Even diehard Star Wars followers have been tripped up by a gap scene in Andor, the brand new Star Wars present on Disney Plus, that displayed the cryptic characters “BBY 5.” Turns out it’s a method of marking time within the galaxy far, distant — one which references a pivotal second in Star Wars historical past.
BBY stands for “Before the Battle of Yavin.” Yavin is the planet round which the climactic battle in Star Wars: A New Hope happens, with Luke Skywalker destroying the primary Death Star and saving the Rebel Alliance from complete annihilation. “ABY” stands for “After the Battle of Yavin.” BBY counts down, with 0 BBY representing the 12 months wherein the Battle of Yavin occurred. ABY counts up from that very same 12 months, with ABY 1 being the 12 months following the Battle of Yavin.
It’s analogous to our actual world nomenclature, which makes use of CE (the “Common Era”) and BCE (“Before the Common Era”) to mark epochs of time. There’s no 12 months zero within the real-world calendar, nonetheless. BCE and CE as a substitute share 12 months 1, which coincides with the Christian perception within the delivery of Jesus Christ. Prior to BCE and CE, historians as a substitute used BC and AD — Before Christ and Anno Domini, or “The Year of our Lord.”
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Image: Disney Plus/Lucasfilm Ltd.
Therefore, BBY 5 represents 5 years earlier than the occasions of A New Hope. We get into the nitty-gritty of the bigger Star Wars timeline — together with how Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader, and the opposite Star Wars streaming tv reveals issue into issues — in a bigger characteristic on the timeline.
Star Wars properties have historically supplied this sort of historic context of their opening scenes. The 9 mainline movies all characteristic an iconic textual content crawl that marches up from the underside of the display screen to vanish into area. The Mandalorian, alternatively, does away with that textual content fully, giving no upfront textual clues as to when or the place the motion takes place from episode to episode. It’s the identical with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Jedi: Fallen Order, for that matter.
The lack of textual content crawls, and even the point out of planet names, induced a little bit of blowback from the fandom, particularly through the run of the primary season of The Mandalorian. Andor’s method subsequently will be seen as a little bit of a concession to these upset by the omission within the current previous. Just don’t name it fan service: Showrunner Tony Gilroy has mentioned he assiduously prevented pandering to followers all through the present’s manufacturing.
