Hidalgo was born in Santiago de Chile and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. In 1987 he became a fan of the role-playing game resources published West End Games, the only official source of Star Wars content in the late 1980s and took it upon himself to become knowledgeable of the universe to create better stories for the group of friends he was playing it with. He later used both content from the RPG and ideas he developed for his gaming sessions within official Star Wars media, such as the tracking device used by the Inquisitor and the name of a ship in Star Wars Rebels. He submitted content for West End Games' Star Wars Adventure Journal in 1993. Although rejected because he was not a published author at the time, his correspondence with the company resulted in him being hired as a cartoonist for the magazine by Peter Schweighofer. Since he was now a published author, he was allowed to publish material for the RPG as well as stories in the magazine. During his involvement, he collected the first large-scale database of Star Wars knowledge, parts of which he posted online in 1997 as the "Star Wars Index". He also used his extensive knowledge to assist Steve Sansweet with fact-checking the Star Wars Encyclopedia, the first such work published shortly before the release of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Working for Lucasfilm
In January 2000 he was hired by Sansweet at Lucasfilm to build up StarWars.com, the official Star Wars website, as a resource for fans during the then-active filming and launch of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. He then served as Internet Content Manager for Lucas Online, the division of Lucasfilm responsible for maintaining StarWars.com, where he also published multiple comics until 2011. Even though Star Warscanon was not completely error-free at this point due to a previous lack of oversight and he was not in any official capacity employed to help maintain it, Hidalgo was already being consulted to ensure continuity during this time. In 2005, he had a non-speaking cameo role in as a patron of the opera Chancellor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker visit.
Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm
After Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, he approached Kathleen Kennedy about making his consulting role official which led to the creation of the Lucasfilm Story Group, a group of Star Wars experts tasked with maintaining the canon of the franchise after its partial reboot in 2014. Their duties range from fact-checking dialogue, e.g. whether a certain character would really say a certain line or whether it makes sense in the universe's context, to keeping track of names and locations of planets as well as naming unnamed planets, characters and other entities as well as coordinating all stories in development. Sometimes called the Yoda of Lucasfilm or "the Indiana Jones of Star Wars", his insider knowledge of Star Wars canon is used by multiple sources to confirm or deny rumors about certain characters, locations or events within the fictional universe. J.J. Abrams admitted that during the production of he often e-mailed Hidalgo up to three times a day asking him questions about details about the franchise's universe.
Partial bibliography
Hidalgo is the author of several official reference and guide books about the Star Wars franchise as well as the G.I. Joe and Transformers franchises.
