added "Benji and I tried to have an in-galaxy reason that the history of this galaxy played out differently for each character, for each planet, for each ship."

Two characters they enjoyed twisting to their purposes were Rey Skywalker and Rose Tico. We saw glimpses of Rey's dark potential in The Rise of Skywalker, but Rose serving evil stretches the imagination. Hernandez describes how the Darth Tico character stemmed from one incident:

"I love that character [Rose] and I love, love, love Kelly Marie Tran and she is just the most incredible performer. And I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more nuance... Her sister dies in 'The Last Jedi,' right? Right at the beginning. And she takes the path of compassion and empathy. But not everybody does. And there was not guarantee that that's how she would have ended up. And so that was a really interesting place to begin to say: what does a dark version of this character who has had a lot of suffering occur, what path does that set her on?"

- Dan Hernandez

Similarly, there is also the appearance of Darth Jar Jar Binks. A widespread fan theory that has some interesting points, the idea that the Sith Lord is the most goofy character was one that Samit expected pushback on. Nevertheless, Disney pointed out that, "If there's ever been a moment to be able to do it, it's this."

The Jedi in this shakeup are certainly in a different place. Hernandez comments, "Our version of the Jedi are... not the Knights in a sort of revered position. They're kind of in a lower, fallen-on-hard -times place."

A major element of the miniseries is that the universe should be remade but not put back together. Hernandez considered, "It would be not truthful or satisfying to sort of hit the reset button like a Nintendo game" and instead framed the idea that the two options in life are "either to move forward or be completely in paralysis about this thing." They wanted to communicate the message that "You don't always have control, but you do have some control over the way that you yourself react to what life throws at you."

LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy is out now on Dinsey+.