Before Disney acquired the rights to Lucasfilm, the entire Star Wars storyline was full of extended storylines that date back thousands of years before the events of the Skywalker Saga. The Old Republic game, for instance, explored the wars between the Jedi Order and the Sith Empire thousands of years ago. One of the most prominent characters in that game was Darth Malgus. So, is Darth Malgus canon?
The Old Republic era is yet to become canon, meaning that Darth Malgus is not canon. That’s because Disney has not made anything about the Old Republic canon. But there’s a chance that Darth Malgus will become canon if the Star Wars canon storyline explores the era of the Old Republic.
While a large part of the Star Wars timeline explores the events that transpired during the Skywalker Saga, we know that the history of Star Wars is even longer than the story of the Skywalkers. That’s because there are bigger storylines that can be explored in the eras thousands of years ago, and Malgus’ story is one of them. Now, let’s look at whether or not Darth Malgus is canon.
Who Is Darth Malgus?
While we know that the current Star Wars canon has already been properly established, we also know that there were storylines created before the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm. One such story would be found in the Old Republic MMORPG which explored the era of the galaxy long before the events of the Skywalker Saga. And one such character that had an extensive storyline in the Old Republic game was Darth Malgus.
Darth Malgus was a huge human Sith Lord that lived during the Sith Empire’s resurgence during the Great Galactic Wars era that happened nearly 4,000 years before the Skywalker Saga. He was born a boy named Veradum, whose inner darkness surfaced quite early. As such, he was sent to the Sith Academy to train as a Sith Warrior.
After he became a true Sith Lord, Veradum adopted the name Darth Malgus and worked under his master, Darth Vindican, to recapture the Sith world of Korriban. However, when Vindican got injured at the hands of a Jedi Master, Darth Malgus decided to kill his master. After that, he decided to lead an assault on Alderaan before seeing defeat at the hands of Satele Shan. The defeat left Malgus injured, and he was forced to wear a respirator throughout his life.
malgus fight
Malgus saw one of his biggest victories when he attacked the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and killed a lot of Jedi as a result of his victory there. He and his strike team killed half of the Jedi High Council while destroying the Jedi Temple. But he was disappointed when he realized that the Sith attack on Coruscant was only to leverage the peace negotiations on Alderaan. He defied the orders of his Sith superiors and returned to Coruscant to attack it, as he eventually became disillusioned with the Sith Empire and went rogue.
Following the presumed death of the Sith Emperor, Darth Malgus declared a new Sith Empire under his leadership. But both the Republic and the Sith tracked him down and defeated him. Nevertheless, he returned to the Sith Empire while serving under Darth Vowrawn. Still, he eventually went rogue once more to expunge all of the limits he thought were placed on him to keep him under control.
Darth Malgus Is Not Canon
Of course, as deep as the Star Wars lore may be, the thing about the storyline of the Old Republic is that there hasn’t been anything about whether or not it is canon. That means there’s a good chance that Lucasfilm has yet to decide on the characters that lived during the Old Republic. This includes Darth Malgus, whose character may or may not be canon.
There hasn’t been any official word on whether or not the Old Republic is canon because the Star Wars continuity is still focused on the current timeline bridging the time of the Empire and the First Order. That means that the focus is currently on the timeline of The Mandalorian. But Lucasfilm has explored the High Republic, an era that started 500 years before the events of the Skywalker Saga.
As such, it might not be the focus of Lucasfilm to explore the events that surrounded the galaxy nearly 4,000 years before the events of the main Star Wars film. There are still a lot of different stories that can be told regarding the current timeline and even the storylines surrounding the High Republic era. And that is why there isn’t any word on whether or not Darth Malgus and the era of the Old Republic are canon.
malgus
Nevertheless, some believe that Lucasfilm is now looking to make a lot of different Star Wars storylines canon. That’s because it was announced that James Mangold would be working on a film that will explore the origins of the Jedi 25,000 years before the events of the Skywalker Saga. This is the earliest point in the storyline of Star Wars.
A Collider article even claimed that the Old Republic era is now canon. The article, of course, wasn’t talking about the video game but was talking about the era per se. That means there’s still no official word on whether or not the events that transpired in the Old Republic video game will be carried into the official canon Old Republic era of Star Wars. And that means there hasn’t been anything regarding whether or not Darth Malgus could be canon.
Will Darth Malgus Become Canon?
At this point, we aren’t sure if Lucasfilm plans to make Darth Malgus canon. We’ve seen how Lucasfilm has used the different Star Wars Legends books and storylines as inspiration to create the current storylines that we’ve seen. For example, the Ahsoka series draws inspiration from the original Thrawn Trilogy novels.
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But we’ve seen ancient Sith characters becoming canon. For example, Darth Bane became canon when his spirit was seen in the events of Star Wars: Clone Wars. We also know that an ancient Sith named Revan was also mentioned in canon, although we aren’t sure if it’s the same Revan in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game.
In that regard, even if Darth Malgus would never become canon, there’s still a good chance that Lucasfilm will use his character to inspire new characters in the Old Republic era. We aren’t sure whether or not Star Wars will explore the Old Republic. But the fact that there will be a movie about the origins of the Jedi should be positive news for those who want to see Darth Malgus and an Old Republic storyline down the line.
