Marcus woke to the sound of his phone buzzing insistently on the nightstand, a persistent electronic chirping that dragged him from dreams of lightsabers and hyperspace jumps and a galaxy that was finally going to be treated with the respect it deserved. He fumbled for the device with fingers that still felt foreign—George Lucas's fingers, thick and weathered, attached to hands that had shaped the childhoods of billions—and squinted at the screen through sleep-blurred vision.
Seventeen missed calls. Forty-three text messages. An email inbox that had apparently exploded overnight with communications from lawyers, agents, executives, and at least one message that appeared to be from the Walt Disney Company's legal department with the subject line "URGENT: Re: Dissolution of Acquisition Agreement."
Marcus groaned and let the phone drop back onto the pillow beside his head. It was—he checked the time—6:47 in the morning, which meant he had gotten approximately five hours of sleep, which was not nearly enough for a man who had cancelled the biggest entertainment deal in history and then spent the evening explaining the Expanded Universe to seventy confused employees.
The phone buzzed again. This time he actually looked at the notification.
KATHLEEN KENNEDY: Call me immediately. Keanu situation.
Keanu situation. Those two words sent a jolt of adrenaline through Marcus's borrowed body, banishing the fog of exhaustion with brutal efficiency. He sat up, fumbled with the phone, and dialed Kathleen's number before his brain had fully processed the implications of a "situation" involving the actor he was hoping to cast as Darth Revan.
She answered on the first ring.
"George, we have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" Marcus was already out of bed, moving toward the bathroom with the phone pressed to his ear. "Did he cancel? Did his people pull out of the meeting?"
"He cancelled, yes, but—"
"Damn it." Marcus's heart sank. He had been so sure, so convinced that Keanu would respond to the material, that the role of Revan would appeal to his sensibilities as an actor and a storyteller. "Did they say why? Was it the script? The concept? Is there something we can do to—"
"George, stop. Listen to me." Kathleen's voice cut through his spiraling panic with the practiced authority of someone who had spent decades managing creative personalities. "He cancelled, but not because he's not interested. He's too interested."
Marcus stopped in the middle of the bathroom, one hand on the marble sink, his reflection staring back at him with George Lucas's confused expression. "What?"
"His assistant called this morning. Apparently, after our initial conversation about the Old Republic project, Keanu went out and bought the Knights of the Old Republic games. Both of them. And he's been playing them continuously since yesterday afternoon."
"He's... playing the games?"
"He's playing the games. He's also ordered every Old Republic novel available, downloaded the comic series to his tablet, and according to his assistant—and I quote—'locked himself in his home office and refused to come out until he understands the full scope of Revan's character arc.'"
Marcus sat down on the edge of the bathtub, because his legs didn't seem capable of supporting him anymore. "Keanu Reeves cancelled our meeting because he's too busy playing KOTOR."
"That appears to be the situation, yes."
A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in Marcus's chest—a genuine, uncontrollable laugh that echoed off the marble tiles and probably sounded insane to anyone listening. He couldn't help it. The absurdity of it all—dying of a heart attack, waking up as George Lucas, cancelling the Disney sale, and now learning that Keanu Reeves was so committed to understanding a video game character that he had postponed a meeting with one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood—was simply too much.
"George?" Kathleen's voice was concerned. "Are you... are you laughing?"
"I'm laughing," Marcus confirmed, wiping tears from his eyes—from George's eyes, which were apparently capable of producing tears of mirth as well as any other kind. "I'm laughing because this is the most Keanu Reeves thing I've ever heard, and I've been a fan of his for years."
"You've been a fan of Keanu Reeves?"
"Haven't you? The man is a national treasure." Marcus stood, his mood transformed from anxious to elated. "So he's doing his research. That's perfect. That's exactly what we want from our lead actor—someone who takes the role seriously enough to actually understand the source material before he commits."
"He did send a message, actually. His assistant relayed it." There was a rustling of paper on the other end of the line. "He said, and again I'm quoting: 'Tell George that Bastila's battle meditation is absolutely fascinating and I have questions about how it would translate to film. Also, I've just reached Korriban and I think I understand why you want me for this role. Please give me another week.'"
"A week to finish the games and do his reading."
"Apparently."
