Report: Star Wars Timeline System Changing(Updated)

By: Benjamin Hart

For years now time in the Galaxy far, far away has been measured using BBY(Before the Battle of Yavin) and ABY(After the Battle of Yavin). As you can tell, this system established Episode IV: A New Hope as year 0 in the Star Wars Galaxy. Now it appears Lucasfilm may be adopting a new, simpler calendar for the Saga.

Lucasfilm story group member, and Keep of the Holocron, Leland Chee has tweeted out what is believed to be the new time measurement system. As you can see in the first tweet, Chee shows the proper placement of all canon films and TV series. The second establishes Episode I: The Phantom Menace as year 0, with everything else following it.

I II CW III R IV V VI
— Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper) August 3, 2014

0 10 10-13 13 27 32 35 36
— Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper) August 3, 2014

It's also worth noting that the Star Wars Rebels Visual Guide detailed that the planet Lothal, which will be a principal location in the series, has it's own calendar. The Invasion of Naboo is at 3245 LY(Lothal Year), the Battle of Geonosis at 3255 LY, and so on. It appears even individual planets will have their own calendars now.

Personally, I think this makes much more sense. Establishing the the Blockade of Naboo as year 0 and counting up for the rest of the Saga is much easier to understand than the old system. BBY/ABY worked before and during the production of the Prequel Trilogy and The Clone Wars, but now that we have the full picture of the Saga, and we're moving forward into the Sequel Trilogy, this new system is much more practical.

Although this did indeed come from an official source, and Chee is know for sharing vague but fascinating tweets(most notably the Clone Wars chronology earlier this year), we are still left to speculate about this info. Hopefully we will get an official announcement from Lucasfilm in time.

Source: Leland Chee/Twitter

Update: Leland Chee has followed up the earlier tweets with this:

We'll still use timelines that mark Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope as Year 0.
— Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper) August 7, 2014

So it appears multiple timelines are still in use, and the BBY/ABY system has not been thrown out. Very interesting...

Update #2: It appears this was all just a misunderstanding.

0-36 are not new official timeline years. They're just numbers to convey the span of years between films we've always been using.
— Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper) August 8, 2014

Follow The Star Wars Underworld on Twitter @TheSWU for more updates about this story and other breaking Star Wars news.