Hoth Off The Press: One Story From Every Star Wars Celebration I've Been To (So Far...)
It’s weird to think how nervous I was when I first arrived at Star Wars Celebration.
The year was 2010, and my family had just pulled up to the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida for day one of Star Wars Celebration V. It was my first time going to any convention of any kind. That fact, in and of itself, isn’t that strange. There are plenty of people who make Celebration their first con. What felt strange, however, was how far we had travelled for this moment. Literally.
Late 2009/early 2010 is when my Star Wars passion was reignited. Despite being practically obsessed as a ten-year-old heading into the release of Revenge of the Sith, I’d let my enthusiasm wane in the intervening years. Or rather, I’d tried to force it to wane. I thought Star Wars was something I needed to grow out of and, as a result, I tried to force myself to let it go.
It was podcasting that brought me back into it. Not my own podcast, that would come later, but I had recently been introduced to the concept of podcasts to listen to back episodes of radio shows. Then, one day I decided to look in the “Podcasts” section of the iTunes store for more things to listen to. Despite my efforts to outgrow Star Wars, I decided to do a search for it just to see if any existed.
To my delight, a handful of shows existed (a tiny fraction of the number that exist now) and I found one that suited my tastes. The hosts soon began talking about something called “Celebration”. I was intrigued. I looked through their back catalogue and found some shows from Celebration IV, which had taken place three years earlier in LA. It sounded like an absolute blast! I knew I wanted to go.
There was a major obstacle standing in my way at the time, I was still only fifteen and travelling on my own seemed out of the question. My only hope was to convince my entire family to go. No small feat.
My brother was also super into Star Wars at the time, so not much convincing was needed there. But neither of my parents had even seen all the films—they still haven’t! When I first broached the subject with them, to say they were confused would be an understatement. Neither of them had ever been to a convention, and prior to that conversation, I had never shown any interest in going to one. And now there I was pitching the idea of a family trip from Toronto to Orlando for a convention about a series of movies that they hadn’t seen all of.
For reasons that I still don’t entirely understand, they decided to go along with it. I still remember my utter shock when they told us that our family vacation for that year would be a week in New York City, followed by five days in Orlando for Celebration.
That shock and joy, though, were replaced by fear and anxiousness that first morning of the convention. We’d had such a fun time in New York that I had begun to worry that we were cutting the better vacation short to do something, in my mind, only I wanted to. Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about and everyone had an amazing time at Star Wars Celebration.
So much of what I’ve done, so many of the friends I’ve made and some of the best experiences I’ve ever had have come at Star Wars Celebration. I’m going to tell you about some of them now—one from each Celebration I’ve been to, which is all of them since 2010—and I owe it all to my parents agreeing to take this risk with me. Whenever you try something new you run the risk of it blowing up in your face. But when you take that risk it also has the chance to be life-changing.
It may sound melodramatic or over-the-top to say, but it’s true. Without Celebration, I wouldn’t have started podcasting or writing about Star Wars and I wouldn’t have met so many of the incredible people I’ve met because of that, some of whom I consider to be among my best friends. All because of Star Wars Celebration.
Now that the corny bit is out of the way, let’s get to the stories! And we begin at that very first Celebration I attended back in 2010.
The Main Event: Celebration V (2010)
The top-billed panel at Celebration V was a live interview with George Lucas, conducted by Jon Stewart. Talk about two legends, one stage. It was not to be missed.
“The Main Event”, as it was called in the schedule, was slated to take place on Saturday morning on the Celebration stage, with satellite broadcasts being beamed out to the other stages for those who couldn’t get in. Fans were expected to camp out overnight if they wanted to get a seat in the Celebration Stage.
Camping out overnight outside a convention center in central Florida in August was where my parents drew the line. They had been fully swept up in the spirit and the energy of Celebration, totally enjoying their time there. But an overnight line was a bridge too far.
Still, I desperately wanted to go, so a compromise was made. We would arrive at the convention center at 5:30 am and see what the situation was. The night before, my parents were bracing my brother and me for the fact that we were probably going to watch it in one of the satellite rooms. But despite their warnings, I still believed.
When we arrived that morning the line was long. A lot of people had camped out overnight for the interview. But my brother, my mom (my parents traded off who accompanied us to the con after the first day), and I all still dutifully joined the back of the line and began the wait for wristband distribution that would determine our fates.
I don’t remember when exactly they began giving out wristbands but eventually, the line began slowly moving toward the distribution point. I could see folks ahead of us being given yellow wristbands, indicating they would be watching George and Jon from the Celebration Stage.
We inched ever closer to the handout point. Then the line came to a stop when there was just one group in front of us. It looked like we might just miss out on the Celebration Stage. I began to console myself with the thought that, at least we would get the best seats in one of the overflow rooms.
That’s when I heard one of the convention staffers say the magic words,
“I think we have eight yellow ones left.”
Immediately I counted the group in front of us. There were four of them. That meant there would still be enough for us (plus one more person) to get in. Sure enough, the staff began to wave us through.
“George wanted you to have this,” another staffer said with a wink when they put the yellow band on my wrist.
It was a moment of pure elation! Even my mom was overjoyed at the moment, having gotten the all-powerful yellow wristband. We then waited for another hour or so until it was time to go into the Celebration Stage.
The interview itself was fantastic. Jon was a terrific interviewer, balancing interesting questions that die-hard fans would be curious about with some good old-fashioned Star Wars jokes. George was also in a free-wheeling form, dropping tidbits left and right—and even matching some of Stewart’s comedy bits with jokes of his own. Among the reveals was the confirmation that Darth Plagueis was in fact Darth Sidious's master (something that had only been speculated up until that point) and the debut of a new clip from season three of The Clone Wars which introduced the character Savage Opress. He also “revealed” the name of Obi-Wan’s homeworld: Stewjon. (Get it?)
George actually jumped the gun a bit with the Savage Opress reveal, mentioning that the character is actually Darth Maul’s brother. This was something the PR team, and production crew, were hoping to keep secret. Later in the day, at the big preview panel for the third season of The Clone Wars, showrunner Dave Filoni addressed the moment by saying that George had said something “interesting” about the character that morning and that he wasn’t going to repeat it.
The Main Event concluded with Stewart bringing out Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to join Lucas on stage for a mini-reunion—and to announce that the Star Wars films would be coming out on Blu-ray next year. Included on the Blu-ray set, promised George, were some never-before-seen deleted scenes. He even showed one to the crowd.
Both George and Jon had delivered on the promise of the event. Plus, seeing the excitement on everybody’s faces, especially my mom’s (again, she hadn’t seen all the films), when we got in was a joyous experience in and of itself. There really is a magic to Star Wars Celebration.