Marcus nodded, even though Kathleen couldn't see him. "Give him the week. Give him two weeks if he needs them. When Keanu Reeves says he wants to understand the material, we let him understand the material. In the meantime, let's focus on the other priorities. What's on the schedule for today?"
"You have meetings with the legal team about the Disney withdrawal—those are unavoidable, the contracts are complicated. You have a lunch with Timothy Zahn to continue your conversation from yesterday. And you had a tour scheduled of the LucasArts facility, though given the announcements you made yesterday about revitalizing the gaming division, that's probably going to turn into something more substantial."
"Make it more substantial," Marcus said immediately. "Cancel whatever I need to cancel. I want the entire afternoon at LucasArts. I want to meet with the development teams, the project leads, everyone who's been affected by the layoffs and cancellations. If we're going to rebuild that division, I need to understand where we are right now."
"That's... going to be a lot of meetings, George."
"Then let's start early." Marcus moved to the closet, pulling out clothes that looked appropriately George Lucas—flannel shirt, comfortable jeans, the uniform of a man who had transcended the need to impress anyone with his wardrobe. "And Kathleen? Have someone send Keanu a care package. The Revan novel, the Tales of the Jedi comics that cover the ancient Sith, anything that fills in the gaps the games don't cover. If he's doing his homework, let's make sure he has all the textbooks."
"I'll handle it." There was a pause, and when Kathleen spoke again, her voice was softer. "George, I have to say—the way you're approaching this, the enthusiasm, the attention to detail... it's different. It's good different, but it's different. I've worked with you for years, and I've never seen you this engaged with the EU material."
Marcus hesitated. He couldn't explain the truth—couldn't tell her that he wasn't really George Lucas, that he was a dead IT worker from the future who had spent his entire adult life immersed in exactly this material. But he could offer something close to the truth.
"I think I forgot, somewhere along the way, why I started telling these stories in the first place," he said. "I got caught up in the business side, in the pressure, in the feeling that Star Wars had become this burden I needed to escape from. But then I really looked at what we have—what other people have built on the foundation I laid—and I remembered. I remembered that this is supposed to be fun. That we're making stories about space wizards with laser swords, about good versus evil, about the eternal struggle between light and dark. How could I ever have wanted to give that up?"
Kathleen was quiet for a moment. "That's... that's a beautiful way to put it."
"It's the truth." Marcus finished buttoning his shirt and grabbed his phone. "Now let's go save LucasArts."
The legal meetings were, as Kathleen had warned, unavoidable and interminable. Marcus spent three hours in a conference room surrounded by lawyers who spoke in a language that seemed designed to obfuscate rather than clarify, discussing exit clauses and dissolution terms and potential liability exposure stemming from the cancelled acquisition. He nodded in what he hoped were the right places, signed documents that had been vetted by people who presumably understood them, and tried not to let his mind wander to more interesting topics like what Keanu Reeves might think of Korriban's ancient Sith tombs.
By the time he escaped—and it did feel like an escape, like breaking free from a tractor beam of legal jargon—it was nearly noon, and Timothy Zahn was waiting for him in the ranch's dining room.
The author looked more relaxed than he had the previous day, dressed in casual clothes that suggested he had settled into the idea of being at Skywalker Ranch as something other than a summons to be worried about. He stood when Marcus entered and offered a handshake that felt more like a greeting between colleagues than an obligation between industry contacts.
"George. Good to see you again."
"Tim. Sorry for the delay—lawyers."
"Ah." Zahn's expression conveyed perfect understanding. "The Disney withdrawal, I assume?"
"Among other things." Marcus settled into a chair across from the author, accepting a menu from a server who appeared as if by magic—Skywalker Ranch apparently had the kind of staff that anticipated needs before they were expressed. "It's complicated. Apparently, you can't just call up one of the largest entertainment companies in the world and say 'never mind' without generating a significant amount of paperwork."
"I imagine not." Zahn ordered a salad and coffee; Marcus ordered something with protein and more coffee, because his body was running on caffeine fumes and he had a long afternoon ahead of him. "I've been thinking about our conversation yesterday. About the Thrawn adaptation."
"And?"
"And I have concerns." Zahn's voice was measured, careful—the voice of a man who wanted to be constructive rather than critical. "Not about the project itself. I think you're right that there's an audience for this material, and I'm honored that you want me involved in bringing it to screen. But I've been thinking about the practical challenges."
"Such as?"
