Star Wars Day is here, with the world uniting to celebrate all things about a galaxy far, far away. But there are Star Wars fans and then there are Star Wars fans, with there being a pretty substantial gulf between the average viewer who just watches the movies and Disney Plus shows and those who want to get really deep into the weeds.
If you’ve poked your head into any online Star Wars fan community, you’ll have seen the acronyms “BBY” and “ABY” casually mentioned when it comes to various galactic events. Any seasoned veteran will of course know what these mean, though it’s perhaps not immediately obvious to everyone. Well, here’s the answer:
The deciding battle of A New Hope is a great way to set the starting point for the Star Wars chronology. Not only is this the most important moment in the first Star Wars movie, but it marks the shift in galactic power that eventually saw the Empire fall and the triumph of the Rebel Alliance.
The flip side is that there’s much more Star Wars prior to A New Hope than there is after it. In the current Disney canon, the timeline goes as far as The Rise of Skywalker in 35 ABY (i.e. 35 years from A New Hope), with the upcoming Rey-focused movie due in 2025 set to push that further still.
But the past stretches back much further. Older galactic events like the High Republic took place in 500 BBY (i.e. 500 years before A New Hope) and the earliest point in canon Star Wars history is way, way back in 100,000 BBY when the construction of the cities on Coruscant first began.
While we’ve got our nerd hat on, we should also mention there are two other competing Star Wars calendars. The “Lothal Calendar” debuted in Rebels, and was used on the planet Lothal and The Phantom Menace took place in 3245 LY. We also have the “Coruscant Reckoning Calendar”, with A New Hope‘s events happening in 7977.331.3 C.R.C., which was used by the Empire in their official documentation.
Got all that? Now you can hold your head up high in some deeply geeky conversations.