Why Lucasfilm decided the High Republic is the future of Star Wars
Why Lucasfilm decided the High Republic is the future of Star Wars
The Acolyte’s setting is the future of Star Wars, for better and worse
StarStar Wars doesn’t really have a future right now. The franchise itself does — it will keep getting new entries forever if Disney has anything to say about — but the story can’t escape the Skywalkers or imagine a future beyond the franchise’s most-featured family. In fact, most of the recent TV spinoffs, like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka, have just been filling in the gaps between the main movies. But with Disney Plus’ new show The Acolyte, Lucasfilm is finally venturing outside of the time period of the Skywalker Saga by letting us know that Star Wars’ true future is in the past: in a time known as the High Republic.
To understand why Lucasfilm is once again taking the franchise backward, it’s important to understand exactly what the High Republic is and where it started. The High Republic was first introduced to Star Wars canon in 2020 as a series of books. The books were designed to introduce fans to a new era in Star Wars history that had never been explored before, and to open the franchise up for more inventive stories in a time period that had a little more canonical freedom. Since then, there have been over 50 books, comics, and short stories written about the High Republic era, all tied together and telling different sides of one larger story about the time period. Despite all that, The Acolyte will be the first time the High Republic appears on screen.
...
Lucasfilm’s apprehension toward the future, like so many other Star Wars problems, is tied up in the creative finiteness of Disney’s sequel trilogy. Rather than taking a grand step into the larger future of the Star Wars universe, they were instead tightly stitched to the legacy of the movies that preceded them, sewing longtime stalwarts like Luke and Han into the very fabric of their story. Lucasfilm used its biggest platform in a decade to build a box around on-screen Star Wars stories that was only as big as the Skywalker family — and its members both real and imagined — taking a grand story and making it feel disappointingly small.
On top of that, while financially successful, the cultural memory and fondness for those movies is spotty at absolute best (and downright disastrous at worst). The dubious reception of these movies made moving the story forward after the trilogy feel like a creative risk that wasn’t worth taking. The series, therefore, had to turn in on itself, exploring the little pockets of the Skywalker Saga that the nine-movie saga couldn’t reach during their run time. This creative effort has been led largely by Dave Filoni, who rose to Star Wars fame through his work on the Clone Wars animated series. While Filoni is fiercely loyal to George Lucas’ original works, Clone Wars was a show that was entirely designed around this filling-in-the-gaps style of storytelling, and it’s a mentality he has carried forward into his work on the Disney Plus live-action series as well. All of this leaves the impression of a universe that somehow shrinks with each successive entry. Rather than expanding the galaxy, it just gets more microscopic and interconnected with each episode.
It’s easy to see why this kind of creative conservatism is particularly appealing to Disney at this moment in Star Wars history. The franchise is one of the company’s biggest creative properties, and nearly every big swing or risky move it’s tried so far has been either divisive, like the sequel trilogy, or an outright disaster, like the Star Wars hotel. So rather than put the franchise in jeopardy, Disney has spent the last several years opting to put it in creative stasis instead. Only greenlighting on-screen projects that fit neatly into the universe, showing fans more of the characters they already care about, and changing very little — with the exception of the proposed Rey movie in the distant future.
In this way, The Acolyte, and Star Wars’ future in the High Republic in general, is particularly exciting. It’s, by definition, a breath of fresh air for the series, a step away from the recent run of series whose plots can be succinctly organized into a list of famous character cameos. It’s also hopefully a sign that Star Wars will soon escape the Skywalker legacy and the gravitational pull of Filoni’s method of burrowing deeper into the universe rather than expanding it.
I don't know how excited I am about the high republic, but the article is right that they fucked up the sequels badly enough that I have no interest in any story after TRoS that references any of that canon in any way. That movie was so garbage I had to mentally delete everything after the throne room scene in TLJ and just pretend they left the story open-ended.
Andor is fucking brilliant. But everything else has been disappointing and half-baked. Ahsoka has potential, but there was a lot of bad in it, and I love Rosario Dawson especially in the marvel Netflix series, but I'm not sold on her for Ahsoka. Mando started off great and still has echoes of that greatness, but I think it's getting weaker. Boba Fett was about ten good minutes sandwiched into the worst garbage I've ever wasted my time watching (short of TRoS) - and I used to own Shark Tornado.
