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A four minutes long trailer announced the arrival of the High Republic era to the Star Wars canon. Series of novels, children’s books and comic books will introduce new characters and events from the Star Wars universe set two centuries before the Skywalker Saga!

Catch up with all news of Star Wars: The High Republic

Disney and the official Star Wars YouTube channel released a four minutes long trailer to what they call “The High Republic”. This is an era previously unexplored by the new Disney canon.

“Later this year, Lucasfilm will launch an epic new era of Star Wars storytelling that will be explored through multiple voices in adult and young adult novels, children’s books, and comics from a variety of publishers including Disney Lucasfilm Press, Del Rey, IDW Publishing, and Marvel.” – The article on StarWars.com explains.

This is a brand new era for the Disney Star Wars canon. The first set of books and comics will arrive with this year’s Stat Wars Celebration in Anaheim.

Star Wars: The High Repuclic is the previously rumored “Project Luminous”. It will introduce many new events and stories all combined under the hood of one giant organization of best-selling Star Wars authors including Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel José Older, Cavan Scott, and Charles Soule.

The announcement trailer claims that these authors will collaborate together with complete freedom to create unique and memorable stories.

I have my doubts when it comes to freedom. Disney has never been known to allow much of freedom to the Star Wars authors. Episode 9 The Rise of Skywalker is a good example of how limited the freedom actually is.

“We are so excited to be opening up such a rich, fertile era for our authors to explore. We’ll get to see the Jedi in their prime.” – Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.

I am also not entirely optimistic about this collaboration delivering crossover stories. So far very few Star Wars authors dared to include characters from other sources (other books, comics) and if they did, those would be either side-lined, briefly appearing here and there just to claim the book is crossing over and borrowing from the massive Star Wars universe or it’s a movie character whose personality has already been established.

The events of Star Wars: The High Republic will be set two hundred years before the Skywalker Saga. This is the time when the Republic is at its peak with the valiant Jedi Knights guarding the peace and harmony.

A new threat emerges, the trailer reveals! What could it be? “Did you ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?” – the words that Sheev Palpatine (before he revealed himself as Darth Sidious) spoke to Anakin in Episode 3 come to mind!

Could this secret new threat be actually the new canon story of Sidious’ master?

I get the feeling that with the release of each new movie Disney is more and more afraid to explore the true Old Republic. The Expanded Universe, created during George Lucas’s rule was not perfect and towards the end we had so many events and heroes descriptions and stories clashing with each other from one source to another – be it books, comics, video games and so on.

We now have Star Wars The Old Republic, set thousands of years before the Skylwalker Saga. Despite the few hints that parts of SWTOR may actually become canon, the game generally continues to support the Expanded Universe from before Disney’s rule with the tons of lore from the earlier planets and missions the player receives.

Then we have the actual Skywalker Saga, which was finally completed with the ninth movie last December.

Few years ago Disney hinted that they prefer to look ahead, not go back. The High Republic is kind of the opposite of that, though.

The House of Mouse giant has finally decided to explore a past era, which is neither too far behind in the “Star Wars history books”, nor to close to the recent movies and TV Shows. This does create more than enough freedom and inspiration for the authors of the different books to show what they can do.

“This was a golden age for the Jedi, and also a time of galactic expansion in the Outer Rim. So expect there to be rich tales of exploration; charting out the galaxy, meeting new cultures, and discovering what pioneer life in the Outer Rim was like. This is an incredible sandbox for our storytellers to play in, both within publishing and beyond, and we can’t wait to see the great fiction they build within it.” – Lucasfilm vice president, franchise content and strategy James Waugh.

The first title from the Star Wars: The High Republic is “Light of the Jedi” and will be released in August 2020. By the way I would not be surprised if the next Star Wars Trilogy spawns from The High Republic.

The book will give a start to a series of interconnected events split and shared among different platforms in the months and even years to come. It will describe a massive disastrous event that will be further explained and explored by the various authors in several books.

The time frame in which the Light of the Jedi takes place is a golden age for the Republic and its noble guardians, stewards the peace and justice – the Jedi Knights.

The new era is a time of great expansion. The Republic doesn’t rule every planet. On the borders and edges of the known galaxy there would always be places and opportunities for smugglers, pirates and bounty hunters.

If the publishers are really given the freedom Disney claims to have given them, this is a great moment for Star Wars indeed. Plenty of new heroes (and hopefully villains) will arise!

The full list of titles known to be a part of The Hight Republic so far includes (links to Amazon for pricing checks and pre-orders):

Below you can see the full original covers for each title (source: starwars.com).

Now, come with me and meet the Jedi of The High Republic!