The New 'High Republic' Era Is The Clean Slate Star Wars Needed
The literary side of the Star Wars universe, which pumps out an endless stream of novels and comic books every year, will be stepping back 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace to tell a slew of stories authored by a brain trust of some of the franchise's best writers. What was once enigmatically called "Project Luminous" has now been officially revealed to be a whole new setting that Lucasfilm is calling it the High Republic era. It's a time when Jedi were plentiful, a good chunk of the galaxy hadn't yet been explored, and toxic fandom hadn't yet been invented.
It's a clean slate with no original trilogy characters that everyone has been emotionally invested in for 40+ years. They can tell brand-new stories and take their characters in bold directions without being sent death threats by white nationalist Youtubers who hate what "(((Disney)))" has done to their proud white savior Luke Skywalker. But don't be surprised if Yoda shows up, since he is 900 years old. He'll be the one bone Lucasfilm will throw at the toxic fandom so they can release their frustrations in a 50-part Twitter thread rant about how Disney screwed him up by parting his hair to the left and not the right as they had described in their 100,000-word handwritten Yoda fanfiction back in 2002.
This clean slate doesn't just apply to the heroes, but to the villains, too. At this point in the Star Wars timeline, the Sith aren't really a threat, since they were defeated once and for all (wink wink) centuries prior. The big bad of the era will be a Mad Max-ish group called the Nihl who live on the fringes of the known galaxy. Maybe it's this new mysterious faction of bad guys through which the brain trust of writers will attempt to answer the central question that they're building this entire new era of storytelling around: What scares the Jedi? Given what we've learned about them already, the answer is probably forethought, fresh ideas, and competence.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. And now you can listen to the first episode on Youtube!
