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When Disney announced that the old EU would no longer be even slightly canon, they promised us that this was a good thing: that it would let their new unified Star Wars canon draw on ideas from the EU without being bound to them.
Six or so years later, with the entire Sequel Trilogy behind us, we can now say for sure that they absolutely meant it.
(This post contains spoilers for all three films, but none of the 3 sections contain spoilers for the films that come after them.)
Episode VII: The Force Awakens
My very first reaction after watching The Force Awakens was 'Oh! Darth Caedus!'. After having more time to think about it, I would like to moderate that description slightly: Kylo Ren is actually Darth Caedus cosplaying as Kyp Durron.
Stop me if you've heard this before: Darth Caedus, aka Jacen Solo, was the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. After having a few issues with his training, he took up the legacy of his grandfather Darth Vader under the tutelage of the hideously scarred Lumiya. In order to affirm and complete his alliegance to the Dark Side, he murdered a close family member.
The Kyp Durron connection is slightly less blatant, but Kyp was a) Luke's most powerful apprentice, b) seduced to the Dark Side by the spirit of Exar Kun, and c) went around blowing up planets with the Sun Crusher. He also had a strong connection to Han Solo, which in his case led to his redemption.
Interestingly, there's a case to be made that the early parts of Kyp's story are actually followed by Rey. Jakku is a far nicer place than Kessel, and scavenger is a less dangerous life than spice miner-slash-slave, but they're similar enough to make 'and then the crashed/abandoned Millennium Falcon and Han Solo got them off the planet' a pretty firm confirmation of the connection. (Come to think of it, Han and Kyp's adventures quickly involved multiple superweapons, including the Death Star prototype.)
The connection to Vector Prime, and the early stages of the New Jedi Order, is less clear, but I think it's still there: Han Solo's arc in the first few books of the era-defining NJO was 'after a family tragedy involving his son, Han runs away from Leia and takes up as a smuggler again'.
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
The accusation of pilfering from the EU is hardest to level at The Last Jedi. Despite the depth of the well it could be drawing from, a lot of the plot points of The Last Jedi appear to be new to Star Wars. A Jedi Master attempting to end the Jedi Order? A stern chase with fuel supplies a major issue? A reckless plan carried out by the protagonists which fails (and in fact makes things worse)? "This wasn't in the books!"
But despite that... I would lay decent odds that Rian Johnson read the Michael J. Stackpole and Aaron Allston X-Wing books at some point. Poe's stunt at the beginning of the film is exactly the sort of thing Wraith Squadron would come up with, and the general theme of 'we are alone and outnumbered, and actually running out of fuel' comes right from the Bacta War arc. Those books also feature the likes of mechanics becoming fighter pilots, ex-Imperials working with the good guys, and covert ops missions which go spectacularly wrong (I'm looking at you, Ton Phanan, and these are not tears in my eyes).
Also, the Allston books in particular were fun, in a way that The Last Jedi captured, but none of the other films really have. (I've always felt that Aaron Allston captured the lighthearted aspects of the original trilogy just as well as Timothy Zahn replicated the epic feel.)
Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
If The Force Awakens was inspired by the latter days of the EU, and The Last Jedi paid tribute to its best parts, The Rise of Skywalker dove deep into the weirdest aspects of the series.
The primary inspiration for the film was, fairly blatantly, the Dark Empire comics. That was the series which featured the Emperor returning to life by transferring his spirit into a string of clone bodies, and making another attempt at conquering the galaxy. He did this, in part, by building Death Star-type superlasers into certain special Star Destroyers. (He also had the Galaxy Gun, a cannon able to fire through hyperspace and destroy entire planets, so there was some cross-polination back to The Force Awakens.) His plan included getting Luke Skywalker (son of Darth Vader and, at that point, the galaxy's only Jedi) to join his team, and ultimately he planned to possess Leia's unborn third child.
But the most prominent plot point of The Rise of Skywalker comes straight from an entirely different series: the young reader Jedi Prince series, which really did encapsulate the worst of the old EU.
(Yes, I'm calling it worse than either The Courtship of Princess Leia or The Crystal Star. I'm right, too.)
Here's a summary of the series, straight from Wookiepedia:
The Empire, led by Grand Moff Hissa and Supreme Prophet Kadann, attempt to install Trioculus as Emperor, claiming that he is Palpatine's son. Palpatine's real son, according to the series, is a madman named Triclops. Both Trioculus and Triclops are mutants who have three eyes.
Ken, the Jedi Prince of the series title, is the son of Triclops and the Jedi Princess Kendalina; this makes him the grandson of the Emperor Palpatine.
Yep. Rey has a brother (or, if her dad doesn't have a third eye on the back of his head, a cousin), and he's probably still stuck on Yavin 4.
Bizarrely enough, this isn't the only plot point borrowed from the series. The first book involves a hunt for the glove of Darth Vader, which survived the destruction of the Death Star, and would allow whoever found it to become Emperor - a lot like the Wayfinder in the film. There is a giant party-slash-market (the Droidfest) on a desert planet (Tatooine in this case) in the third book. The series also heavily features the Prophets of the Dark Side, who are a nice match for Palpatine's Sith cult in the film.
Look, at least they didn't use the part where Leia is forced to marry Palpatine's fake son. Did I mention that the whole series was almost entirely ignored even by the continuity-heavy parts of the EU. It was that bad.
After all that, it's almost anticlimactic to mention that Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology features a secret base in the Unknown Regions where an Imperial leader was being regrown as a clone, which was successfully attacked by a Jedi and his former Dark Side girlfriend. I think there's enough of a connection there for it to count, but... yeah.
