At a casual glance, a Star Wars fan might look at the calendar of movie releases and assume that pretty much nothing happened in that franchise between 1983’s Return of the Jedi and 1999’s The Phantom Menace. And while it’s true that no major theatrical releases were put forth, Star Wars itself was quite busy.

In the latter part of the ’80s, Star Wars mania was still going strong. Books and comics took up the narrative slack, there were a couple of Ewok made-for-TV movies, Star Tours opened to great acclaim in ’87 at Disney, and the Ewok and Droids cartoons fed a younger generation of fans.

But it was the ’90s where everything started to get really interesting for the franchise. Most everyone is aware of the 1997 Special Editions that were not just a cash grab but a practice run for the prequels that would kick off two years afterward. However, this was only the latest in a series of major events that could be seen as stealth sequels that helped to lead up to the revival of the film franchise.

I thought it would be interesting to jump back to the ’90s for a bit and do my part in recalling two releases that fed a starving fanbase’s hunger for more story and more adventures in a galaxy far, far away…

The Thrawn Trilogy

As hard as it is to believe these days, between 1987 to 1991 there was almost nothing new in the Star Wars universe. And I’m not being hyperbolic here. These four years have been labeled as a “dark time,” a nod to a phrase in the original trilogy. During that periood, new toys, novels, magazines, and books dried up, and it looked like Star Wars finally had turned the lights off.

That is, until 1991 when the Expanded Universe of novels came back in a huge way. Bantam decided to test the market to see if there was still demand for Star Wars in the ’90s and hired scifi author Timothy Zahn to write a three-novel sequel series to Return of the Jedi.

Promoted as the next part of the saga and largely viewed at the time as the official/unofficial Episodes 7, 8, and 9 of Star Wars, the Thrawn Trilogy continued the story of Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie as a new threat to the New Republic arose.

The series picked up five years after Jedi as the New Republic is starting to take shape. This fragile peace is shattered when a blue-skinned Chiss named Grand Admiral Thrawn emerges to gather together the old Imperial Navy and start a new campaign of conquest. Thrawn is a brilliant strategist and is able to pull out victory after victory, setting the New Republic on its back heels.

Luke, Han, and Leia struggle to meet this new challenge, eventually winning only by the skin of their teeth. Leia’s pregnant with twins, Luke falls in love with a former assassin named Mara Jade, and Han goes on a smuggling adventure. We even got a farewell visit from Obi-Wan.

The novel trilogy was a huge hit, selling over 15 million copies combined. More importantly, it proved that there was a huge hunger for Star Wars and paved the way for a rise of Star Wars-related media in the 1990s.

Shadows of the Empire

Lucas was incredibly reluctant to jump back into making movies, almost needing overwhelming proof that new Star Wars movies would succeed. Thus, another project was greenlit in 1996 — a Star Wars movie launch that had everything except the movie. Confused? Keep reading.

The idea was to create a huge multimedia event — “multimedia” was quite the buzzword back in 1996 — that would sell all of that lucrative merchandise like a film would and rev up interest for the upcoming Special Edition releases.

Shadows of the Empire was set between Empire and Jedi, starring a brand-new hero named Dash Rendar — a Han Solo replacement — as well as a rival for Darth Vader, a syndicate leader named Prince Xizor. Without much established story to retcon, this tale brought Dash and Xizor in contact with our old heroes. It was basically a whole smuggler-focused adventure in the underbelly of the Star Wars universe with some connections between the films.

This project spawned an official novel (by Steve Perry), a six-issue comic book series, a sequel comic series, a soundtrack (!), loads of toys, trading cards, and a rather famous video game adaptation that originally launched on the Nintendo 64. If you played a N64 back in the day, you probably have strong memories of Shadows, especially the opening Battle of Hoth scene. I’ll never forget that, nor Dash’s pretty cool Outrider ship.

And yes, this was enormously lucrative for LucasFilms, Kenner, and other involved parties. Between this in 1996, the Special Editions in 1997, and The Phantom Menace in 1999, you can see see a return trajectory for the franchise.

While these projects are no longer considered canon, elements of them were adopted into more modern Star Wars, especially the appearance of Thrawn in some of the TV series and the Black Sun Syndicate. The Outrider even appears in A New Hope’s special edition, flying over Mos Eisley.