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Be prepared to take this upcoming Star Wars TV show rumor on face value: unconfirmed and highly speculative.

Could one of the plot points in Star Wars: Underworld involve a group of bandits time traveling back into the past to stop the rise of Darth Vader?

That's what the unidentified person told Ain't It Cool News today. As the site points out, this is totally unconfirmed (although some "reasonable context" helped give the scooper some weight that what they were saying was worth listening to.) Still, stranger things have been published on the Internet that have later turned out to be 100% accurate -- and I've published a few of those myself.

The individual doesn't give any context in how the mechanism for time travel in the Star Wars universe would be shown or explained. Unlike the Star Trek franchise which has used time travel in numerous occasions, in the canonical Star Wars universe (meaning the movie series) there hasn't been any instance of time travel. In the expanded universe which includes the comic books, novels and animated TV shows there has been some use of time travel but in a minor fashion. Something like what the AICN scooper is describing for Star Wars: Underworld would be pretty much the first instance of time travel being used in the galaxy far, far away for nearly all of the show's possible audience.

While it could be that the report is legit, personally it rings hollow to me. A very similar plot mechanism was used in 2009's Star Trek movie where a group of Romulan terrorists rewrote the continuity of the Trek universe (and along the way managed to successfully give the rest of us a freshly rebooted Star Trek movie franchise.) The comparison between Trek's most recent use of time travel, especially in the context of messing around with the established timeline that we all remember, and the rumored Star Wars: Underworld concept just seem too similar to each other. Would Lucas really dare to tread on such similar ground?

Perhaps someone will ask the question to Lucas or one of his associates during the press rounds for The Phantom Menace 3D release and we'll get an official answer of sorts.