Please do not use the first person — WMG is for everyone!
Please also be warned that most of these theories make more sense than the Holiday Special ever did.
The Star Wars Holiday Special is in-universe Imperial propaganda.
It's tempting to see it as
Rebel propaganda, given its focus on Rebel sympathisers and its inclusion of a cartoon of Rebel icon Luke Skywalker. But it's the other way around —
The Empire made it to
discredit the Rebels. Part of it was simply to make the Rebels look foolish — badly needed after they managed to destroy the Death Star. But another part of it was
meant to harm the viewers. It might even be related to the unseen torture Darth Vader used on Princess Leia in
A New Hope — the bits with her in it were being fed to her by Vader on the Death Star (it conjures a nice mental image of Leia singing to herself, alone in her cell and incredibly high). It may even specifically have been a way to turn Imperial citizens
against the Wookiees, priming them for an upcoming pogrom on Kashyyyk. And they had such trouble finding an actor who looked like Luke Skywalker that they had to employ lots of makeup to make it look even remotely convincing.
Whether or not it was successful in this respect is a matter of debate. What is not a matter of debate, though, is that if the film flopped in-universe, Vader was probably not very forgiving of the director.
Life Day itself was created by the Empire to keep the Rebellion too discombobulated to be effective.
It's celebrated with colourful holographic dancers, psychedelic music straight out of
The '70s, a lot of makeup (at least on the men), a
lot of drugs (if Leia is any indication), and ritual porn viewership.
If the Holiday Special had come out before home recording, it would have been the most sought after print of all time.
The
Holiday Special aired once and
never again, so the only way anyone would have ever been able to see it is if someone recorded it. And that's exactly what happened — the special was heavily advertised in advance, and people made VHS recordings. This is why pretty much every copy of the special preserves the commercials from its original recording.
But imagine if that weren't possible. Imagine if the Holiday Special aired once and never again — and no one was able to preserve it for their own records.
People wouldn't even have known it existed. The Star Wars franchise goes on without a hitch, and it picks up its fandom and its Expanded Universe. It's not until The '90s that the really hardcore fans start spreading rumours of a holiday special that supposedly aired in the late 1970s, and how it apparently had Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and 20 minutes of unsubtitled Wookiee noises. But there's no proof. Maybe someone finds old TV Guide clippings, promotional materials, maybe some still photos. And maybe there would be some testimonials — but remember, in our timeline, Carrie Fisher claimed she didn't remember any of the special because of drug-induced amnesia. If she claimed that and no one could verify the special's existence, that alone would make it legendary.
Soon, the pieces will be put together in the Internet age. The cels of the animated segment might leak out (auctioning for triple the price it did in "our" timeline). The 45 single pressing of the Jefferson Starship song would have been discovered. Slowly but surely, the special will be pieced together. The network prints might leak out — even in the late 70s, TV shows were still being distributed on 16mm film. Maybe, with a little luck, with a lot of hype, and with a generous soul with connections, the entire special can be stitched together and put on YouTube.
And it would be the most legendary letdown in the history of the Internet.
The Holiday Special will, by definition, never be officially released.
George Lucas engineered it so that nobody would be able to legally release it. Lucas insisted he never would when he had the rights himself. Then he sold the rights to
Disney, but he could well have included a clause prohibiting Disney from releasing the special. And he put a clause in his will, explicitly stating that his heirs could
also never release the special. It will be forever in the legal grey areas.
George Lucas is the ringleader behind such proposed laws as SOPA and PIPA, which would have effectively allowed copyright holders like him to force websites like
YouTube to take down any video without question. He's looking to remove one specific video: the
Star Wars Holiday Special. Lucas chose to keep his efforts secret — although Hollywood
and the U.S. Congress would likely sympathize with him, there's always the
Streisand Effect to worry about which could galvanize the fandom to specifically preserve the
Holiday Special.
If you're wondering, SOPA and PIPA failed in spite of Hollywood money and enthusiasm, because the Internet protested hard
— Wikipedia blacked out its home page in protest. So we're not likely to see Lucas succeed any time soon.
The bartender is Dorothy Zbornak.