Six or so years later, with the entire Sequel Trilogy behind us, we can now say for sure that they absolutely meant it.
(This post contains spoilers for all three films, but none of the 3 sections contain spoilers for the films that come after them.)
Episode VII: The Force Awakens
My very first reaction after watching The Force Awakens was 'Oh! Darth Caedus!'. After having more time to think about it, I would like to moderate that description slightly: Kylo Ren is actually Darth Caedus cosplaying as Kyp Durron.
Stop me if you've heard this before: Darth Caedus, aka Jacen Solo, was the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. After having a few issues with his training, he took up the legacy of his grandfather Darth Vader under the tutelage of the hideously scarred Lumiya. In order to affirm and complete his alliegance to the Dark Side, he murdered a close family member.
The Kyp Durron connection is slightly less blatant, but Kyp was a) Luke's most powerful apprentice, b) seduced to the Dark Side by the spirit of Exar Kun, and c) went around blowing up planets with the Sun Crusher. He also had a strong connection to Han Solo, which in his case led to his redemption.
Interestingly, there's a case to be made that the early parts of Kyp's story are actually followed by Rey. Jakku is a far nicer place than Kessel, and scavenger is a less dangerous life than spice miner-slash-slave, but they're similar enough to make 'and then the crashed/abandoned Millennium Falcon and Han Solo got them off the planet' a pretty firm confirmation of the connection. (Come to think of it, Han and Kyp's adventures quickly involved multiple superweapons, including the Death Star prototype.)
The connection to Vector Prime, and the early stages of the New Jedi Order, is less clear, but I think it's still there: Han Solo's arc in the first few books of the era-defining NJO was 'after a family tragedy involving his son, Han runs away from Leia and takes up as a smuggler again'.
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
The accusation of pilfering from the EU is hardest to level at The Last Jedi. Despite the depth of the well it could be drawing from, a lot of the plot points of The Last Jedi appear to be new to Star Wars. A Jedi Master attempting to end the Jedi Order? A stern chase with fuel supplies a major issue? A reckless plan carried out by the protagonists which fails (and in fact makes things worse)? "This wasn't in the books!"
But despite that... I would lay decent odds that Rian Johnson read the Michael J. Stackpole and Aaron Allston X-Wing books at some point. Poe's stunt at the beginning of the film is exactly the sort of thing Wraith Squadron would come up with, and the general theme of 'we are alone and outnumbered, and actually running out of fuel' comes right from the Bacta War arc. Those books also feature the likes of mechanics becoming fighter pilots, ex-Imperials working with the good guys, and covert ops missions which go spectacularly wrong (I'm looking at you, Ton Phanan, and these are not tears in my eyes).
Also, the Allston books in particular were fun, in a way that The Last Jedi captured, but none of the other films really have. (I've always felt that Aaron Allston captured the lighthearted aspects of the original trilogy just as well as Timothy Zahn replicated the epic feel.)
Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
If The Force Awakens was inspired by the latter days of the EU, and The Last Jedi paid tribute to its best parts, The Rise of Skywalker dove deep into the weirdest aspects of the series.
The primary inspiration for the film was, fairly blatantly, the Dark Empire comics. That was the series which featured the Emperor returning to life by transferring his spirit into a string of clone bodies, and making another attempt at conquering the galaxy. He did this, in part, by building Death Star-type superlasers into certain special Star Destroyers. (He also had the Galaxy Gun, a cannon able to fire through hyperspace and destroy entire planets, so there was some cross-polination back to The Force Awakens.) His plan included getting Luke Skywalker (son of Darth Vader and, at that point, the galaxy's only Jedi) to join his team, and ultimately he planned to possess Leia's unborn third child.
But the most prominent plot point of The Rise of Skywalker comes straight from an entirely different series: the young reader Jedi Prince series, which really did encapsulate the worst of the old EU.
(Yes, I'm calling it worse than either The Courtship of Princess Leia or The Crystal Star. I'm right, too.)
Here's a summary of the series, straight from Wookiepedia:
The Empire, led by Grand Moff Hissa and Supreme Prophet Kadann, attempt to install Trioculus as Emperor, claiming that he is Palpatine's son. Palpatine's real son, according to the series, is a madman named Triclops. Both Trioculus and Triclops are mutants who have three eyes.
Ken, the Jedi Prince of the series title, is the son of Triclops and the Jedi Princess Kendalina; this makes him the grandson of the Emperor Palpatine.
Yep. Rey has a brother (or, if her dad doesn't have a third eye on the back of his head, a cousin), and he's probably still stuck on Yavin 4.
Bizarrely enough, this isn't the only plot point borrowed from the series. The first book involves a hunt for the glove of Darth Vader, which survived the destruction of the Death Star, and would allow whoever found it to become Emperor - a lot like the Wayfinder in the film. There is a giant party-slash-market (the Droidfest) on a desert planet (Tatooine in this case) in the third book. The series also heavily features the Prophets of the Dark Side, who are a nice match for Palpatine's Sith cult in the film.
Look, at least they didn't use the part where Leia is forced to marry Palpatine's fake son. Did I mention that the whole series was almost entirely ignored even by the continuity-heavy parts of the EU. It was that bad.
After all that, it's almost anticlimactic to mention that Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology features a secret base in the Unknown Regions where an Imperial leader was being regrown as a clone, which was successfully attacked by a Jedi and his former Dark Side girlfriend. I think there's enough of a connection there for it to count, but... yeah.
