After a year of waiting, the secretive Project Luminous was revealed as The High Republic, a giant publishing initiative which would span different mediums and tell one big, connected story set some 200 years before The Phantom Menace. Even after a delay due to COVID-19, the hype for the era was real, and its opening salvo brought the new era to vivid and exciting life, fulfilling the promise of something new and different. By the end of Phase 1, almost a year and a half later, fan reaction could best be summed up to how the luminous codename for The High Republic turned into a loving nickname for the authors, and even in the months since it closed in March 2022, it’s clear the era has sparked its own part of the fanbase, filling up a Celebration panel about the upcoming Phase II even. Before the next Phase of the era starts, Chris and I (with some help from other fans), decided to look back at the initiative so far and the opening Phase, digging into what we enjoyed, had issues with, and found could be improved as the era continues, so head below for our big retrospective!

With a total of three Phases, there is still quite a lot of The High Republic to come, with the second Phase only beginning October 4, 2022, so we’re probably a few years from it being completed at this point. With that in mind, our retrospective has only the opening Phase to reflect on and base our hopes and concerns for what’s to come on, so the luminous authors of Cavan Scott, Justina Ireland, Charles Soule, Daniel José Older, and Claudia Gray (a list which has grown for Phase II!) have plenty of time to adjust course or find different focuses, but for now Phase I paints a full enough picture to look back on and see the initiative’s strengthens and weaknesses. As this is already a long enough article, without further ado, let’s get into it:

What We Liked About It

Diversity in writers, characters, releases, age ranges (Chris): Have you ever tried to have the same meal every night for a week? Maybe you’re a meal prepper, maybe you’re just really into a certain dish for a while, but you just can’t stop eating it? And then, after a while, it still tastes good, but it starts to get a little…bland? I think Star Wars was starting to feel that way a little bit to me. Everything started to feel like it was written by the same people, to the same audience, featuring the same material, and the same stories, and the same characters, and the same aesthetics.
Thank the Maker, then, for the Luminous crew. It was nice seeing a crew come together that had a few more women and people of color than we’re used to seeing on a Star Wars project, huh? This, I think, opened up the era to a different level of possibility than we’ve seen before. Needless to say, we know that a person’s social standing, gender, sex, race, and more can influence the stories they tell, and the characters they create and the things that they focus on, so having this diversity really brought a fresh amount of life into the project. But it wasn’t just that they had different identities, but also different writing strengths. Soule has a background of legal cases and prose novels; Cavan worked well on franchise tie-ins before; Justina with historical fiction; Older with his blend of fantasy, sci-fi, and cultural work, including music!; and Claudia in romance and young adult books. Of course, these don’t sum up the only thing these authors brought to the table, but they do speak to the variety of material we’d get in the Phase. Being able to have manga and adult novels and short stories really brought a lot to the project, so I’m very happy to see it.

The Jedi (Chris): Star Wars is the most unique when it’s dealing specifically with the Jedi. I think a lot of people believe that, but might not feel like it’s the case. But I love Star Wars when it leans into what makes it unique. Stories about bounty hunters or mercenaries or rebels can be fun, but the Jedi are, IMO, what makes the franchise uniquely the franchise. And I love that the movies focused a lot on the Jedi, but it seems to make ancillary material move away from them. The High Republic comes back to them in spades. THR brings in so many unique Jedi, from potentially-too-young-Knights to lost-in-their-pants-warriors to ex-Jedi-now-monster-hunters. And they’re allowed to be heroes. I think some people get too enamored showing that the Prequel Jedi were right and forget to show how they are still heroes. But from moments like banding together to save Hetzal, or blowing away a thick cloud of poisonous gas, or even saving medical towers and pilots, the Jedi of the High Republic are a huge high point for me.

Right Bait on the Right Hook (Ryan): A lot lived or died with the strength of the opening wave of content, especially the adult novel from Del Rey, Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, but so too with the first issue of Cavan Scott and Ario Anindito’s The High Republic comic and Justina Ireland’s A Test of Courage mid-grade novel. Beyond just introducing us to the era, from how the Jedi operated, the Republic was expanding its reach across the galaxy, the Outer Rim’s response, and bringing the troubles of the Nihil to the forefront, these opening salvos needed to both give us characters to connect with, love, ponder over, or downright hate, but also provide a hook worth coming back to see unfold across the rest of the publishing initiative. Not only did Light of the Jedi have that all in spades, the other books and comics did as well, and in the months after they maintained an intriguing story, relatable and exciting new characters, and a unique mystery to unravel in Marchion Ro (including the mystery of how you pronounce it) and his sinister plans.