"Casting, for one. Thrawn is... distinctive. He's blue-skinned, red-eyed, a member of an alien species that's never been shown in the films. You can't just cast any actor and put them in makeup—you need someone who can convey his intelligence, his menace, his almost aristocratic bearing, all while looking fundamentally non-human."
Marcus nodded. This was something he had been thinking about as well—had been thinking about since he was a teenager reading Heir to the Empire for the first time and trying to picture what Thrawn would look like in live action. "I have some ideas about that. Have you ever seen any of Lars Mikkelsen's work?"
Zahn's eyebrows rose. "The Danish actor? He was in Sherlock, I think. And some European productions."
"He has the bearing. The intelligence in his eyes. And his voice—" Marcus stopped himself. He was getting ahead of his own timeline; Lars Mikkelsen wouldn't actually voice Thrawn in the Rebels animated series until 2016, and that version of events was no longer going to happen. But the instinct remained valid. "I think he'd be worth considering. Someone who can be both charming and terrifying, who can make exposition feel like a trap being set."
"That's... actually a very good suggestion." Zahn looked impressed. "I wouldn't have thought of him, but now that you mention it, I can see it. The angular features, the precise diction. He could work."
"We'll set up screen tests once we have a script to work from." Marcus paused as their food arrived, using the interruption to gather his thoughts. "What else concerns you?"
"Mara Jade." Zahn set down his fork, his expression becoming more serious. "She's central to the trilogy—arguably as important as Thrawn in terms of the story's emotional core. Her journey from the Emperor's Hand to reluctant ally to eventual Jedi is one of the most compelling arcs in the EU. If we get her wrong, if we cast someone who can't convey that complexity, the whole thing falls apart."
"I know." Marcus did know. Mara Jade was one of the most beloved characters in the Expanded Universe, and she had never appeared in any film or major live-action production. Getting her right would be essential. "I've been thinking about that too. We need someone who can be dangerous, who can project the kind of cold competence that comes from being trained as an assassin. But we also need someone who can show vulnerability, who can make the audience believe in her eventual redemption."
"Any thoughts?"
Marcus hesitated. He had thoughts—many thoughts, accumulated over years of fan casting discussions and internet debates. But he was wary of committing too early, of locking in choices before they had a proper casting process in place.
"Let's talk about it more once we have a script," he said finally. "I want to make sure we're casting for the story we're actually telling, not the story we have in our heads."
Zahn nodded, apparently satisfied with this answer. They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, the quiet of the Skywalker Ranch dining room punctuated only by the clink of silverware and the distant sounds of the ranch going about its business.
"Can I ask you something?" Zahn said eventually.
"Of course."
"Yesterday, when you were talking about the EU—about what it means to you, about why you couldn't sell it to Disney—you said something that stuck with me. You said the EU represents forty years of talented people pouring their creativity into your galaxy. Making it bigger and richer than you could have alone."
"I remember."
"That's not how most creators talk about licensed work." Zahn set down his coffee cup, his eyes meeting Marcus's with an intensity that was almost uncomfortable. "Most creators—and I mean this with no disrespect—see the EU as something that exists at their pleasure. Something to be tolerated, maybe appreciated on some level, but ultimately subordinate to their own vision. You talked about it like it was a collaboration. Like we'd built something together."
Marcus was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer honestly without revealing the truth of his situation. He couldn't tell Timothy Zahn that he wasn't really George Lucas, that he was a fan who had grown up reading Zahn's novels and had dreamed of seeing them on screen. But he could try to convey the spirit of that truth.
"I think I lost sight of something important," he said slowly. "When you're the creator of a thing, it's easy to get possessive. To feel like you're the only one who really understands it, the only one who has the right to shape it. But that's not how stories work. Stories aren't owned—not really. They're shared. They're gifts that you give to the audience, and then the audience takes them and makes them their own."
He paused, looking out the window at the rolling hills of Marin County.
"The EU authors—you, Michael Stackpole, Drew Karpyshyn, all the others—you didn't just license my universe. You made it yours. You brought your own perspectives, your own themes, your own characters into this galaxy, and in doing so, you made it richer than I ever could have alone. Thrawn isn't just a villain I approved—he's your creation, your vision, your contribution to something we both love. How could I not want to honor that?"
When he looked back at Zahn, the author's expression had softened.
