5 days ago
I Can't Stop Staring at This Massive ‘Star Wars' Galaxy Map
For as many times, narratively speaking, Star Wars' universe can feel awfully small in much of its recent output, it's always nice to be reminded that, actually, the scope of the galaxy far, far away is incomprehensibly vast. Especially if we can be reminded such an incredibly nerdy manner: via the medium of a massive, updated official map of that galaxy.
Today the official Star Wars website, to sit alongside its own interactive timeline of the eras of Star Wars' past and future, released an updated semi-interactive map of the Star Wars galaxy. Based on a version that was first officially created in 2009 for the reference book Star Wars: The Essential Atlas (and updated multiple times since), the newest version now features locations from across recent Star Wars history, like Andor's Narkina, Bad Batch's Pabu, the worlds of the Chiss Ascendancy explored in Timothy Zahn's canon Thrawn, and much, much more. There's even an accompanying list of every star system charted on the map, including its reference grid on the map as well as the sector and region it belongs to. Star Wars RPG fans, fanfic writers, and more, rejoice!
The map itself can be fully zoomed in on for better staring on the official site, but there is something breathtaking about just staring at the whole thing as in. Letting the words and hyperspace routes sort of blur, the regions of space and the official sectors of the galaxy intermingle, you really do remember that the Star Wars galaxy is a galaxy. It's huge!
People on one end of it could never see or know what's going on on the other. Luke's line in A New Hope about Tatooine feeling like it was so far away from that bright light of the deep core feels so much more real when you see the the sheer distance Tatooine has from what was declared the 'hub' of galactic existence. The fact we have so many modern stories obsessed with maps, aside from speaking to Star Wars' own fascination with archival history and mythmaking, becomes so much more poignant in a way when confronted with the sheer scale of what these maps represent in a vast, cosmic scale.
It makes other thematic ideas about the universe that much grander and impactful too—like the thought that Nemik's manifesto in Andor spread from one young man in one tiny cell of resistance in one tiny segment of the universe to the point that it was on Coruscant in the heart of the ISB, it was on Yavin IV, it was, as Major Partagaz despairingly admits, everywhere. The fires of the Clone War raged across this space. The Rebellion against the Empire sparked and flourished, from isolated pockets to a unified alliance that had members all over. The Resistance did it all over again years later, pulling together people from across these star systems to stand against the First Order, lying in wait at the galaxy's fringes. And that yes, the Force itself connects every living thing on all these bright lights across the universe.
Star Wars is so, so very big. Its stories can do anything and be anything in a sandbox as vast, almost incomprehensibly so, as the one laid out here. With so much room, there's room for everything—including going beyond it. And that's what Star Wars should always feel like, so free and full of possibility.
That's a lot to get out of just staring at a galaxy map, to be sure. But sometimes being given the scope of the thing allows us to comprehend our place in the universe—even a fictional one like Star Wars'.
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