There's a lot out on the Internet about Star Wars's history, both in real life and in the Legends and canonical universes. I am not versed deeply in the lore of Star Wars Legends as there is a great deal of it, and I am at best a journeyman in my knowledge of the new canon's history. But I am a history buff (both for Star Wars and for real life) and an armchair philosophy who uses popular culture as the lens for my personal philosophies.
Maybe you don't know Star Wars very well, maybe you like it but you never took the time to synthesize everything that's been going on in all the movies and television shows and comic books and novels and... *gasping breath* ...whatever else is out there.
I'd like to reflect on the current state of affairs in Star Wars history, and the interesting direction it's taken since the Legends have been thrown out. I feel that, since so many people were attached to the Expanded Universe stuff (now called Legends), the current canon is not usually given a fair shake. My own personal views on Star Wars philosophy will play into my interpretation of what I've read, and that's the touch that I hope will convince you that what I'm writing is worth having read.
So what follows is a -- *ahem* -- brief synopsis of the Star Wars saga so far.
For those who do not know, the Star Wars calendar (as recorded by the New Republic) measures time before and after the Battle of Yavin (ie. the destruction of the first Death Star above the planet Yavin). So the First Galactic Empire and its New Order was established in 19 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin) and fell in about 7 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin) with the Battle of Jakku. This is important to know for a clear understanding of the time frames that I'm talking about.
To get a quick backstory on how the Empire came to be, it's important to understand the history of the Clone Wars. All of this started about 40BBY with a Jedi master named Sifo Dyas. I won't go into too much detail about Sifo Dyas, but suffice it to say that he predicted the whole Clone War thing coming and so went, in secret, to have an army of clones made for the Grand Republic. This eventually became the Grand Army of the Republic, and it was all made from the genome of a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Jango Fett. The dark lord of the Sith, who had been developing his power in hiding, caught wind of Sifo Dyas's behavior, and sent his apprentice to mess around with the clones and set in motion the circuitous plan that would make the Sith Lord the Emperor of the galaxy.
Twenty years later (yes, there's no shit that big a gap between important events here), a nobleman named Count Dooku takes a grip of star systems that were once part of the Grand Republic and secedes, forming the Confederacy of Independent Systems. It is because of this that the supreme chancellor, Sheev Palpatine, secretly the dark lord of the Sith, is able to receive emergency war powers that let him officially found the Grand Army of the Republic. The Separatists employ battle droids in armed conflict against a force of primarily Jedi in the First Battle of Geonosis which kicks off the Clone Wars. Nobody seems phased by the fact that the Grand Army was hot and ready to shoot when Palpatine called for them.
Through twists and turns, Palpatine manipulates both the Separatists and the Grand Army to weaken the infrastructure of the galaxy until he can take a new apprentice: Darth Vader. Palpatine is convinced that Darth Vader is a prophesied and powerful warrior who will help him reign over the galaxy for all eternity. In order for that to work, however, Palpatine has to find the secrets to eternal life. So he begins to look for that. Meanwhile he sends Vader on a killing spree. Vader kills all the Jedi on the capital world of Coruscant, including all the Jedi children. Then Vader is sent to kill the Separatist leadership, and the Clone Wars end very suddenly. Along with this, Palpatine's earlier interference with the Grand Army allows him to force the Clones to execute all the Jedi out in the field. The galaxy is told that the Jedi betrayed the Republic. Palpatine reorganizes the Republic into the First Galactic Empire in 19BBY. The regions throughout the Core of the galaxy easily accept the peace this brings, because much of the fighting had damaged their worlds tremendously.
That's the nitty-gritty of the Clone Wars, distilled into three paragraphs. There's a lot more intrigue and development, but this post is already quite long and I'll assume you haven't got all day. You now know enough to move onto the Galactic Civil War.
To begin the Galactic Civil War era I want to answer a question that I myself have asked, and recently have heard asked, about the Rebellion. Why did it all take place in the Outer Rim?
The simple answer is that the Core Worlds, the Colonies, and the Mid-Rim were all mostly happy to fall under Imperial rule. These are worlds primarily inhabited by human beings, and although some key non-human races inhabit the Core Worlds, most of the prominent members of non-human races come from the Outer Rim.
