Since the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Chuck Wendig has been working to explore the post-Return of the Jedi era with his Aftermath trilogy. During the Star Wars publishing panel at San Diego Comic-Con, he dropped a few cryptic hints as to what we can expect in the trilogy's final installment, Aftermath: Empire’s End, and how it ties into the new films.

During the panel, Wendig told con-goers that the first draft of Aftermath: Empire’s End has been turned in to his editors, and that the book will tie into the new film trilogy in a big way by featuring the Battle of Jakku.

"Jakku figures in considerably," Wendig noted, "The Empire figures in considerably. The end of Life Debt has some pretty galaxy shuddering things. So Empire’s End is definitely about shaking all that stuff out and getting into the consequences."

Wendig's Aftermath trilogy is part of the new continuity that the Star Wars Story Group has been setting up in place of the franchise’s Expanded Universe. It’s no small task: Wendig is helping to filling in a now vacated three-decade gap that leads to The Force Awakens. The battle has already been featured in Star Wars: Battlefront, and is the cause for the crashed Star Destroyer on Jakku that figured prominently in the first act of The Force Awakens.

Following Disney's acquisition of the franchise, Lucasfilm has completely rebooted the story of Star Wars, eliminating the long-running Expanded Universe (now published as Star Wars: Legends), which allowed filmmakers to approach The Force Awakens with a clean slate. Now, with the new Star Wars trilogy and standalone films such as Rogue One coming, the Story Group has been making sure that each new novel, game and comic will fit into the larger continuity of the franchise.

Aftermath: Empire’s End is scheduled to come out on January 31st, 2017. The latest installment of the trilogy Aftermath: Life Debt, arrived in bookstores on July 12th.