It's pretty clear that Disney doesn't know what the fuck to do and they just get lucky sometimes and then when they get something that works they ruin it with their need to make it huge.
I do have some trust in Dave Filoni because he seems to be a common thread in their successes, but I just don't know if Disney is the right owner for Star Wars. Bring on the high republic but if this show sucks... well I have almost fifty years of fond memories, and that's not a bad legacy for a dead horse still being beaten.
I'm a big Dave Filoni fan but I've been iffy with the handling of Book of Boba/Mando season 2/Ahsoka.
The darksaber storyline had so much build up but then just sort of fizzled out.
The Mando reunion happened in a different show.
Boba had weird motivation.
Ahsoka was all set up with new questions, but then just swaps character locations and fizzles.
I'm still in, but they need to take a moment.
Not just the Palpatine/Skywalker story, but the Jedi and Sith / light side vs dark side as a whole are all a dusty crater that used to be the site of a beaten, dead horse.
Space wizards and laser swords have been WAAAAY overdone.
I fucking loved Rogue One and Andor, in part because they did such a good job of showcasing other elements of the Star Wars universe in a way that isn't the same tired good guy vs bad guy schtick. In both productions, we see both the dirty side of the Republic and the albeit hyperauthoritarian but not evil side of the Empire.
The Acolyte is back to space wizards... the little I've read about it sounds like kind of a space CSI type show, and honestly I can see the potential in that so long as it's not too heavy on the same tropes they keep trying to redo.
I'd really like to see more stuff that showcases members of the empire as being totally sold on their cause. Dedra Meero and Syril Karn are fucking fantastic examples - they weren't strong-armed into submission by the Empire, they were completely indoctrinated and served with pride and patriotism: from their perspective, they're believably the 'good guys' doing their best to fight the 'dirty Rebel terrorists'.
We see a touch of this in EA's SW Battlefront II with Iden Versio and her squad: basically special ops Storm Troopers doing their job professionally and with camaraderie amongst each other. The scene with the death star exploding, unexpectedly for the squad on the planet below, was great: they just watched all their friends get obliterated before their eyes, and they go through a quick transition from speechless to "our friends are all dead" to "oh fuck we gotta MOVE or we're dead too!". Again, their perspective is believably not evil - they're serving what they genuinely feel are the 'good guys'. Then the switch to the light side arch kicks in and we're back to old SW tropes, but the first hour or so is pretty solid!
Something like that adapted as a TV series or movie has a lot of potential imo. Showcase Storm Troopers as a legit military force and not just a bunch of bumbling idiots who can't shoot straight. Pull inspiration from things like Jarhead, Band of Brothers or even fucking MASH lol.
There's so much more to SW than space wizards and light v dark!
Can't wait for Andor S2
Because the High Republic is awesome and worth exploring. That’s why.
It's been explored to death.
I ain't dead yet, I didn't hear no bell
Having watched the premiere of Acolyte, I am not convinced. They jumped 100 years into the past, and everything feels exactly like “present” Star Wars.
There’s a Jedi. There’s a Cantina scene. There’s an orange sabre to validate Rey’s sabre. There’s Coruscant, looking pretty much as it will in 100 years from now. There’s a wookie.
It all felt very same-y. Aesthetically, if Mando walked into the scene, he wouldn’t be out of place. Which is weird.
I get that it’s in the ‘Canon’, but when a character that lives a century before the trilogies are set referenced R2 units, it sent me on a spiral down wookiepedia. It would be like someone today talking about driving their T-Model Ford. Did the droid company really only release 3 more R series droid between now and when Luke buys R2 from the Jawas?
Acolyte is a fun story, but I don’t think the High Republic is as revolutionary as they claim. I guess it at least separates us chronologically from the Skywalkers… for now.
There’s an orange sabre to validate Rey’s sabre.
Both Rey and Yord wield yellow lightsabers, which don’t require validation as they’ve been part of the Star Wars canon for a while. Just not in live-action.
Fan have decided: Star Wars is dead and done.
Don't believe me? If they have the nerve to release a SW movie it while bomb like Furiosa.
You and I have different definitions of “fan”.
Also, they’re releasing a series of movies starting in 2026.