There were shocking and exciting moments in every medium telling stories, from the all-ages comics with IDW by Daniel José Older (Takodana and its various protectors serving the Nihil some whoop-ass) or Marvel’s fare (Avar, Lourna Dee, and Keeve duking it out on an exploding ship), the young adult or middle grade aimed books, and of course the adult novels (The Rising Storm’s ending haunts me to this day!), making sure each piece felt important to whole. Sometimes it was in smaller ways, or more about character growth than moving the story (like Tempest Runner’s exploration of Lourna Dee dealing with the changes in the Nihil and their battle with the Republic/Jedi or the wonderful and healing Bake-Off issue of THRA), but even these felt vital to breathe extra life into the era considering how little extra room there was to do so in its structured three waves. It’s led to a large fandom online, given shape in its showing at Celebration Anaheim for the panel and subsequent cosplay event, and the excitement it seems to drive across said fandom as it weaved through its first three waves and now the subsequent build into the next phase speaks a lot to its lasting impressions. Phase II’s trip to the past, 150 years before the start of Phase I, seems like a bold move (even though Star Wars always likes to start in the middle with its stories), but the pieces we’re seeing from it suggest we’ll get important backstory that’ll propel us into Phase III. Regardless, Phase I has definitely built out an era worth exploring and one fans want to come back to, be it the characters, its events, and as we’ll talk about later, the increase in representation.

Answering Questions and Building Eras (Ryan): I’ll level some complaints on the structure and pacing, and so will Chris in his parts, but despite all the content within pushing the story forward and not really taking a moment to rest in the era, I felt like the overall breath of stories gave a pretty well-rounded, large-scale feel of the era we’re in. The Chancellor Lina Soh and her Great Works details the peace and prosperity of the time, considering she can focus their efforts on such lofty ambitions, while a few Senator and advisor characters give us varying viewpoints on the Republic’s expansion and plans; the Hutts playing behind-the-scenes games gives us context for familiar threats to a corruption-free galaxy; the Jedi Order’s more accepting tone and expansion outreach throughout the galaxy with satellite temples speak to a more hands-on approach; the lack of Sith and their machinations show the folly of these Jedi come from their own actions and not someone pulling the strings; the response of the galaxy to the calamity at Hetzal shows the unified spirit of the Republic; while spending time with the Nihil reveals it might not be as kismet-filled as everyone would like to think. We haven’t had much time to settle into the era beyond the main story, but there’s more than enough content here to see how different this era is from what we already know; it’s enough to feel different yet familiar. Plus, it’s opened up a unique time-frame and tons of potential for future stories to weave through it, the places we are left with unknowns or questions fertile ground.

I also felt like the big question poised by the team to create this era, “What scares a Jedi?” and its potential answer, the Nameless, have tons of potential for Phase III and the mystery behind them is compelling enough for a jump backwards in Phase II to learn the answers. It did feel like it was a slow-burn on actually revealing the Nameless themselves, too slow at times, as well as when the Jedi figure it out (far too late for them to do anything about it at the moment, of course), but it’s a compelling answer to the big question. Animals, living things, that essentially feed off the Force, reducing Jedi to husks, is a truly terrifying idea, while the big reveal of their abilities left us all shocked during the end of The Rising Storm (it still sends shivers down my spine thinking about the scene). But was this reveal, their abilities and threat to the Jedi, too little, too late in the story? Maybe, but the idea they are out there, the Jedi have no idea what to do about them, besides maybe Yoda after he returned from his forced vacation (imagine all the vacation days he has rolled over throughout the centuries), and so much of the galaxy is in disarray and many Jedi are missing or presumed dead certainly makes up for any Nameless questions because our focus has mainly been on these characters and they are all left on intriguing, frightening, or mystery-laden cliffhangers that won’t be resolved for some time. Regardless, the Nameless themselves, and how we’re about to explore the history behind them, and later see how the Jedi deal with them while becoming the ones we know in the prequel era, is enough to keep me hooked and less worried about whether the lingering questions will live up to theories or the time it takes to provide those answers; with this team, even before the new writers joined, I do believe any answers they dream up will be worth the wait.

