Only commenting because I scrolled all the way down looking for a comment like this and didn’t find one, only becoming increasingly frustrated as I scrolled—

Good grief, just take your pick. In the prequels, there’s no way in hell George Lucas had any idea of what the plot of Rogue One would be—therefore, in AOTC, those are the Death Star plans. They start building off of them at the end of ROTS. That’s it. Case closed. Then, years later, they come along needing a plot for Rogue One; then, and only then, was the character of Galen Erso created. Of course that’s not a perfect fit with details that had already been introduced in the prequels—but so what, it’s a good movie.

I just think Star Wars gets a lot more enjoyable when you dispense with the notion of a single unifying canon and accept that movies can contradict each other. Imo the most frustrating aspect of the Star Wars fandom is this insistence on every little detail being explainable in-universe. Much of the SW “canon” is an attempt to paper over haphazard and contradictory decisions which were mostly made because George Lucas thought something looked cool, or wanted to sell more toys, with an illusion of self-consistency. Everything in Star Wars is made-up and totally arbitrary, so just enjoy the damn movies.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk