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We know from this question that it was no more than a few hours between the end of Rogue One and the start of A New Hope but I'm curious how much time elapsed specifically between Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba's narrow escape from Jedha and their unfortunate fate in the Mos Eisley cantina.

A Twitter quote in an answer to this question from Rogue One screenwriter Gary Whitta indicates that it was only a few days later.

Q. How did "my friend doesn't like you" survive the attack on Jedha?

Whitta: They were on their way off-world. Lucky escape, not quite so lucky later in the week.

Via Twitter - Spelling and grammar corrected

It's been a bit since I've seen Rogue One but I got the impression that its events take place over several days and then after R2D2 and C3P0 crash on Tatooine in ANH, it's several days or weeks of them wandering in the desert and in Jawa custody before being sold to Owen and Luke. Then at least another day passes before Kenobi rescues Luke from the sand people.

So, my question is whether or not this out-of-universe quote is supported by the events of the movies, other showrunner quotes, and any other canon material. In other words, precisely how much time passes between Evazan/Baba's appearance on Jedha and their appearance in the cantina?

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  • Just on the topic of the timing in ANH. Though to there are several abrupt fade-outs after the droids arrived on Tatooine, I never got the impression that more than 2 days passed before before Luke meets them. So, 3 days after the end if Rogue 1.
    – Verdan
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 3:01
  • @Verdan - The shuttle lands on Tatooine on day 1. The droids are captured the same day and transferred to the sandcrawler. The following day the crawler arrives at Owen's farm and the droids are purchased.
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 12:27
  • That was my initial impression. I was allowing a bit more for wiggle room.
    – Verdan
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 16:26
  • @Valorum - Are you sure they were captured and sold within a day of landing? They show a lot of wear by the time they're sold and I always attributed that to brutal desert conditions and poor maintenance from the Jawas, accumulated over several days at least.
    – TheIronCheek
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 16:31
  • @TheIronCheek - "The next morning, a squad of Imperial stormtroopers found the abandoned escape pod half buried in the sand. A Sentinel-class landing craft had delivered the stormtroopers to Tatooine, where they’d appropriated dewbacks — large four-legged reptiles — from the local authorities. ..... .. .. . “Wake up! Wake up!” C-3PO said to R2-D2 as the transport came to a stop. R2-D2 had switched himself off, but — at C-3PO’s urging — his dome’s lights activated and he was immediately alert."
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 17:15

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Well, Disney's timeline is a bit of a mess, but it is possible that they fled Jedha On Monday, and were "cut off" by Kenobi on Saturday :) And who knows how much days a week has in the SW universe :) Anyway, in Rogue One , after the destruction of Jedha there is the Mission to Eadu to kill Galen Erso, then the Alliance Council meeting on Yavin, then Rogue One goes to Scarif without permission, then the Rebel fleet joins the battle and finally Princess Leia flees with the plans to Tatooine. All of this should last a couple of days, meanwhile Evazan and Baba should have already arrived. As for R2D2 and C3P0, if Luke had to wait for morning to search for R2D2, and his uncle bought them the previous day, then there must be at least two days since they escaped from the Tantive IV, possibly more, before the events in the cantina.

My personal impression is that the screenwriters of new (Disney) SW canon don't really know or care about existing timeline and events, so they often ruin previous works. In this case, theoretically it is possible to squeeze in Evazan and Baba adventures in a single week, but it is on the edge of the knife really.

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    There may be too much personal opinion in this answer, imo.
    – RedCaio
    Commented Jan 8 at 8:02

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