Whill

The Whill are a race of omnipresent beings who are in fact the species that the Star Wars saga is being told to, by the droid R2-D2.

Speculation

 * Rumors exist that postulate that the Jedi masters Yoda, Yaddle, and Vandar Tokare may in fact be Whills; currently, they are officially designated as belonging to a "mysterious species".
 * Another rumour is that the Whills are spotted in Episode I in the Senate Rotunda. The creatures are of the same species as E.T. the extra terrestrial from the film of that name.

Trivia

 * According to George Lucas: "Originally, I was trying to have the story be told by somebody else (an immortal being known as a Whill); there was somebody watching this whole story and recording it, somebody probably wiser than the mortal players in the actual events. I eventually dropped this idea, and the concepts behind the Whills turned into the Force. But the Whills became part of this massive amount of notes, quotes, background information that I used for the scripts; the stories were actually taken from the Journal of the Whills."
 * In the book The Making of Revenge of the Sith, it was finally revealed that the Whills are still a part of the Star Wars Saga canon, as mentioned above. Because of this information, it is in fact R2-D2 who is the central character in the series, not Anakin Skywalker as most would speculate.
 * R2-D2's relating the story to the Whills explains away the "a long time ago" setting that precedes each film and several of the games.
 * In the book Star Wars, the events preceding the book itself are from the "Journal of the Whills".
 * Science fiction writer Algis Budris, writing in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in 1981, jokingly referred to the closing medals ceremony scene in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) as "The Triumph of the Whills" - implying that the scene resembled Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 documentary, Triumph of the Will, a propaganda film which depicted the Nuremberg rallies.
 * In the novelization of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, there was a passing reference to a Shaman of the Order of the Whills, confirming their existence, although the capacity of which is arguable.