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When Marvel Comics published Star Wars #1 in 2015, all eyes were on the book. It was not only Marvel’s first Star Wars comic since regaining the license from Dark Horse after more than 20 years, but it was also one of the first new pieces of Star Wars media since Disney had acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. In addition, it was also the first comic series set in the new canon being overseen by the Lucasfilm Story Group. (Previous comics were part of a non-canonical continuity known as 'Legends.')

Star Wars #1 was a big deal, but according to Jason Aaron, who wrote the series, Lucasfilm was not as vigilant as one would expect.

“It was awesome,” Jason Aaron said during the Writing the Star Wars Universe panel at MegaCon 2026. “I think we benefited from the fact that there was so much going on when we launched that book. Disney had just bought Lucasfilm. They were going from not having done a movie in a while to now doing a whole bunch of movies and TV shows and everything. And we kind of snuck through the doorway. We were the very first new thing that came after that.”

This allowed Jason Aaron to add some pivotal moments to canon, including Luke’s first meeting with Darth Vader (seen at the end of issue 1) and Vader learning that Luke is his son. “We wanted to grab for big important beats. We wanted the book to feel like you needed to read it. Like this was important. This is not just what they did on some random Tuesday between the movies,” Aaron explained. “There’s a lot of big beats that happened between A New Hope and [Empire Strikes Back], and we wanted to grab for as many of those as we could. And I think we were able to get some of them just because we snuck in so quickly.”

He continued, “I think if that had happened six months later, they probably would have said no to a lot of those things, but I think there was so much going on. They were like, sure, you could do that beat where Darth Vader hears the name Skywalker for the first time in relation to this mysterious kid who blew up the Death Star. We’ve got Luke Skywalker fighting Boba Fett. And we’ve got Jabba the Hutt and Darth Vader meeting and all that kind of stuff. I think even a few months later they would’ve said, no, you can’t do any of that, but it was benefited from sneaking in. Sneaking out of the gate really quickly.”

Disney is notoriously vigilant with their properties, so the fact that Aaron was able to sneak multiple events into Star Wars canon is amazing. Perhaps he has some Jedi abilities we weren’t aware of.

Those first Marvel Star Wars issues are available in the Star Wars Modern Era Epic Collection: Skywalker Strikes collection. 

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.