Culture

Where does 'Rogue One' fit in the Star Wars universe?

We can help you decipher the timeline -- it's not as simple as you might think.

Caitlin Petrakovitz Director of audience

Caitlin Petrakovitz studies the Marvel Cinematic Universe like it's a course in school, with an emphasis on the Infinity Saga years. As an audience expert, she rarely writes but when she does it's most certainly about Star Trek, Marvel, DC, Westworld, San Diego Comic-Con and great streaming properties. Or soccer, that's a thing she loves, too.

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Morgan Little Senior Director, Audience

Morgan leads the teams managing CNET's presence and content across social media, news platforms and more after stints in the marketing world and LA Times. Eventually his last byline on the site will be about something other than Godzilla

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Caitlin Petrakovitz

Morgan Little

Dec. 13, 2016 9:00 a.m. PT

2 min read

It's easy. The timeline is: "Attack of the Clones," "Revenge of the Sith," "Rogue One," "A New Hope."

Wait. What about the "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels" TV shows? And the new Marvel comics, which are technically canon? And the "Rogue One" prequel novel? And those other Star Wars Stories on the horizon?

On second thought, let's just stick to it being between "Revenge of the Sith" and "A New Hope."

According to director Gareth Edwards in this featurette, "The simplest way to explain is that text you see at the beginning of 'A New Hope,' that is essentially our movie." Without getting into spoilers, the film is sans Jedis and all about a ragtag team's efforts to steal the Death Star plans (you know, the ones Princess Leia hides in R2-D2).

Incorporating shows and movies, we can pretty much decipher where "Rogue One" belongs.

An educated guess places it just before "Hope" but long after "Revenge." And "Rogue" makes it apparent that this film takes place years (maybe about 20?) after Saw Gerrera's origin story in the "Clone Wars" series, but definitely just before Leia is sent the Death Star plans. Finally, looking into the future, we can make another educated guess that this film is more than likely to come after 2018's Han Solo origin story.

What do you think -- how do you feel our timeline holds up? Leave a comment below to let us know.

The graphic was edited at 10:30 a.m. to reflect that "Rebels" is a television property, not a movie. Sorry for any confusion!