Founded in 1997 the 501st legion now has over 14.000 members worldwide. The 501st Legion is an all-volunteer organization formed for the purpose of bringing together costume enthusiasts from around the world. The 501st Legion seeks to promote interest in Star Wars through the building and wearing of high quality, screen accurate costumes and to contribute to the local community through costumed charity and volunteer work.
The 501st legion has been recognized as ‘Lucasfilms preferred imperial costuming organization’, so much so, that George Lucas honored them by canonizing the legion in universe, by making them Vaders clone battalion in the prequels. Although the 501st Legion is not sponsored by Disney or Lucasfilm, they often call, together with their partners, upon members of the Legion to help promote the commercial release of new Star Wars products and tie-ins. Members of the 501st legion have even been featured as extras in recent Star Wars TV shows, such as The Mandalorian.
In 2020 the 501st Legion finally arrived in Malta. Due to the pandemic the activities were limited to online campaigns and so called ‘troops’ abroad as guest of other ‘detachments’. At this years Malta Comic Con the Commanding Officer of the Malta Outpost Eve / ST-90019 will talk about ‘how to join’ and the 501st Legions mission statement and hopefully recruit some new members.
