The second issue of Marvel’s Kylo Ren origin comic, Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #2, hit store shelves yesterday, telling the story of Luke Skywalker’s first encounter with the Knights of Ren alongside a young Ben Solo and Max von Sydow’s Lor San Tekka character from The Force Awakens. The trio are busy hunting down Jedi artifacts in a remote part of the Outer Rim called the unknown regions, years before Ben’s fall to the dark side. It’s an exciting adventure that throws some bones to fans who wanted the sequel trilogy to feature a more classical take on Luke, featuring the Jedi Master showing off overwhelming power in his fight with the Knights, as well as a few clever tricks that hint at how he’s grown. But hidden alongside the comic’s pages is a key phrase that hints at what might be coming next for Star Wars movies: the “High Republic era.”
A few days before the comic’s release, on January 4, Star Wars enthusiast blog MakingStarWars.net posted a blog article claiming to have insider knowledge on the next Star Wars movie saga. Making Star Wars is known for accurate leaks, although up to this point, the post had no proof aside from claiming to have “informants” inside Hollywood. However, with the release of the new Kylo Ren comic, the post bears examination.
Early on in the comic’s story, Lor San Tekka and Luke are talking about the distant Jedi artifacts they’re tracking down, with Luke telling Tekka that he didn’t expect the Jedi to have a presence so far from the Galaxy’s inner core. Tekka tells Luke that the artifacts are probably from the “High Republic era,” which he explains as a “time of greatly expanded Jedi activity throughout the Galaxy.”
This is important for two reasons. The first is that, aside from a brief mention in the canon audiobook Dooku: Lost Jedi, this High Republic era is an entirely new addition to Star Wars lore. The second is that the High Republic era is exactly what Making Star Wars’ recent blog post focuses on.
In the post, Making Star Wars Editor-in-Chief Jason Ward claims that the next series of Star Wars films will be set in this High Republic era, which takes place roughly 400 years before The Phantom Menace. This would be a little over half a century after Darth Bane had established the Sith’s “Rule of Two,” and thousands of years after the era explored in the quasi-canon Knights of the Old Republic video game (I say quasi-canon because the Rise of Skywalker’s Visual Dictionary establishes the game’s Darth Revan as the namesake for a legion of Sith Troopers). Also, according to Ward, Yoda is still a Jedi during this era, though not the old master we’ve come to know in the Skywalker Saga.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Ward claims that the upcoming films set in the High Republic era would not be a trilogy, but would rather take on a more MCU-like structure where they tell different individual stories that happen to interconnect and build up to a larger whole. He also claims that the High Republic will feature in a video game to be released as part of “Project Luminous,” a multimedia Star Wars side story initiative officially announced last year. Further, he adds that “For some time, I have heard that Project Luminous was a build up” to this new film era.
While we would not normally report on an unsubstantiated rumor, the use of the previously almost unheard of “High Republic” term twice in such succession, one from an unofficial source and one straight from Star Wars canon, certainly lends the leak more credibility. While the Old Republic era, prequel era, original trilogy era, and sequel trilogy era are all well documented at this point, the High Republic is a new invention that’s only previous mention is an offhand reference in a relatively obscure audiobook released last October. For Making Star Wars to even know the term, let alone post about it so soon before its second official mention, is impressive. Additionally, Ward’s post also mentions that some High Republic films might focus on the Jedi exploring the “unknown regions” mentioned in the Kylo Ren comic. While the unknown regions is not a new concept in Star Wars, stretching back to even the old EU, its mention as a subject of High Republic interest in both Ward’s post and in the comic is noteworthy as well.
Ward’s post concludes by asserting that the first film set in the High Republic era was the mysterious 2022 Star Wars project Game of Thrones’ D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were attached to prior to backing out for a more lucrative deal, and that the current working idea of the High Republic aesthetic would then likely match Weiss and Benioffs’ idea of what the Republic would look like. He states that he doesn’t know what characters the series is set to feature yet, but that despite being an era of Jedi prosperity, it would focus on both Jedi and non-Jedi heroes.
While it’s still wise to take Ward’s post with a grain of salt, it’s cool to see the existence of some kind of Republic golden age confirmed in this Kylo Ren comic. We’ve, uh, we’ve only ever seen it falling apart. As someone who’s recently been replaying KOTOR 2, I’m curious to see what Disney has planned for this middle era in the Star Wars timeline. We already have old Yoda. We already have Baby Yoda. But who’s ready for a ripped new young Yoda?
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