u/AbsoluteDramps

Let's set aside qualitative judgements of on-screen post-OT Star Wars, which movies are good, which movies are bad, which shows are worth anything, etc. etc. This how the protagonist of one of the great American film trilogies has been treated in the ensuing 50 years:

-A trilogy of prequels was made, which only featured him in the final scenes as a baby

-A trilogy of sequels was made, where he only appears in one film alive where he's a curmudgeonly master to the new protagonist who dies at the end

-None of the cartoons are about him

-None of the videogames that don't directly adapt movie content are about him either

-He only appears sporadically in a couple of the live action shows as a deepfake puppet whose biggest accomplishment is aura farming in the last episode of Mando Season 2

All of this is objectively completely insane. Again, the original trilogy is still considered one of the defining landmarks of western cinema and via some utterly bizarre sequence of events its lead has just been ignored for half a century of his universe exploding in scope far beyond what George Lucas could've begun to imagine in the deserts of Tunisia in 1977.

Of course, there is an obvious retort and giant asterisk to all this: the books and comics, especially those from the pre-Disney Expanded Universe. But the cold, unfortunate truth is that other than maybe Heir to the Empire nobody that isn't totally immersed in the hardcore Star Wars fandom bubble has read those things. Please do not try to pretend that anybody in the general public knows who Mara Jade or Doctor Aphra are and what Luke did in his adventures with them. As I said the print media is a series of products for the 98th percentile of Star Wars nerd. As far as everyone else is concerned, the above sequence of bullet points is what has become of one of the great sci-fi heroes.