The Politics! (Chris): Recently, I sat down to watch a little bit of The Phantom Menace. As soon as the crawl started, I was reminded the movie is extraordinarily upfront about its political messaging. Really, if you were unfamiliar with the franchise as a whole, and this was your first movie, you’d think you were about to watch a political thriller, not an action-fantasy romp! The history of the franchise has been overly political. Contrary to what some YouTubers might say, Star Wars has been a political franchise since its inception. In A New Hope, the greatest threat to the Emperor’s power wasn’t, at the time, a Jedi or a hero, but the Imperial Senate. Return of the Jedi allegorized the war in Vietnam. Attack of the Clones dealt with militarization (and its spin-off cartoon focused on debt ceilings!)

Unfortunately, as we’ve moved away from the first six films, it feels as if we’ve lost that same political edge. The Sequel Trilogy opened with the trappings of the Original Trilogy’s political aims and ideals, but simply reskinned, and didn’t have a ton to say about the political aspect except “First Order Bad”. By the time the trilogy ended, it shifted away from the political bodies that made up the Resistance-First Order War and reimagined the entire Saga as focusing on the battle between the Jedi and the Sith. Thankfully, some stories still tell political tales, but most of the time, they feel divorced from the Senate and the government bodies, instead using more symbolic allegories or talking *about* politics without involving politics.

I was refreshed by seeing how political The High Republic really could be. One of the main characters in the first book, Lina Soh, is the Chancellor of the Republic, and her office is the defining feature of the era. Lina Soh is directly designed on American history, suggesting a golden age for the galaxy based on so-called Great Works. Other prominent Senators feature in the book, like Senator Noor, the overseer of Outer Rim economics, who provides a foil to Chancellor Soh in trying to advocate for a people group he does not believe she represents. A major player in The Rising Storm is Tia Toon, who argues about the role of Jedi in battles and Republic business. Not since Attack of the Clones have we seen such major debates about the role of the Republic and a military. Though we don’t see many events taking place within the Senate Chambers, we see many political meetings in offices or via holo-call. The second issue of the Eye of the Storm duology takes place in Soh’s office, as many political leaders deal with the fallout of the destruction of Starlight Beacon and learn about the final stage of Marchion Ro’s plan.

In-Between

Marchion Ro (Chris): I argued, briefly, above that the Jedi are what makes Star Wars, well, Star Wars. While that may be true for me as a die-hard fan, I wonder if that’s true for the casual fan. I wonder if the casual fan doesn’t think about Star Wars as more about a certain Dark Lord. One of the things that I saw frequently commented on by casual fans in discussing Obi-Wan Kenobi was how it made Vader scary again. A lot of times, an iconic villain is the key to making a lasting impression on audiences.

And, at first, I thought Marchion Ro was going to be that villain. He’s ruthless and smart, driving plots forward that cull his own forces to rid himself of rivals, while also driving plans that bring him closer to his goals. He commands armies with force, and can cripple planets and governments. He can even plan to bring down the ultimate symbol of the Jedi and the Republic: Starlight Beacon. On the face of it, Marchion had all of the makings of an incredible villain.

But this is where I note that I said “on the face of it,” because as time has gone on, I’ve felt like we needed to see more of what drives Marchion. A two-part Marvel series, Eye of the Storm, purported to tell us more about the villain, which, to be fair, it did. We learned of his family’s backstory, his relationship with his father and grandmother, but I don’t know if we know enough about him and what drives him. We’ve seen the circumstances that have shaped him, but I’m not sure I could definitively say we know him well enough. I would’ve loved to have had more in his brain at the end of Phase I to go into Phase III with.

