By George Bate & Josh Bate
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Those iconic words have graced screens since 1977 and provide a general context to the events in the Star Wars universe: everything occurred in some unspecified past long away from here. To provide context, events are often described in reference to the Battle of Yavin, the climatic sequence in A New Hope which saw Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance bring about the destruction of the Death Star. This seminal event lead to the language BBY to specify events occurring Before the Battle of Yavin and ABY to specify events occurring After the Battle of Yavin. But this system can be difficult to wrap one’s head around. How many years are in between The Phantom Menace and The Mandalorian? Where does Andor fit in in relation to The High Republic? Well, we’ve got a tool that might help out…
An adjusted Star Wars timeline may be found below. The said adjustment entails eliminating the BBY/ABY system in favor of situating the events of Star Wars in our own system of dating. That is, how would the events of Star Wars map onto the Gregorian calendar, or our calendar using Common Era (CE) or Anno Domini (AD) designations. We decided to place The Rise of Skywalker in 2023 as this film marks the most recently set major Star Wars story in the chronology.