"You know," Zahn said quietly, "I've spent over twenty years writing in this universe. I've always felt like a guest in someone else's house—welcome, but not really at home. What you just said... that's the first time I've ever felt like a collaborator."
"That's what I want this to be." Marcus extended his hand across the table. "A collaboration. Not a licensing agreement. Not a work-for-hire arrangement. A genuine creative partnership, where your voice matters as much as mine."
Zahn took his hand and shook it. "Then let's make something incredible together."
The LucasArts facility was located in a nondescript office building that betrayed nothing of the creative legacy it housed. From the outside, it could have been any corporate space—glass and steel and carefully maintained landscaping, the universal aesthetic of American business parks. But Marcus knew what was inside. He knew the history of this building, the games that had been developed within its walls, the stories that had been told and the stories that had been cut short.
He also knew, thanks to Kathleen's briefings, that morale was at an all-time low. The layoffs had been brutal. Projects had been cancelled mid-development, sometimes with years of work simply discarded. The remaining staff were survivors of a culling that had left their department gutted and demoralized, unsure if their jobs would exist in six months.
Marcus was here to change that.
He was met at the entrance by a woman named Sarah Mitchell, who introduced herself as the acting head of game development—acting, she clarified with a bitter edge to her voice, because the previous head had been let go three months ago and they hadn't bothered to name a replacement. She was perhaps forty, with the kind of exhausted intensity that came from trying to hold something together against impossible odds.
"Mr. Lucas," she said, shaking his hand with a grip that was firm but not aggressive. "We weren't expecting you today. When we heard you were coming, I tried to pull together something resembling a presentation, but—"
"Forget the presentation." Marcus cut her off gently but firmly. "I'm not here for slides and projections. I'm here to listen. How many people do you have available right now?"
Sarah blinked, clearly recalibrating. "Available? Almost everyone, honestly. Most of our active projects were cancelled last quarter, so we've got a lot of people doing busy work while they wait for..." She trailed off, apparently deciding not to finish that sentence.
"While they wait for more layoffs?"
"That's the assumption, yes."
Marcus nodded. "Get everyone together. Everyone who can attend. Conference room, cafeteria, wherever you have space. I want to talk to the whole team."
"The whole—Mr. Lucas, that's over a hundred people."
"Then we'll need a big room."
Sarah stared at him for a moment, then seemed to decide that arguing with George Lucas was not a productive use of her time. "Give me fifteen minutes."
She disappeared into the building, leaving Marcus standing in the lobby with only his thoughts and an increasingly nervous Kathleen Kennedy for company.
"George," Kathleen said quietly, "what exactly are you planning to say to these people?"
"The truth." Marcus watched a group of employees hurry past, their expressions ranging from curious to worried. "They deserve to know what's coming. Good or bad, they deserve to know."
"And what is coming?"
Marcus turned to face her, and for the first time since waking up in George Lucas's body, he felt completely certain of what he was about to do.
"The future," he said. "The future of Star Wars gaming."
The cafeteria at LucasArts was not designed to hold a hundred and thirty-seven people, but somehow it managed. They had pushed tables against the walls, brought in chairs from conference rooms, and still there were people standing along the perimeter, leaning against vending machines and doorframes, their eyes all fixed on the flannel-clad figure of George Lucas standing at the front of the room.
Marcus looked out at the sea of faces—young and old, diverse in every way, united only by their presence in this building and their shared uncertainty about whether they would still have jobs next week—and felt the weight of responsibility settle onto his borrowed shoulders.
"Thank you all for coming on short notice," he began, and his voice—George's voice—carried surprisingly well in the crowded space. "I know there have been a lot of rumors flying around. I know morale has been... difficult. I know some of you are probably expecting me to announce more layoffs, more cancellations, more of the same painful contraction that's been happening for the past year."
He paused, letting that sink in. He could see shoulders tensing, expressions hardening in anticipation of bad news.
"That's not why I'm here."
A ripple went through the crowd. Confusion. Hope. Disbelief.
"Yesterday, I cancelled the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. Some of you may have heard about that. What you may not have heard is why." Marcus moved away from the front of the room, walking among the tables, making eye contact with as many people as he could. "I cancelled the sale because I realized that I was about to hand over something precious—not just the films, not just the characters, but the entire legacy of Star Wars—to a company that might not understand what makes it special."