Lost in the Middle (Ryan): Throughout The High Republic’s many stories, plenty of everyday citizens of the galaxy get caught up in the Nihil’s many nefarious plans and ideas, be it collaborating with them, helping out the Jedi, or just trying to survive at whatever cost. Ones like Avon Starros or Syl Yarrow are among my top favorite characters in the era overall, alongside the many Jedi characters that populate the material, and even Lourna Dee of the Nihil is someone I’ve come to really enjoy. Overwhelmingly, the materials follow Jedi characters, meaning we mainly get their point of view on events, otherwise it’s that of the Nihil, leaving the larger galaxy and their reaction to events often unsaid. Even the characters who aren’t in those two camps, whether they work for the Republic, journalists, or young scientists, while help give some perspective, can’t account for a bigger view of the galaxy. The young Avon Starros, trying to make synthetic kyber and whose mother is a Senator (with a dark secret) doesn’t give us much in the way of the galaxy’s general feelings with her laser focus on solving personal mystery and scientific endeavors, as she’s not in touch with the galaxy’s feelings about the larger conflict; Sly Yarrow’s attempts to survive credit by credit, pulled into the machinations of families playing behind the scenes games with the big factions, only provides a glimpse of the little people in the galaxy when visiting Jordanna Sparkburn and how she’s dealing as Marshal on a frontier world, but that’s an isolated case; however, the reporter Rhil Dairo, her feelings on the unfolding chaos at the Republic Fair, while is what brings the attack and its atrocities to the galaxy, doesn’t tell us how or show how various worlds react (worlds coming to aide does a little); the threat of the Drengir doesn’t hold as much weight when it’s only transmissions from nameless/faceless beings that show us the trouble they are causing outside the sphere of what we’re seeing; or the destruction of Starlight Beacon and the effects it has not just on the visionary aspect of its symbolism going down, but those who worked there or relied on it doesn’t come across at all, making it feel simply like a symbol fell, not something totally vital to others (though it helps if you’ve read the Star Wars Insider short stories, but not enough). Phase II looks to incorporate more non-Jedi in the sense of the Pathfinder teams including Republic grunts alongside the Jedi or exploring the Path of the Open Hand, among other aspects, so I hope the return to the “present” in Phase III will continue the potential in Phase II’s trend and help flesh out these events and give them greater context throughout the galaxy.

Cost of Entry (Ryan): If readers wanted to stay current on THR’s story, the costs of buying all the content across different mediums and publishers really added up. We talk more later on how we’d want the publishing initiative to slow down and release more to explore the era in a fuller manner, but talking about its overall costs now sort of cuts into that argument, as more content means more money. I’m assuming this is partly why the initiative was conceived the way it was, to not drive up the cost of entry terribly high. In fact, there’s the argument ,which even Lucasfilm and the authors have made, you can read just the main Del Rey novels and still get the gist of everything (which is mostly true, you’ll just feel left out on certain things/not as connected to certain characters), leaving how much you want to engage with the era beyond that is up to you (like all the beautiful variant covers by Out of Print for those novels). And if you don’t mind not staying up-to-date, either since you’re not really online much or interacting too much with the community around the stories, libraries are a valid alternative to catching up with the story at your pace and leisure for a much smaller price: free. When considering entry into this era, you’ll have to take your personal preferences into account, as while I can tell you how important it is to read every bit of content and how much depth it brings to the era, its characters, and the story until the heat death of the universe, at the end of the day, all that matters to you might be the core of the story (like the Del Rey novels) or exploration of a few more items, so it’ll be up to you to make the call on how much you engage with. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize your costs while each piece of content contributes something to the story, be it characters or pushing the era forward, so whatever level you dig into will be worth it.

Dreading Drengir (Ryan): I loved the idea of the Drengir and the hints at their deep history even more intriguing, but it certainly felt like they came and went as a threat pretty quickly. They were a distraction by the Nihil, to spread the Jedi thin and increase the chaos of their attack at the Republic Fair, so to be fair they weren’t the meat of the story (see what I did there?), but even their distraction was background noise in most of the stories that followed their introduction. In fact, while the Marvel comic is where they are finally dealt with, the calls of help from across the galaxy due to the actions of the Drengir heard in the background of a few panels in one issue is about as far as we go into exploring their blight across the stars. As important as show, don’t tell is, it’s hard to really give the Drengir the full focus considering the pace of the story and avoiding bloat, but it still felt like they were mostly underserved as villains. What they and their actions mean for certain characters, like Avar Kriss’ hero complex, Keeve Trennis’ ability to fill in the shoes of her heroes, or Sskeer and his dwindling connection to the Force/relationship with his Apprentice, is far more important anyways, essentially making them a means to an end to help develop and push these characters through the ringer. We can’t expect everything to have its fair share in the spotlight, especially plant-based villains, but it doesn’t mean they should be so quickly discarded. As Chris will point out as well in his Drengir section, the Life Day one-shot has a little tease the Drengir might terrorize the galaxy again.

Interconnectivity – hit and miss (Chris): Earlier in this article, I praised The High Republic for how much weight each story really felt like it carried. It’s really nice knowing that the $10 you spent on the recent issue of Star Wars Insider really is going to carry you into the next story, and doesn’t stand as filler in the magazine. But as you may have noticed, I’ve noted the cost of each issue at least twice now. I think this is where you can really fall into trouble with The High Republic: cost and connectivity. I will note that, in part, this section may be two fuller sections, but I think talking about these issues together helps elucidate one of the mixed aspects of the era.As the initiative drove forward, I kept hearing podcasters, the creative teams, and bloggers say that you really don’t have to read the entirety of The High Republic to really understand what’s going on in the series. It seems to me that a real staple of the modern storytelling franchise is that accessibility is the main selling point of any series. By this, I mean that people selling stories want you to know that you can pick up their latest releases without reading any other novel or having prior knowledge of that franchise. And, in a lot of ways, this is super important. Not everyone can afford to read everything with Star Wars printed on the cover – some may have less access to audiobooks, libraries, and eBooks than even I can imagine, so free options can still woefully under serve some readers. But I’m not sure that’s the case with The High Republic, really.

For example, people say that you can pick up The Rising Storm without having read Light of the Jedi. In some respects, this feels true: the novel picks up in the middle of a time of peace, noting prior events but not really looking at the immediate aftereffects of the events of the book. Instead, it comes a full year later. You could argue that the previous books are unnecessary to understand the book, and that may be true. But as the series went on, this seemed to become less and less true. Tempest Runner, the audiodrama that takes place between TRS and The Fallen Star, sets up a new status quo for the Nihil, one that’s reflected as reality in the next comics and books, but isn’t explained again. If you want to know why things are the way they are, you’ll have to go listen or read.

Another connectivity issue – one that I could see people argue both for and against – is the fact that stories are told across publishing mediums. What I mean is that if you want to follow the story of Vernestra Rwoh, but want to focus on the more important aspects and not just cameo appearances, you’ll need to read the middle grade book she appears in, then the second young adult novel of the three, returning to the middle grade readers for the third story in her arc. If you wanted to read about Ram Jamoram’s story, you’ll go from the second middle grade reader in the series to the third arc of the all-ages The High Republic Adventures comic series, finishing in the third young adult novel of the series. For those who don’t exist perpetually online, this could become too hard to follow, either asking them to become more chronically online or start to buy everything anyway.

Either way, that’s all going to start to add up. If you factor in the cost of, at MSRP, three adult novels ($28), three young adult novels ($17), three middle grade books ($10), three kids’ books ($5), about 35 comic books ($4), the audio drama and/or novel ($20/28), the manga ($15), and the eight Insider short stories ($10), the total really starts to build up. For a lot of people, Star Wars is already a pick and choose franchise, and I think the series can really support that for a while. You don’t need to read The Princess and the Scoundrel to follow the Han Solo & Chewbacca mini-series. But to get the entire story within a story of THR, you’re gonna cough up some change.

And, you might say, that’s part of storytelling. You’ll always need to make some choices. And LFL is a business, so they want to encourage you to buy everything anyway. So, sure. It’s part and parcel of buying art in capitalism. But I think there are ways to alleviate some of these costs, if we’re letting my imagination run wild. My first thought would be that I would love to see one storyline carried out in one medium. Let’s use Phase I examples to reimagine what I mean. You could follow one character across all of the middle grade novels: imagine following Vernestra through the Steady Wing’s destruction, the Republic Fair, and Dalna only in the middle grade readers. You would miss her storyline in Out of the Shadows, but it would move more toward accessibility in both costs and readers’ abilities to keep up. Or, imagine if you only read about one event in the young adult novels: say, the development of the Gravity’s Heart. This way, you could cycle characters in and out, but you would know what you were looking at when you picked up a young adult novel. This would probably help sales, too, since you could call it something like Gravity’s Heart 2: Out of the Shadows. I know, these examples are becoming a little too esoteric, so maybe I could just do a tl;dr: streamlining the storytelling process between mediums or authors could both help people keep up, afford what they want to read, and may even be able to give us more space to build on previous works.

Speed (Chris): One of the most ironic mixed-critiques I have of the series, after talking about how much there is to read and purchase, is that I felt like the series has moved entirely too fast for my tastes. Despite the vast library of THR material, I think that some events moved too quickly, we didn’t get enough time with certain characters, and the climaxes to Phase I were undercut a little bit by having too little room to breathe. I’ll look at these in turn.

