How Long Ago Is "A Long Time Ago?"

This tagline above has been at the beginning of nearly all Star Wars movies, as well as the beginning of many books, comics, and video games. Basically, it’s the Star Wars version of a fairytale’s “Once upon a time.”

But what does “a long time ago” actually mean? How long ago is a “long time” relative to our timeline here on earth?

Well, there is no official answer to this question from Lucasfilm, and there probably will never be. But on May 14, 2004, Dark Horse Comics released Star Wars Tales #19, which included a story called “Into the Great Unknown.” It was written by Hayden Blackman, who penned several Star Wars books, comics, and video games, and is probably best known as the project lead and writer for The Force Unleashed I and II (and the canceled III).

For those who don’t know, Star Wars Tales was a comic series that ran in 24 issues from 1999 to 2005. Each issue contained several rather short stories, and much of them were basically designed to be non-canon, even at a time when “Legends” was still more than a decade away. This gave the writers the opportunity to explore ideas and stories that were not likely to happen within Star Wars lore (like a lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and Darth Maul).

“Into the Great Unknown” starts with Han Solo and Chewbacca flying the Millennium Falcon and being chased by Imperials. As the Falcon is having technical difficulties, they make the jump to hyperspace without proper calculation and end up in a star system they don’t know. The engines of the Falcon fail completely, and they crash land in a big forest that reminds Han of Endor. While they leave the ship to look for a way of communication, Han is shot with several arrows by local natives. Chewie takes his wounded pilot back to the ship, where Han dies.

126 years, later Indiana Jones and Short Round find the Falcon and the skeleton of Han Solo, while looking for Big Foot, who is actually the Chewie who has been roaming the forests for many, many years.

So how does this help us to find out when Star Wars takes place? Well, Nathan P. Butler did some calculations in his excellent several thousand pages long long e-book series The Star Wars Timeline – Gold Edition, which we are going to follow here. We will then update the result of Mr. Butler’s work with some additional information from Hayden Blackman, and, finally, I will try to put this in context of the current Star Wars timeline.

Butler deduced correctly that, as Han Solo knows Endor, the events of “Into the Great Unknown” must have taken place after Return of The Jedi. As the Empire is still around, the story could also not have happened after the events of Timothy Zahn’s Vision of the Future (19 years after the battle of Yavin), where the peace treaty with the Imperial remnants was signed. Remember, this is Legends, where the leftovers of Empire were around much longer than in current canon.

The dying Han Solo also mentions that he had always thought that Chewie would die saving his kids (old canon, remember, where the twins to Han and Leia – Jacen and Jaina – were born in 9 ABY), so the Falcon’s crash on earth must have taken place between 9 ABY and 19 ABY, Butler sets it to 15 ABY.

Indiana Jones, on the other hand mentions Atlantis. The story of the computer game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is set in 1939 of our time.

So, we first deduct the 126 years that the corpse of Han Solo rested on the Falcon from 1939, which gives us 1813, then we deduct another 15 years from this, which means that the events of A New Hope would have taken place in the year 1798 of our time.

In a tweet from 2018, Hayden Blackman wrote that, in his mind, the events of "Into the Great Unknown" did take place 7 or 8 years after the story of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which happened in 1935. So Jones would have found the body of his “cousin” in 1942 or 1943, setting the events of Episode IV to 1801 or 1802.

Now, let’s try to put this into current Star Wars continuity. And yes, it is weird to use a story that was never even canon even in the Legends continuity as a reference to define a point in time in current canon, but I will do it anyway:

The Empire basically ends with the battle of Jakku and the Galactic Concordance (5 ABY). This is also the day when Ben Solo was born. (Yes, the comic mentions Solo’s kids – plural – but let’s just ignore this). At the beginning of the story, Han is chased by TIE Fighters and a Star Destroyer, which would mean that the events would have taken place relatively short after the peace treaty. Otherwise, the rest of the Empire would have been gone. So lets’ assume this was also in 5 ABY.

Doing the calculation above would give us the year 1811 or 1812 for A New Hope, based on Mr. Blackman's tweet.

So, for the 1977 release of ANH, “a long time ago” means around 176 years prior, based on the Legends timeline, and around 166 years prior, based on current continuity.

Again, this is just a fun little food for thought thing, and we will probably never know for sure. Some years ago, there were actually plans for a book trilogy (with the first book titled Alien Exodus) that would have linked the Star Wars galaxy and the human race there to our Milky Way, but this never came to fruition. In my personal opinion this is for the better.

As we never get to know when “Once upon a time” is, why would we need to know how long “a long time ago” would be?

Written By Gerald Petschk

Source(s): The Star Wars Timeline - Gold Edition

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