Star Wars: The High Republic Is Looking Very Interesting
Let’s talk about the latest news about Star Wars’ High Republic Era.
It’s been a while since we’ve last talked about the High Republic Era and took a look at the new Jedi. Since then we’ve gotten a trickle of news out giving us more details of the period and events. For those unfamiliar with it, the High Republic is a new era of Star Wars set roughly 200 years before Episode I and showing the Republic, and the Jedi, at their height. It’s currently a publishing project spread across books, comics, and audiobooks, but there are hints it could grow to more. Today lets take a look at two new things we’ve learned about the Era.
A New Jedi Master
After our last article talking about Jedi in the High Republic we got a look over at Starwar.com at yet another new Jedi. Sskeer isn’t the first Trandoshan Jedi we’ve seen, I’ll admit to loving all the ones we’ve met so far, so I’m excited to see him join the gang. He’s set to appear in the comics for now and is said to play a major role. The writers describe him as:
” A gruff, opinionated Trandoshan who has been around the block more times than he cares to remember. Loyal, but brutally honest, you can always be sure Sskeer will tell you exactly what’s on his mind…or so Avar Kriss and his fellow Jedi think.”
Seems like a cool dude, and I dig his design. Notice that he even has a lightsaber holster rather than just hanging it on his belt. He’s also got some kind of terrible dark secret ™ that seems to be tearing him apart. I’m sure this will be a source of much drama. We also know that one of the other featured Jedi is Burryaga Agaburry, a Wookiee, and given the history between Wookies and Trandoshans, I’m sure they will be best friends.
***Spoilers For The High Republic and Light of The Jedi ahead***
The Great Disaster
The Great Disaster is the inciting incident for the High Republic story. It was billed as some kind of massive hyperspace accident that required the Jedi to mobilize for. Over on IGN they previewed the first chapter of the upcoming novel Light of the Jedi and thanks to the author spread more, ahem, light on the subject of the disaster.
Basically what happens is that a freighter mysteriously breaks up while in hyperspace. While this seems like an innocent accident I’m betting it’s not. This accident causes bits of the ship to spread all across hyperspace and apparently they will just randomly fly out of hyperspace at random places and times to cause mass destruction across the galaxy. Think of the Last Jedi’s Holdo Maneuver, but random and widespread. You can imagine the damage this would cause. In order to deal with this crisis the Jedi Order is ordered to help… and yes they do want fries with that order. 
I’m going to admit that I’m a little on the fence about this incident. It does seem kind of cool, and certainly large scale. On the other hand it, like the Holdo Maneuver, breaks a lot of what we knew or used to know, about hyperspace. It also kind of stretches by suspension of disbelief that something like this hasn’t happened before, in fact, it seems like it would be pretty common, given that everyone and their uncle can get a hyperspace capable ship, you’d think there’d be more such accident. Heck, I’m pretty sure in canon we’ve seen ships get destroyed in hyperspace. I’m also not really clear why this is something that needs to the Jedi to deal with. If it’s viewed as an accident that it seems like you just need whatever the Republic’s version of FEMA is. Still, I’m willing to give it all the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays out.
Let us know how you feel about these new developments, down in the comments!