First, the speed at which events moved. If you think about the major events in the years 232-231 BBY, you might come up with The Great Disaster, The Republic Fair, the destruction of Starlight Beacon, and maybe the attack on Corellia. But if you look, you’ll see that the Great Disaster really featured in one novel, with the aftereffects in another; The Republic Fair is covered in two books; and the attack on Corellia in one book and part of a comic and manga. Each event is huge, and should have massive ramifications felt over the period of books and comics, and lots of material builds on these events having happened, but each is shelved in favor of the latest event that takes over the story. The Great Disaster is huge, throwing off the economics of the Outer Rim and causing lots of problems, but we never really see how these problems affect people’s day to day. We never see the ways that they are starving because of the imposed blockades. We never really get to see Valo after the destruction of the Fair. Maybe we’ll get back to those, but it felt like every event happened but so much was happening we can’t possibly stop and look back. I’d love future Phases to maybe tone down the number of events, looking instead at deepening fewer events.

Along with the speed at which we move from story to story, I think we start to see too much movement from character to character. While I love most of them, the cast of The High Republic is absolutely huge. It’s hard to keep up with everyone that we meet over the past 40 years of the franchise, let alone in a single past year. Some characters die in the course of the series after only featuring in one book or a few issues of a comic series, leaving their deaths meaning a little less than they could. One example, for me, is Orla Jareni. We know that Orla is an extremely interesting Jedi, and we do spend some time with her in Into the Dark and the Marvel comic series, but we’re more told about her interesting stories than see them. We know she and Cohmac had history, as she did with Stellan Gios, but because there are so many Jedi to follow, we don’t get to see her as much as we could. Speaking of Cohmac, I felt like his climactic change at the end of Midnight Horizon was a bit abrupt. We do read about him in three different novels, but he is sidelined in the second (Out of the Darkness) and we don’t get into his mind much at all in the third (MH). In this case, we, the readers, are just as shocked as the characters in the story when he leaves the Jedi, but we are just as in the dark as to why he would.

Finally, I think the speed of the series served to undermine some of the climaxes of the series as well. When Avon Starros is in danger in Mission to Disaster, we only really know her from A Test of Courage and a few Insider short stories. Had we had some more time with her, I think we would’ve been more invested in her fate. Instead, the book hints more at what we can expect from Phase II than the characters (at times!), which took a lot of the tension out of the story. Similarly, by the time we got to The Fallen Star, we had not spent much time on Starlight Beacon to be terribly invested when it finally fell. If you had not read the Insider short stories, I’d be curious how much the destruction would’ve impacted readers at all.

While Phase II seems to be a shorter Phase, maybe with only two waves, the speed could still be addressed if the scope is whittled down a bit. Between six novels, an audiodrama, three comic series, and three major focuses (between Dalna, Jedha, and Eiram-E’ronoh), it might address this. Perhaps Phase III will focus on even fewer characters, fewer events, now that the story is really rolling.

What We Didn’t Like About It

Pace Left Certain Aspects in the Dust (Ryan): While THR started in January 2021 and finished in March 2022, that might sound like a decent chunk of time (and it is!), but when you consider there were over 60 items to read, it starts to sound like a lot for such a short time. There’s a lot of nuance to be had here regardless, as elongated releases surely could’ve help create breathing room for monthly releases like the comics, but considering how often those can get delayed these days, there’s a risk of pieces falling out place; a tight, compact story really forces the creatives to step up their game, which they delivered, but it can leave conflicts and character development feeling rushed or not as epic as hoped; dragging it out too long could lose attention and letting in non-story driving material would only muddy the already vast content coming, driving up costs for readers like we talked about earlier; and more. I wanted to bring that all up because it’s still fair to lobby this was done too quickly, too compressed, but juggling all the publishing parts to line up like this and crossover must’ve been a herculean feat so I get why it was done the way it was done. Still, it meant the threat of the Drengir was seemingly done before we really got to see the full terror they could inflict, characters like Orla Jareni had exciting potential for them skipped to service the story, The High Republic Adventures character pairings and the journeys they took between big events were left unfold. It looks like Phase II might be only two waves, so even shorter and less content, so I’m worried the same problem will crop up there too, but the shorter length could mean a tighter story…here’s hoping Phase III can find a better way to deliver its story, especially if it goes for three or more waves.

