In 2006, Lucasfilm added characters and information from the movie Willow to the official Star Wars Databank. It wasn’t the first time someone considered adding George Lucas’ other works to Star Wars canon: Alien Exodus, a canceled novel trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, would have reconciled the Star Wars universe with the movie THX 1138.
Even before the announcement, some fans considered Willow to be part of the Star Wars universe. While the Databank entries were soon revealed to be an April Fool’s joke, they did bolster fans’ pet theories by presenting some useful arguments for how the universes might work together.
Background
Willow is a 1988 fantasy film with a story by George Lucas, directed by Ron Howard. The plot is the archetypal tale of a young Nelwyn farmer, Willow Ufgood, who finds the baby Elora Danan, prophesied to overthrow the evil Queen Bavmorda. Armed with a magic wand from the sorceress Cherlindrea, Willow sets off to destroy Bavmorda with his unlikely companions: Madmartigan, a swordsman and escaped convict; Fin Raziel, a sorceress transformed into a rodent; Franjean and Rool, two mischevious brownies; and Sorsha, Bavmorda’s daughter.
In the late 1990s, George Lucas and Chris Claremont wrote the novel trilogy Chronicles of the Shadow War as a sequel to Willow. It begins with a major Cataclysm that kills most of the movie’s characters and drives the land into chaos. Willow, under the name Thorn Drumheller, searches for answers. Eventually he finds Elora, now a teenager, ruling as the Sacred Princess of Angwyn. Together, they must defeat the new evil that threatens their world.
Setting
The setting is probably the least problematic thing about Willow existing in the Star Wars universe. According to the fake Databank entries, Willow takes place on the planet Andowyne. The location is not canonical, and no specific location is given.
There is no evidence of space travel on Anowyne. The culture has little advanced technology; the people fight with swords and bows, travel by horseback or wagon, and cook over fires. But there have been other isolated, primitive planets in the Star Wars universe. Consider the Lost Tribe of the Sith, who had no contact with the galaxy outside their planet for 5,000 years, or the Ewoks, who appear to have never seen a droid before C-3PO.
The fake Databank entry for the character Willow mentions that his quest to uncover the truth behind the Cataclysm takes him off-world to places like Tatooine, where he uses his magic to win bets and watches the Boonta Eve Podrace. This explains the cameo appearance of Warwick Davis, who played Willow, in The Phantom Menace. However, this creates more inconsistencies than it fixes. It makes more sense to assume that Andowyne is an isolated planet without access to space travel, and that Davis' appearance as "Weazel" is a separate character.
Species
The primary sentient species in Willow are the Nelwyns, a hobbit-like race of little people; the Daikini, who for all intents and purposes appear human; and the Brownies, who look like humans but are only about 8 inches tall.
The Databank entries for Willow and Madmartigan clarify that Daikini is merely a local word for Human and that the Nelwyns are a Near-Human race, similar to humans in both biology and appearance. The entry for Brownies draws a connection with the Wisties, a species of small, glowing, fairy-like creatures on the forest moon of Endor. Although the two species don’t have much in common other than their size, it does clarify that small humanoids can exist in the Star Wars universe.
The other creatures in the movie are harder to reconcile. The characters tend pigs and ride horses. Fin Raziel is turned into a rodent, a raven, a goat, a tiger, and other familiar animals. Other than a few fantasy creatures -- trolls and the two-headed, fire-breathing Ebersisk -- animals in Willow appear to be the same as those on Earth.
Considering the number of humans and human-like species throughout the galaxy, however, is it so unrealistic that one planet in the Star Wars universe might have animal life similar to our own? Horses and horse-like creatures, at least, have already appeared in the Star Wars universe, such as in the movie Caravan of Courage.