The Outer Rim is also more vast and lawless, so the Empire is stretched thin trying to keep it all under control. The Hutts gangsters have their kajidics reaching outward from Hutt space to the Western reaches with the help of Jabba the Hutt (through 6ABY). Although the Hutts officially paid lip service to the Empire, they considered themselves above Imperial law and asserted their own authority wherever they lay their greasy tails.
But the Outer Rim is not as resource-rich as the Core-ward regions. There are some key strategic planets, and the Empire certainly pinpointed those first, but until the Alliance to Restore the Republic stole the Death Star plans the Empire never considered the Rebels to be a credible threat. Whatever small victories the Rebels may have had on planets like Lothal and Mygeeto, the Empire responded by doubling down its strength to great effect. For the most part, if the Empire wanted any one planet in the Outer Rim, they took it.
There was the issue of keeping the planets they took, and all of the others, after they had been placed under Imperial Authority. Rebel cells acted as nuisances, disrupting the efforts of Imperial governors and causing problems for the Imperial foothold in the Outer Rim. So a project left over from the Clone Wars was brought forward by Director Orson Krennic and the Imperial Governor Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. Tarkin pitched the idea to the Emperor, and Director Krennic set off trying to reclaim the one guy in the galaxy who'd figured out how to turn kyber crystals (the focus of a Jedi's lightsaber energy blade) into a source of near-infinite power: Galen Erso. And Krennic wanted this man to weaponize that power for the Death Star. Go figure.
During much of this ruthless expansion into the Outer Rim territory, the Emperor continued to be slowed down somewhat by the existence of the Imperial Senate. A holdover from the Grand Republic, the Senate gave the galaxy some semblance of democracy. Although the Emperor held supreme military power, much of the actual governing of planets was handled by the Senate until 0BBY. So the Emperor set about a plan to get rid of the Senate. Because when people are voting, you'll never get them to agree which planet ought to be blown up. And the Emperor does like playing with his toys.
When Jynn Erso stole the Death Star plans and delivered them to the Tantive IV, the Rebellion earned the close and continued attentions of Darth Vader. Though Vader had a hand in dealing with Rebels on Lothal, he was really only interested in hunting down a missing padawan: Caleb Dume (aka Kanan Jarrus). Until the Death Star plans were stolen, Vader's job wasn't routing out Rebels it was continuing to eliminate the Jedi as an overseer of the Imperial Inquisitorius. It took an encounter with his old padawan, Ahsoka Tanno, to divert his attention from the Jedi of the Phoenix Squadron Rebel cell.
Vader was a legendary physical manifestation of the Emperor's will, and, eventually like Luke Skywalker, was a bit of a myth among the people of the galaxy fortunate enough not to cross his path. Few Imperials even dealt with him, and during the early Empire Era Vader operated out of his castle on Mustafar. Having Vader as a common presence would have disrupted the general belief that the Force was a bunch on nonsense made up by the Jedi to bamboozle the galaxy (an important tenet of Imperial propaganda).
Most importantly, Jyn Erso and the Battle of Scarif legitimized the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the eyes of the Empire. They weren't just dealing with a few disparate dissidents, they were dealing with an organized and armed militia. Tarkin took up residence on the Death Star and Vader chased after the Tantive IV to recover the stolen Death Star plans. Quite honestly, this one task is the most involved Vader ever was in rooting out the Rebellion as a fighting force. After failing to recover the plans, Vader devoted himself to locating Luke Skywalker, not to destroying the Rebels. Ostensibly, he was still continuing his mission to eliminate the Jedi.
But as much as the Skywalkers would like to believe it, the galaxy doesn't orbit them and their weird family squabble. The Empire never planned to have only one Death Star, and began right away on a second one. In traditional Imperial fashion, they doubled-down on their military, and an interesting thing happened in the Core, Colonies, and Mid-Rim regions: there was a schism of opinion in the Empire.
Two things happened to cause this: the Death Star destroyed Alderaan, and then the Rebels destroyed the Death Star. Both of these events cost millions of lives. Possibly collectively billions (the population numbers are always estimated really low in science fiction). People who cared more about the atrocity that the Empire committed against a Core World began to dissent. People who cared more about the ferocious terrorist attack on an Imperial military facility strengthened their resolve. In short, the civil war got worse. This is hard to see in the Star Wars trilogy, but it has a lot to do with why The Empire Strikes Back is so dark, and why the Rebels lose so much footing in that movie.
The Rebel Alliance is on the run so badly that it cannot gather except in the depths of the Outer Reaches. Out beyond the Outer Rim, they begin to amass an unprecedented fleet of ships from all over the galaxy. Everyone was starting to show up to the party, including larger numbers of Imperial defectors. It was at this time that the Rebels learned from Bothawui of the second Death Star being constructed above the forest moon of Endor (which is technically not a moon, but a dwarf planet).
The Empire felt pretty good about its chances against the Rebels. Between 1ABY and 6ABY, they had the Rebels on the ropes. They had no reason to suspect that the enemies they made during those years would contribute to their demise. Did you ever notice how much larger the Rebellion military seemed to be in Return of the Jedi compared to A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back? Well, people weren't happy about what the Empire was up to and they showed up with guns to do something about it. When the second Death Star was destroyed, there was much celebration by rebel sympathizers throughout the galaxy. But there was also a sudden and horrible retribution from the remaining Imperial powers.
You see, those in power aren't likely to give it up quickly, especially when they got that power by bullying in the first place. And the Empire was made up of no one if not a multitude of the most clever, brutish, and cold-hearted bullies that ever terrorized the galaxy. But these bullies were also people, and often people of strong convictions. The slaughter on worlds like Coruscant following the tear down of Sheev Palpatine's statue was just what you would expect from a military dictatorship struggling to retain its power.
In the first few months following the Battle of Endor, the Empire executed a powerful campaign of misinformation. The official story was that the Emperor was not at Endor, and that he was alive and well on Coruscant. You see, Palpatine had plans in place in the event of his death, and his subordinates were able to keep much of Imperial High Command fooled in the time after his destruction.
The Empire was, however, extremely fractured. Without central guidance from the Emperor, and without a replacement for the missing ruler, Moffs and Admirals took it into their own hands to steer their diaspora forces to victory over the New Republic fleet.
To say the New Republic made short work of the Empire is not entirely accurate. Imperial forces continued to fight on with as much fervor as ever in the wake of Endor. It was at about this time that Luke Skywalker split fully from the Rebellion to begin researching the ancient Jedi ways. He had yet to decide to found his temple, and Leia and Han hadn't yet produced baby Ben yet. Nevertheless, a cadre of the more capable Imperial commanders regrouped and planned one last ditch effort to try to defeat the New Republic once and for all: the Battle of Jakku.
Exactly one year and a day (I think) after the Battle of Endor, the Battle of Jakku was a huge failure for the waning Empire. Jakku had been the site of an Imperial listening post during the height of the Empire, and Palpatine had even ordered some top secret research be done there. According to Palpatine, this planet was going to be a big deal some day in the future. Who'd have thought?
But the battles aside, the politics of what was going on behind the scenes start to get really interesting at this point. With the war ending, the Core Worlds are beginning to realize that they are under new leadership. Being that they supported centralized government, they more or less welcomed the New Republic. To your average citizen, it wasn't much different in the Core Worlds (except there were lower recruitment quotas for the demilitarizing New Republic military). Tariffs were lifted and trade lanes opened up.
But in the Core Worlds, something was missing. Nobody talked about it openly for many years (about 24 years, Bloodline takes place about 6 years before The Force Awakens). But over two decades, political sentiments in favor of a more fascist, utilitarian government have started to come to the fore. So the New Republic splits between two diametrically opposed factions: the centrists and the populists.
You can start drawing a lot of parallels here between American political parties and the political parties of the New Republic. You can even see how whenever there's a political official that someone doesn't like they're compared to Darth Vader. Well, okay, that's not exactly what happened -- Leia's relationship to Darth Vader was released and the galaxy balked. But it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that kind of tactic being thrown around a heated senate chamber in the New Republic.
Officially, the Empire had no political parties because they were pretty clearly a fascist organization. The centrists in Star Wars desire the social benefits of that fascism. The more naive centrists see the benefits of that organization and believe it can be achieved without the iron fist of men like Darth Vader and Sheev Palpatine. Most, however, simply miss the Galactic Empire and the fringe benefits they had from being at the top of their societal food chains.