Drengir (Chris): With the first major reveal of The High Republic as The High Republic (and not as “Project Luminous”), we were posed a question: what scares the Jedi? As more material came out, the answer looked like it might have been “the Drengir”. The Drengir are sentient beings, plant-like in nature, who have some sort of deep connection with the Dark Side of the Force. They’re so powerful, it seems, even the Sith fear them, and it caused Darth Krall to lock them away with Sith idols rather than letting them roam free around the galaxy. Unfortunately, the Jedi didn’t get the memo, unleashing them on the galaxy again…

Well, for about a year, as far as we know. After their introduction in Into the Dark, the Drengir really didn’t register in a ton of places in the rest of the series. They served as the primary antagonists in the first arc of the Marvel series and the first volume of Edge of Balance, and arguably in Race to Crashpoint Tower, but then they took secondary roles in other stories, like THR Adventures and the introduction to The Rising Storm. Because the whole initiative is so crowded, it makes sense that there wouldn’t have been a ton of time to develop the villains outside of the series, but it felt like they underutilized the concept. That being said, however, the Life Day one-shot hints that we may not yet be done with the Drengir.

But even beyond how little it felt like they were featured, again as probably the side effect of being newly created for a crowded initiative, it felt like there wasn’t a ton of unique elements to them. Aside from being botanical in nature, in a lot of ways, it felt like they could’ve been swapped out for other monstrous terrors. It’s hard to say what’s unique about sentient monsters with some connection to the Force that you could ONLY say about the Drengir. For example, I feel like I could replace the Drengir with pretty much any species that speaks Basic, has some sort of vague Force connection, and is hard to kill. In a lot of ways, the innovation of the Great Progenitor made them feel more like insects than they felt like plants. If the Drengir do return for Phase III, or if someone makes allowances for them to appear in maybe more “current” Star Wars stories, I’d love to see them expanded a little bit.

Or, in my wildest dreams, imagine Yuuzhan Vong terraforming with Drengir. Okay.

Incomplete Storylines and Hanging Threads (Chris): As Phase I, Wave III began to close, it felt natural that a lot of the series would begin to wrap stuff up as they opened the door to a few new stories that could come in (what we thought then would be) Phase II. Some stories that were set up before Wave 3, like the attack on Corellia, were wrapped up, and we saw closure to certain elements of the series, too. But one thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was that a lot of stories ended with way too much open-endedness. For example, I’ve compiled a list below of characters with open storylines. Specifically, they are open because, last we saw them, they were in dangerous and life-threatening situations, but the story just….left them hanging.

Now, to be fair, there are a lot of hanging threads in the Star Wars universe. As of the publication of this article, the future fates of Thane Kyrell and Cienna Ree are still up in the air a little bit. This is somewhat natural in a franchise that could set a story literally anywhere in a 25,000 year window. But I think in structuring the THR stories in phases, we should have expected to see fewer hanging threads like this. One counter to putting this aspect of the story into the “bad” category is the idea that cliffhangers are a natural part of storytelling. And I do agree with that. The end of Lost Stars is sort of a cliffhanger. But the way that THR left a lot of these characters hanging felt more like it was a forgotten thread than a cliffhanger. With a cliffhanger, I feel like we go into the next story in the series with the expectation that we will, more or less, pick up exactly where we left off in the previous story. If someone is literally hanging off a cliff, we’re going to open the next “episode” with the character still on the cliff. I don’t see how there’s room for that with Phase III stories. For example, in Trail of Shadows, Torban Buck and Q’ort’s storylines are left open: did they survive their fight against the Nameless? Well, we probably will learn, but not in the way we’d like, since Starlight exploded. Will the first story of Phase III go back to the moment Torban left Emerick? Maybe, but it seems more likely that we’ll catch up with a lot of the characters later in the timeline than revisit them here.

As I’m writing this down, I think (and this could be limited imagination) that this style of storytelling leaves too much open room for anti-climactic resolutions. If these characters really did just die off-screen when they were left, it seems like we would’ve gained more by seeing them die when the story originally sent them off. But if they’re simply alive when we come back, why the cliffhanger? It robbed the original story of some finality, and unless something major happens along the way before we revisit them again, I’d have rather seen that.