He stopped beside a table where a young woman was sitting, her laptop still open to what looked like character design work. "What's your name?"
"Uh—Maria. Maria Chen." The woman looked startled to be addressed directly. "I'm a concept artist. Was a concept artist. I've been doing... documentation work since the layoffs."
"What were you working on before?"
"Level design concepts for 1313. Before it got cancelled."
Star Wars 1313. Marcus remembered—the game about Boba Fett that Disney had killed after the acquisition. In his original timeline, it had become one of the most mourned lost projects in gaming history.
"Do you still have those concepts?"
Maria blinked. "I—yes? They're archived on the company servers. Nobody told us to delete them."
"Good. I want to see them later. And I want to talk about whether there's still a game there."
The murmur that went through the crowd was louder this time. Marcus could see people straightening in their chairs, the defensive postures of the waiting-to-be-fired transforming into something more attentive.
He continued walking, addressing the room as a whole. "Here's what's going to happen. LucasArts is not being shut down. LucasArts is not being sold. LucasArts is being rebuilt. And I want your help to figure out how."
"What does that mean practically?" someone called from the back. "Are you talking about new projects? What kind of budget?"
"I'm talking about the games that should have been made," Marcus said, turning to address the questioner—a man in his thirties with the exhausted look of someone who had survived too many project cancellations. "Knights of the Old Republic III. Imperial Commando. A proper successor to the Jedi Knight series. Star Wars 1313. All the projects that were cancelled, that were deemed too risky or too expensive or not in line with corporate strategy—we're going to look at every single one and figure out what can be salvaged."
"KOTOR III?" The voice came from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, and it was saturated with naked longing. "You're serious?"
"Dead serious." Marcus made his way toward the voice and found a man who looked like he hadn't slept in days, wearing a faded BioWare t-shirt that had clearly seen better days. "What's your name?"
"Jake. Jake Morrison. I was on the writing team for The Old Republic MMO before... well, before everything."
"Then you know the source material. You know what a KOTOR III could be."
"I've been dreaming about it for years," Jake said, and there was something raw in his voice. "We all have. There are design documents floating around—unofficial, stuff people worked on in their spare time—that outline what the game could be. The conclusion of Revan's story. The final confrontation with the True Sith. It's all there, it just..."
"Never got greenlit?"
"Never even got seriously considered. The MMO was supposed to be the continuation of the story, but it's not the same. It's not the single-player, narrative-driven experience that KOTOR was. Some of us have been working on proposals, trying to pitch it internally, but..."
"But nobody was listening." Marcus nodded. "I'm listening now. And I want to see those design documents. Tonight, if possible."
The energy in the room was shifting. Marcus could feel it—the transformation from resigned acceptance to tentative excitement, from a group of people waiting for the axe to fall to a group of people suddenly wondering if they might be allowed to create something again.
"I have questions," someone called out. "A lot of questions."
"So do I." Marcus grinned—George Lucas's grin, but with Marcus's enthusiasm behind it. "Let's figure this out together. What do you want to make? What games have you been dreaming about? Forget budget constraints for a moment, forget what's 'realistic'—if you could make any Star Wars game in the world, what would it be?"
The dam broke.
Suddenly everyone was talking at once, voices overlapping in a chaotic symphony of creative passion that had been suppressed for too long. Someone was talking about an open-world game set during the Clone Wars. Someone else was pitching a horror game set on a derelict Star Destroyer infested with something terrible. A group in the corner was having a heated debate about whether a podracing game could work with modern physics engines.
Marcus found himself moving through the crowd, catching fragments of conversations, asking questions, making mental notes. He spent ten minutes talking to a team of programmers about the technical feasibility of large-scale space battles. He spent another fifteen with a group of artists debating the visual style of different eras in Star Wars history. He found himself in a surprisingly intense discussion about lightsaber combat mechanics with a designer who had apparently written a sixty-page manifesto on the subject.
The meeting that Kathleen had warned might run long was, by the two-hour mark, showing no signs of concluding. Marcus had long since abandoned any pretense of formal structure, and the cafeteria had transformed into something more like a creative brainstorming session crossed with a gaming convention. Someone had found a whiteboard and was sketching out game concepts. Someone else had pulled up old design documents on a laptop and was walking Marcus through cancelled project ideas.
And then, somewhere around hour three, Marcus had an idea.