The climate is right for the First Order to return. The First Order, built from the remnant of Imperial forces that survived the Battle of Jakku, have been hiding out in the Western reaches for three decades. In the final years before The Force Awakens, they have begun to more radically mobilize because the political atmosphere has begun to support it. They choose the name First Order because they want to be clear that the Republic is the usurping power in the galaxy, and the Galactic Empire's New Order (founded 19BBY) is the legitimate government, and that it never went away in the first place.
What we don't get to see in The Force Awakens is that the galaxy after the destruction of Hosnian Prime is going to be split like a pane of glass, with a thousand fragments breaking off from several large pieces. The destruction of the New Republic doesn't just allow the First Order to assert a foothold, it allows Centrist systems to swear fealty to the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Snoke, outright and reestablish the Empire in one fell swoop.
Other members of the New Republic will lose faith in it and split off to be sovereign states of their own. The First Order doesn't consider this a problem - with the backing of the centrist systems and the might that they have been developing in the Western Reaches the individual stragglers will offer no resistance.
With Rogue One out in theaters and Star Wars: Episode VIII due out next December, trailers will likely be released soon offering glimpses of what is to come and sparking speculation about where the authors of this saga will take us in the future. You're now caught up with everything that's been going on in Star Wars.
Maybe you don't know Star Wars very well, maybe you like it but you never took the time to synthesize everything that's been going on in all the movies and television shows and comic books and novels and... *gasping breath* ...whatever else is out there.
 |
| [Excited Whistle] |
So what follows is a -- *ahem* -- brief synopsis of the Star Wars saga so far.
 |
| I'm not much more than an interpreter, and not very good at telling stories anyway. |
To get a quick backstory on how the Empire came to be, it's important to understand the history of the Clone Wars. All of this started about 40BBY with a Jedi master named Sifo Dyas. I won't go into too much detail about Sifo Dyas, but suffice it to say that he predicted the whole Clone War thing coming and so went, in secret, to have an army of clones made for the Grand Republic. This eventually became the Grand Army of the Republic, and it was all made from the genome of a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Jango Fett. The dark lord of the Sith, who had been developing his power in hiding, caught wind of Sifo Dyas's behavior, and sent his apprentice to mess around with the clones and set in motion the circuitous plan that would make the Sith Lord the Emperor of the galaxy.
Twenty years later (yes, there's no shit that big a gap between important events here), a nobleman named Count Dooku takes a grip of star systems that were once part of the Grand Republic and secedes, forming the Confederacy of Independent Systems. It is because of this that the supreme chancellor, Sheev Palpatine, secretly the dark lord of the Sith, is able to receive emergency war powers that let him officially found the Grand Army of the Republic. The Separatists employ battle droids in armed conflict against a force of primarily Jedi in the First Battle of Geonosis which kicks off the Clone Wars. Nobody seems phased by the fact that the Grand Army was hot and ready to shoot when Palpatine called for them.
Through twists and turns, Palpatine manipulates both the Separatists and the Grand Army to weaken the infrastructure of the galaxy until he can take a new apprentice: Darth Vader. Palpatine is convinced that Darth Vader is a prophesied and powerful warrior who will help him reign over the galaxy for all eternity. In order for that to work, however, Palpatine has to find the secrets to eternal life. So he begins to look for that. Meanwhile he sends Vader on a killing spree. Vader kills all the Jedi on the capital world of Coruscant, including all the Jedi children. Then Vader is sent to kill the Separatist leadership, and the Clone Wars end very suddenly. Along with this, Palpatine's earlier interference with the Grand Army allows him to force the Clones to execute all the Jedi out in the field. The galaxy is told that the Jedi betrayed the Republic. Palpatine reorganizes the Republic into the First Galactic Empire in 19BBY. The regions throughout the Core of the galaxy easily accept the peace this brings, because much of the fighting had damaged their worlds tremendously.
That's the nitty-gritty of the Clone Wars, distilled into three paragraphs. There's a lot more intrigue and development, but this post is already quite long and I'll assume you haven't got all day. You now know enough to move onto the Galactic Civil War.
To begin the Galactic Civil War era I want to answer a question that I myself have asked, and recently have heard asked, about the Rebellion. Why did it all take place in the Outer Rim?
The simple answer is that the Core Worlds, the Colonies, and the Mid-Rim were all mostly happy to fall under Imperial rule. These are worlds primarily inhabited by human beings, and although some key non-human races inhabit the Core Worlds, most of the prominent members of non-human races come from the Outer Rim.