I think the thing that rubs me the most wrong way about all of these is that it left parts of their respective stories feeling unfinished. I’ll do two major examples. The first, from the Marvel comic series, is Ssskeer. As the comic unfolded, we learned that the Trandoshan Jedi Master was suffering from a disease that affected his connection with the Force. This left him as someone who was more than capable of fighting the Nameless, those who affected Force users. But by having him run off panel to meet whatever fate Cavan has for him, we never really get finality in his story with Keeve Trennis. I think it would be fairly anti-climactic if Phase III opened up exactly where the story left off, but I also don’t want to see a time jump, either – maybe this is a personal thing, but there’s a no-win situation leaving these stories hanging on too long. I would be disappointed if Sskeer is killed “off-screen”, but I don’t think it would make much sense to open the story by backing up a bit to show him getting killed. If it was followed up in the next issue, or at least in the next few months, it would be a little better for me. But taking a year or more off just robs the story of some that weight, in my opinion. The other one is the story of Lula Talisola and Zeen, one of the main driving character-focuses of both The High Republic Adventures and Midnight Horizon. The comic series focused on the characters as their love for one another grew, and MH opens on them realizing their feelings for one another. Really cool and really special! But the bummer is that the time that I felt most invested in their relationship was during MH, and we hear, off-screen, that Lula is heading into trouble. I’m sure I’ll be invested when their story rolls around again, but it felt like it took from MH to not address it there.

Top Five Moments

Chris:

“This is Jedi Master Avar Kriss. The Jedi are here to help.” – Light of the Jedi | Qort’s mask breaks – The High Republic Adventures #9–10 | Reath Silas – Midnight Horizon (yes, just the character) | Keeve Trennis stands up to Avar Kriss – THR #13 | Buckets of Blood and Kantam Sy bake – Great Galactic Bake-Off

Ryan:

Vernestra Rwoh receives a special Path from Mari San Tekka – Out of the Shadows | Keeve Trennis finds another way to end the Drengir blight beyond killing them – THR #8 | More like Loden Greathusk, am I right? (too soon?!) – The Rising Storm | The big opening disaster exhaustively taking up the beginning of Light of the Jedi | Zeen Mrala and Lula Talisola admit their feelings for one another…and then promptly never see each other again (at least for now!) – THRA/MH

After 2019, my (Chris) Star Wars fandom was in a bit of a rut. After a lackluster movie, and a lack of tie-in material I thought I was interested in, I was getting worried about how much longer I would find myself enjoying Star Wars. 2020 threw its own complicated wrench into the system, making it hard to enjoy, well, anything. But when I found my copy of Light of the Jedi early, something in me was reminded that there’s a lot of good and a lot of life left in the franchise.

I hope you got the impression when reading the above that the negatives, and even the mixed elements, of the era really didn’t outweigh the positives of the era. All of these critiques, I hope we proved, were done in love. As we discuss what we didn’t think worked in the era, we’re saying that it’s really too bad that some of these elements didn’t quite soar to the same highs that we had seen from other parts of the era. As we talked about the stuff that was mixed, we were really discussing the things that had a lot of potential, and hopefully, a lot of time to grow into the potential that we really see the subset of the franchise having.

Because, at the end of the day, we’re all just huge fans of The High Republic. We love having our hearts broken when our favorite character dies – and we have a lot of fun seeing our beloved characters walk into situations that they have no idea what they’re in for. We love the setting, and look forward to spending more time in the setting. We are happy to be along for the ride and for others to be on this ride with us – whether you’re reading in release or chronological order, whether you’re reading the parts you like or can afford, or whether you’re getting into the franchise with this material. I can say writing about THR, collecting the variant books and covers, and collecting the Insider stories was a huge highlight for me in 2021. Every time I saw that golden box, I was a little happier with the franchise and was reminded that there’s so much to look forward to. Every story with that golden box was an invitation to fun, adventure, excitement, emotions, and just…love. Love for the characters, for the franchise, for each other. The way that this era built an entire community of fans, from Porter Engle stans, those who call for Elzar’s concept art, to those who cosplayed our favorite green lizard Jedi, was truly remarkable in a time of great uncertainty and fear and pain in the real world.

So, having said our piece on the Phase I, we look forward to Phase II. We’re excited to see the way the little blue box of Phase II tickles our fancies and invites us into an even more unfamiliar world. That little blue box says The High Republic invites just as much wonder and excitement as the gold ones, and I know we’re all so excited for the ride.

So, here’s to Phase I and here’s to Phase II.

For light and life.

Chris is Mynock Manor’s Sous Chef. You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms. Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.

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