The Golden Girls kept their promise to Rose that when they die, they'll
be frozen so they can be cured and get back together in the future. Well, it took them a really long time to get thawed, and they found they'd been transported to a galaxy far, far, away. The four opened a cantina on Tattooine; they clearly like hot weather, and Blanche just loves bad boys like smugglers and men in uniforms like Stormtroopers.
Not literally, of course, but his presence indicates that while he may have indeed died as a result of his encounter with Han Solo,
he was fine the next day, in the tradition of Hans Moleman,
Kenny McCormick, and other slapstick characters. He just... didn't have anything to do in the next two films, but it's not unthinkable that he died a few more times since.
The Imperial Guard who visited Saun Dann's shop was on leave with PTSD following a battle with the Mon Calamari in which his entire squad were wiped out.
It would explain why he hated fish.
Disney is planning a big-budget remake of the Holiday Special to rehabilitate it.
It seems like the kind of thing Disney would do. Although it
may have been
Jossed by the existence of
The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special.
Mark Hamill crashed his car on purpose to get out of the special.
It didn't work (and it necessitated some truly frightening makeup), but it was worth a try.
Princess Leia really was on drugs, and almost everything in the special takes place from her point of view.
Going with the
Real Life fact that Carrie Fisher was on drugs when they did the special, Leia was on some
Star Wars drugs. She's self-medicating — poor girl has to deal with her entire planet getting
blown up before her eyes. She got high before she even landed on Kashyyyk and doesn't remember anything about her trip there — this is why, in
The Thrawn Trilogy, when she visits Kashyyyk again, she thinks it's her first time there. The drugs also explain why "Kashyyyk" is misinterpreted as "Kazook", why Greedo appears after apparently dying, and all of the other weirdness. After this nightmare, she swore off the drugs and has been clean ever since.
The announcer in the placeholder commercial is Boba Fett.
The
commercial was animated by
Nelvana, and the PSA the audio comes from must also be animated by Nelvana. It's random, but it might be plausible. The backwards part is Boba speaking in Mandalorian, and the forwards part is Boba speaking in English. The voiceover sounds nothing like Don Francks, but still...
Life Day is the one day when all the Galaxy's drugs are made legal by the Empire.
Like a toned-down, more hilarious version of
The Purge. Plus, it would explain about 99% of the special itself.
Every year, when Ceraxian's Comet reaches its perihelion, the kindly old galactic trader Saun Dann comes down to the planet's surface in a starship pulld by pygmy nerfs. He delivers toys to all the good sentient beings, before returning to the comet and his workshop, where his Toydarian employees make all the toys for the next Life Day. The "Saun Dann" seen in the
Holiday Special is actually a Rebel agent smuggling weapons to the Alliance while undercover as an "office Santa"
IN SPACE!Life Day traditionally involves a sacrifice of some sort.
Look at the stone slab at the base of the Tree of Life. In ancient times, the Wookiee holy men would make a sacrifice on that slab, as part of a ritual to bring a symbolic end to Kashyyyk's harsh winters. The old canon even semi-officially describes it as some sort of ancestor worship with Saturnalia elements. (The weather looks pretty warm during the special because Kashyyyk seasons are weird.)
He'll miss the
regular closing musical numbers, but at least he now has the money for
his cloning side-project.
The whole thing is a dream that R2-D2 had while falling asleep in front of a holovision
Okay, first of all, if we're going by George Lucas's comments, all the main movies in the Skywalker Saga are from R2's point of view and he's just recounting it to the Whills centuries into the future.
Second of all, let's assume droids can have dreams.
You ever fall asleep with the TV on, and your brain just sort of mixes up everything you're hearing into a super-crazy dream? The Holiday Special is exactly that. R2 had a holovision on that was airing a documentary on the Wookiee holiday of Life Day, another about the Mos Eisley cantina, a cooking show, a rock concert and a cartoon one after the other, and he's dreaming that they're all just one big program.
Centuries later, he's running out of stories to tell the Whills. But they want to hear one more. R2 then starts with "Okay, lemme tell you about this crazy dream I had about Life Day..."