It wasn't a new idea, exactly. It was an idea he'd had for years—an idea he'd discussed in online forums and Reddit threads and late-night Discord conversations with other fans. An idea that, in his original timeline, had never come to fruition because the people who owned Star Wars gaming rights weren't interested in taking risks.
But now he owned those rights. Now he could make it happen.
"Hey," he said, raising his voice to cut through the noise of multiple simultaneous conversations. "Hey, everyone. I want to pitch you something."
The room gradually quieted, attention focusing back on him.
"I've been listening to all your ideas, and they're incredible. Seriously, the creativity in this room is exactly what I hoped to find here. But I want to throw something out there that I've been thinking about for a while. Something that might sound crazy, but I think could work."
He moved to the whiteboard that had been commandeered for concept sketches, grabbed a marker, and started drawing.
"The battle royale genre," he said, sketching out a rough planetary surface. "It's exploding right now. Games like DayZ are proving there's a massive audience for large-scale survival competition. And I've been thinking—what would a Star Wars battle royale look like?"
The room was silent. Marcus could see people processing, some looking skeptical, others intrigued.
"Think about it," he continued, his marker squeaking against the whiteboard as he sketched. "A hundred players. Different starting locations across a planetary surface—or maybe a space station, or a Star Destroyer in the process of crashing, or a city under bombardment. The 'shrinking circle' mechanic could be an ion storm, or an advancing army, or a planet that's literally breaking apart. You could have different factions—Imperial, Rebel, neutral—with different spawn points and equipment."
"What about Jedi?" someone asked. "You can't have a hundred Jedi fighting each other. That doesn't make sense lore-wise."
"So we set it in an era where Jedi are rare," Marcus said, warming to the idea. "The Old Republic era, maybe—during one of the Sith wars, when both sides had Force users but they were still a minority. Or the Imperial era, where you might have one or two Force-sensitive players per match, but they're rare and special and everyone wants to take them down."
"The loot mechanics could be interesting," another voice chimed in—a woman Marcus recognized from earlier, one of the systems designers. "Different tiers of blasters, armor types, grenades. Maybe rare lightsaber spawns that give you a huge advantage but also make you a target. Vehicle spawns—speeder bikes, maybe even TIE fighters in certain maps."
"Exactly!" Marcus was grinning now, caught up in the collaborative energy. "And you could have environmental storytelling. The map isn't just a battleground—it's a place with history. You're fighting in the ruins of a Jedi Temple, or on the surface of a planet that's been bombarded from orbit, or in a space station that's slowly falling into a sun. The world tells a story while you're playing in it."
"Squad mechanics?" someone asked. "Teams or solo?"
"Both. Maybe even larger squad sizes for organized play. Imagine a tournament mode where it's Empire versus Rebellion, fifty on fifty, fighting for control of a planetary surface."
The room was buzzing now, people breaking into smaller groups to discuss specific mechanics, art styles, potential maps. Marcus stepped back from the whiteboard and watched it happen—watched the creative energy that had been suppressed for months finally finding an outlet.
"Mr. Lucas?" Sarah Mitchell, the acting department head, had appeared at his elbow. Her expression was complicated—something between amazement and concern. "Can I speak with you privately for a moment?"
Marcus nodded and followed her to a relatively quiet corner of the cafeteria, away from the increasingly animated discussions about blaster tier systems and vehicle spawn rates.
"That was..." Sarah paused, apparently searching for the right word. "That was unexpected."
"Which part?"
"All of it. The KOTOR III announcement. The promise to revive cancelled projects. And now you're in the trenches with the development teams, pitching battle royale concepts like you've been thinking about game design for years." She studied his face with an intensity that made Marcus slightly uncomfortable. "Mr. Lucas, I've worked at LucasArts for fifteen years. I've met you maybe half a dozen times, always in formal settings, always with layers of management between us. You've never—you've never been like this."
Marcus considered his options. He couldn't explain the truth. He couldn't tell her that he wasn't really George Lucas, that he was a gamer from the future who had spent countless hours thinking about what Star Wars games should be. But he could offer something close to honesty.
"I've been too removed," he said. "Too focused on the big picture, the corporate strategy, the business side of things. I forgot that games aren't spreadsheets—they're experiences. They're created by people who love what they do, and if I want great games, I need to give those people the freedom and support to create."
"And the battle royale idea?"