The Outer Rim is also more vast and lawless, so the Empire is stretched thin trying to keep it all under control. The Hutts gangsters have their kajidics reaching outward from Hutt space to the Western reaches with the help of Jabba the Hutt (through 6ABY). Although the Hutts officially paid lip service to the Empire, they considered themselves above Imperial law and asserted their own authority wherever they lay their greasy tails.
But the Outer Rim is not as resource-rich as the Core-ward regions. There are some key strategic planets, and the Empire certainly pinpointed those first, but until the Alliance to Restore the Republic stole the Death Star plans the Empire never considered the Rebels to be a credible threat. Whatever small victories the Rebels may have had on planets like Lothal and Mygeeto, the Empire responded by doubling down its strength to great effect. For the most part, if the Empire wanted any one planet in the Outer Rim, they took it.
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| Tarkin Town, a ghetto on Lothal created by Imperial sanctions against aliens and dissidents. |
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| In response to Rebel activity, Tarkin Town was razed to the ground. |
During much of this ruthless expansion into the Outer Rim territory, the Emperor continued to be slowed down somewhat by the existence of the Imperial Senate. A holdover from the Grand Republic, the Senate gave the galaxy some semblance of democracy. Although the Emperor held supreme military power, much of the actual governing of planets was handled by the Senate until 0BBY. So the Emperor set about a plan to get rid of the Senate. Because when people are voting, you'll never get them to agree which planet ought to be blown up. And the Emperor does like playing with his toys.
When Jynn Erso stole the Death Star plans and delivered them to the Tantive IV, the Rebellion earned the close and continued attentions of Darth Vader. Though Vader had a hand in dealing with Rebels on Lothal, he was really only interested in hunting down a missing padawan: Caleb Dume (aka Kanan Jarrus). Until the Death Star plans were stolen, Vader's job wasn't routing out Rebels it was continuing to eliminate the Jedi as an overseer of the Imperial Inquisitorius. It took an encounter with his old padawan, Ahsoka Tanno, to divert his attention from the Jedi of the Phoenix Squadron Rebel cell.
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| Vader on Lothal |
Most importantly, Jyn Erso and the Battle of Scarif legitimized the Alliance to Restore the Republic in the eyes of the Empire. They weren't just dealing with a few disparate dissidents, they were dealing with an organized and armed militia. Tarkin took up residence on the Death Star and Vader chased after the Tantive IV to recover the stolen Death Star plans. Quite honestly, this one task is the most involved Vader ever was in rooting out the Rebellion as a fighting force. After failing to recover the plans, Vader devoted himself to locating Luke Skywalker, not to destroying the Rebels. Ostensibly, he was still continuing his mission to eliminate the Jedi.
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| If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. |
Two things happened to cause this: the Death Star destroyed Alderaan, and then the Rebels destroyed the Death Star. Both of these events cost millions of lives. Possibly collectively billions (the population numbers are always estimated really low in science fiction). People who cared more about the atrocity that the Empire committed against a Core World began to dissent. People who cared more about the ferocious terrorist attack on an Imperial military facility strengthened their resolve. In short, the civil war got worse. This is hard to see in the Star Wars trilogy, but it has a lot to do with why The Empire Strikes Back is so dark, and why the Rebels lose so much footing in that movie.
The Rebel Alliance is on the run so badly that it cannot gather except in the depths of the Outer Reaches. Out beyond the Outer Rim, they begin to amass an unprecedented fleet of ships from all over the galaxy. Everyone was starting to show up to the party, including larger numbers of Imperial defectors. It was at this time that the Rebels learned from Bothawui of the second Death Star being constructed above the forest moon of Endor (which is technically not a moon, but a dwarf planet).
The Empire felt pretty good about its chances against the Rebels. Between 1ABY and 6ABY, they had the Rebels on the ropes. They had no reason to suspect that the enemies they made during those years would contribute to their demise. Did you ever notice how much larger the Rebellion military seemed to be in Return of the Jedi compared to A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back? Well, people weren't happy about what the Empire was up to and they showed up with guns to do something about it. When the second Death Star was destroyed, there was much celebration by rebel sympathizers throughout the galaxy. But there was also a sudden and horrible retribution from the remaining Imperial powers.
