In the canon wars of Star Wars fandom, the question of who shot first doesn’t so much center on Han Solo and Greedo anymore. Instead, shots are now fired either the fans or members of the Lucasfilm Story Group. And the latest skirmish over the canonicity of Han and Greedo’s fateful meeting was just waged on Twitter by Pablo Hidalgo.
On Monday, Hidalgo fired off a series of tweets which reflected his personal “opinions” on how fans might interpret canon. Seemingly, these tweets weren’t in response to any one particular question, but instead, just some canon-opinions Hidalgo felt like he needed to get off his chest. “Against my better judgement I’m about to start a few tweets about the dreaded C-word, canon,” he wrote ominously. And then proceeded to lay out his interpretation for how fans might think about canon. Essentialy, Hidalgo thinks the basic events of any given scene are what’s canon, and drilling down on specific dialogue, or asking how many blaster bolts were exchanged isn’t a discussion for Star Wars canon, at all.
This all means that when it comes to Han versus Greedo, Hidalgo thinks the canonicity of who shot first is irrelevant: “All that’s canon is that two people entered that booth, and Greedo died. Reports vary.”
Tellingly, Hidalgo refers to the Han-Greedo debate as a “horse carcass,” implying everyone is shooting this particular dead space-horse long after it has died. For the sane, Hidalgo’s way of thinking about Star Wars canon makes sense. And yet, if it is a dead horse, why was Hidalgo taking up the whip himself? True, Hidalgo said these statements aren’t Lucasfilm company policy, but the fact remains that with this round, he’s the one who shot first, not the fans.
The next “offical” installments in Star Wars canon are the Forces of Destiny animated shorts, airing now on YouTube and on the Disney Channel on July 9.