Marcus smiled. "Let's just say I've been paying attention to where gaming is headed. The industry is changing. Player expectations are evolving. If we want Star Wars games to stay relevant, we need to be ahead of the curve, not chasing it."
Sarah was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, she smiled back.
"You know what? I don't understand what happened to you overnight, but I'm glad it did. This is the first time in months that I've seen my team actually excited about coming to work."
"Then let's keep that momentum going." Marcus turned back toward the crowd, toward the animated discussions and the whiteboard covered in sketches and the palpable energy of creative people finally being allowed to create. "How quickly can we get formal proposals together for KOTOR III and the battle royale concept?"
"For real proposals? With budgets and timelines and technical assessments?" Sarah considered. "A month, maybe. If we prioritize it."
"Prioritize it. And anything else that comes out of today's discussions—anything that the team is genuinely excited about. I want to see all of it."
"Mr. Lucas, I have to ask—what's the budget situation? You're talking about multiple major projects, possibly concurrent development. That's not cheap."
Marcus thought about the four billion dollars he had just turned down from Disney. Thought about the resources that Lucasfilm had at its disposal, about the leverage that the Star Wars name carried, about the investors who would line up for a chance to be part of this renaissance.
"The budget situation," he said, "is that we're going to make the best Star Wars games ever created, and we're going to figure out how to pay for them. Money follows quality. If we make something incredible, the money will come."
"That's not how studio executives usually talk."
"I'm not a studio executive. I'm the guy who created Star Wars." Marcus grinned. "And I'm done letting accountants decide what stories get told."
The meeting—which had long since ceased to be a meeting and had become something more like a creative festival—ran for four hours and twenty-three minutes. By the end of it, Marcus had filled three whiteboards with notes, had committed to reviewing design documents for no fewer than twelve different game concepts, and had promised to return to LucasArts within the week to continue the conversation.
He had also, somewhere in hour three, ended up in a thirty-minute tangent about the evolution of first-person shooter mechanics that had absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars and everything to do with the pure joy of discussing video games with people who loved them as much as he did.
It was, Marcus reflected as Kathleen drove him back toward Skywalker Ranch in the fading evening light, probably the least professional thing George Lucas had ever done. A CEO of a major entertainment company did not spend four hours sitting on cafeteria tables debating the optimal respawn timer for a hypothetical battle royale game. A captain of industry did not get into animated arguments about whether aim-down-sights mechanics enhanced or detracted from arcade shooter feel.
But Marcus wasn't really a CEO. He wasn't really a captain of industry. He was a gamer who had somehow ended up in charge of one of the most important gaming companies in history, and for the first time since waking up in George Lucas's body, he had allowed himself to simply... be himself.
"You know," Kathleen said, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over the car, "I've never seen you like this."
"So I keep hearing."
"No, I mean—" She paused, searching for words. "In all the years I've known you, I've never seen you that happy. That engaged. You were in there with those developers like you were one of them. Like gaming was your passion rather than just a business."
Marcus stared out the window at the California hills rolling past, painted gold by the setting sun. "Maybe it always was," he said quietly. "Maybe I just forgot."
"Well, whatever happened, I hope it lasts." Kathleen turned onto the road that led to Skywalker Ranch, the familiar grounds coming into view. "The team at LucasArts—they needed that. They needed to feel like someone at the top actually cared about what they do."
"I do care." Marcus turned to look at her. "That's the thing, Kathleen. I really, genuinely care. About the games, about the movies, about all of it. Not as a business. As a fan."
"George Lucas, admitting to being a Star Wars fan." Kathleen laughed softly. "Now I've truly seen everything."
Marcus laughed too, and for a moment, the strangeness of his situation faded into the background. He was here, now, in this body, with this power. He had the ability to shape the future of a franchise he loved. He had spent the day laying the groundwork for games that his previous self had only dreamed about.
And tomorrow, he would continue the work. More meetings, more planning, more of the slow and painstaking process of turning dreams into reality.
But for now, as the car pulled up to Skywalker Ranch and the first stars began appearing in the darkening sky, Marcus allowed himself a moment of simple satisfaction.
KOTOR III was going to happen.
The battle royale game was going to happen.
Keanu Reeves was playing the Knights of the Old Republic games and reading every piece of Old Republic lore he could get his hands on.
Thrawn was coming to the big screen.
And this was only the beginning.