I think it could actually work quite well if he remains a solitary kind of person, the character we see in ROTJ is very much aloof and even though he’s still Luke, there’s a haunted nature to him, a sense of some deep pain under the surface. It makes sense that his path is probably sort of like Obi-Wan’s in that way.

What would be funny would if the plan was to make Episode VII all along and that the books for all these years were all just a prelude to that. Funny and cool.

I think I’d like to see Princess Leia again just to see how Carrie Fisher would approach the role after so many years. I’m curious as to what role she will have played in shaping a New Republic (assuming they call it that). Just the thought that we may not even get to see all that take shape, that it’ll be dumped on us seems…well, it might be jarring if not done just right.

I’ve always been more of a Jedi person than a smuggler person, so Han Solo is not high up on my list, but I always felt like Star Wars needed someone like him. I think the Prequel Trilogy suffered from not having a guy who didn’t have any powers and was kind of skeptical and roguish and a smart aleck. (And I say that as a fan of the Prequel Trilogy, mind you–I went in expecting at least someone who would be, well, not Han Solo, but Han Solo, if you take my meaning.) The edge and the humor and just the…gunslinger, for lack of a better term, that Han Solo brings to the stories is sort of a way to round them out and remind us that this is also a fun adventure story and not as simple as light vs. dark.

Of course…I do think it would be nice to include at least one surviving Prequel Trilogy character. We know Jar Jar Binks survived (something I didn’t expect, I assumed Vader would kill him at the end), and while I won’t campaign for bringing him back, I will say that if you write for his character properly, he could work, just not in the context of Episode VII in my opinion. I would say that if Ahsoka Tano survives Order 66, she should return as an older, possibly roguish Force-user. I think it might be interesting to have a character like her around especially since her view of the Jedi Order would be pretty jaded and so it would challenge someone like Luke who wasn’t (so far as we know) told the full story of how they treated his father just before he fell to the dark side.

But I think the smartest thing they can do is avoid killing off the older heroes–at least for Episode VII–so that we get that sort of…rush of excitement from an uplifting first chapter of the new trilogy. It might fit better to have a darker Episode VIII and have a major death occur then, but then…if they can do it as well as Obi-Wan’s death was handled, it doesn’t really matter when it’s done, I suppose.

Whatever the case, I won’t feel entirely let down if they totally ignore the Expanded Universe stuff. Just mostly heartbroken…but I’ll still be glad I read a LOT of great stories in the meantime and maybe a bit curious to see if the novels currently in play will incorporate any elements from the new films. I guess we can think of the EU as a sort of alternate reality, if all else fails, right? Like a giant Star Wars Infinities Book Series, if you will. As Han would say, “It’s a good story.”