It’s a big day for Star Wars fans. Yes, a new episode of The Book of Boba Fett drops later this evening but there’s even more book news from a galaxy far, far away. The final chapter of phase one of Star Wars: The High Republic kicks off today in the form of Claudia Gray’s The Fallen Star, and now we know much more about phase two: “Quest of the Jedi.”
As announced on a special High Republic Show anniversary stream over on the Star Wars YouTube, phase two of the transmedia publishing initiative will be called “Quest of the Jedi,” and serve as a predecessor to the initial wave of High Republic stories. Tales told in “Quest of the Jedi” will be set 150 years “in the past,” in an homage to George Lucas’ decision to make Star Wars’ prequel trilogy in the wake of the original saga. It wasn’t said in the video itself if this means that the new phase is set 50 years after the events of phase 1, which was set 200 years before the Star Wars prequels, or if it’s set 150 years before phase 1, making it 350 years before the movies—but High Republic writer Daniel José Older teased on social media that is indeed even further back into the era’s past. Vague timelines aside, four new authors are also joining the team established in The High Republic’s first phase: Lydia Kang, Tessa Gratton, Zoraida Córdova, and George Mann.
But what about the authors who put together “Light of the Jedi?” We’re glad you asked. Cavan Scott is once again writing a new High Republic comic series for phase two, which will launch from Marvel Comics in October. Charles Soule will explore the backstory of legendary, mysterious Jedi Porter Engle—a long-living character first introduced in Soule’s novel Light of the Jedi—in “another Marvel project,” and the aforementioned Older will be writing an “all-ages original graphic novel” over at Dark Horse Comics, which we recently found out is making Star Wars comics again. There will, obviously, also be more adult, YA, and young reader novels to come as well, but most details beyond new comics for the phase are still being held back. One tiny morsel revealed today: Justina Ireland, who wrote phase one’s A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, and the new release Mission to Disaster, is co-writing the first YA novel of “Quest of the Jedi” with new addition, Tessa Gratton.
While fans might be a tad frustrated in the knowledge that the futures for all the characters they’ve come to know and love in The High Republic are going to be kept up in the air, we love the fact the series is just going deeper and deeper into Star Wars mythology. More building blocks, more history—and, frankly, while we want to see what’s next for the surviving High Republic characters coming out of the events of The Fallen Star and other new stories, furthering these adventures go into the “future” of The High Republic, the more likely it is they’ll intersect with known Star Wars canon. That might sound good—and we’re going to get a taste of it in the Disney+ series The Acolyte at some point, set at the tail end of the era—but the true joy of The High Republic is it being a space for Star Wars stories that largely live on their own, away from the mainline continuity of the movies, and it seems like phase two will be more of that.
“Quest of the Jedi” will begin in October 2022.
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