You see, those in power aren't likely to give it up quickly, especially when they got that power by bullying in the first place. And the Empire was made up of no one if not a multitude of the most clever, brutish, and cold-hearted bullies that ever terrorized the galaxy. But these bullies were also people, and often people of strong convictions. The slaughter on worlds like Coruscant following the tear down of Sheev Palpatine's statue was just what you would expect from a military dictatorship struggling to retain its power.
In the first few months following the Battle of Endor, the Empire executed a powerful campaign of misinformation. The official story was that the Emperor was not at Endor, and that he was alive and well on Coruscant. You see, Palpatine had plans in place in the event of his death, and his subordinates were able to keep much of Imperial High Command fooled in the time after his destruction.
The Empire was, however, extremely fractured. Without central guidance from the Emperor, and without a replacement for the missing ruler, Moffs and Admirals took it into their own hands to steer their diaspora forces to victory over the New Republic fleet.
To say the New Republic made short work of the Empire is not entirely accurate. Imperial forces continued to fight on with as much fervor as ever in the wake of Endor. It was at about this time that Luke Skywalker split fully from the Rebellion to begin researching the ancient Jedi ways. He had yet to decide to found his temple, and Leia and Han hadn't yet produced baby Ben yet. Nevertheless, a cadre of the more capable Imperial commanders regrouped and planned one last ditch effort to try to defeat the New Republic once and for all: the Battle of Jakku.
Exactly one year and a day (I think) after the Battle of Endor, the Battle of Jakku was a huge failure for the waning Empire. Jakku had been the site of an Imperial listening post during the height of the Empire, and Palpatine had even ordered some top secret research be done there. According to Palpatine, this planet was going to be a big deal some day in the future. Who'd have thought?
But the battles aside, the politics of what was going on behind the scenes start to get really interesting at this point. With the war ending, the Core Worlds are beginning to realize that they are under new leadership. Being that they supported centralized government, they more or less welcomed the New Republic. To your average citizen, it wasn't much different in the Core Worlds (except there were lower recruitment quotas for the demilitarizing New Republic military). Tariffs were lifted and trade lanes opened up.
But in the Core Worlds, something was missing. Nobody talked about it openly for many years (about 24 years, Bloodline takes place about 6 years before The Force Awakens). But over two decades, political sentiments in favor of a more fascist, utilitarian government have started to come to the fore. So the New Republic splits between two diametrically opposed factions: the centrists and the populists.
You can start drawing a lot of parallels here between American political parties and the political parties of the New Republic. You can even see how whenever there's a political official that someone doesn't like they're compared to Darth Vader. Well, okay, that's not exactly what happened -- Leia's relationship to Darth Vader was released and the galaxy balked. But it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that kind of tactic being thrown around a heated senate chamber in the New Republic.
Officially, the Empire had no political parties because they were pretty clearly a fascist organization. The centrists in Star Wars desire the social benefits of that fascism. The more naive centrists see the benefits of that organization and believe it can be achieved without the iron fist of men like Darth Vader and Sheev Palpatine. Most, however, simply miss the Galactic Empire and the fringe benefits they had from being at the top of their societal food chains.
The climate is right for the First Order to return. The First Order, built from the remnant of Imperial forces that survived the Battle of Jakku, have been hiding out in the Western reaches for three decades. In the final years before The Force Awakens, they have begun to more radically mobilize because the political atmosphere has begun to support it. They choose the name First Order because they want to be clear that the Republic is the usurping power in the galaxy, and the Galactic Empire's New Order (founded 19BBY) is the legitimate government, and that it never went away in the first place.
What we don't get to see in The Force Awakens is that the galaxy after the destruction of Hosnian Prime is going to be split like a pane of glass, with a thousand fragments breaking off from several large pieces. The destruction of the New Republic doesn't just allow the First Order to assert a foothold, it allows Centrist systems to swear fealty to the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Snoke, outright and reestablish the Empire in one fell swoop.
Other members of the New Republic will lose faith in it and split off to be sovereign states of their own. The First Order doesn't consider this a problem - with the backing of the centrist systems and the might that they have been developing in the Western Reaches the individual stragglers will offer no resistance.
With Rogue One out in theaters and Star Wars: Episode VIII due out next December, trailers will likely be released soon offering glimpses of what is to come and sparking speculation about where the authors of this saga will take us in the future. You're now caught up with everything that's been going on in Star Wars.
