Star Wars: The High Republic Reveals New Jedi Starfighters and More Ships and Vehicles

Star Wars: The High Republic kicks off and January, and Lucasfilm is giving fans a taste of the new starships of the era. The High Republic era is centuries before to the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. That means it has an aesthetic all of its own. In order to find that aesthetic, the creators behind Star Wars: The High Republic looked at the Star Wars prequel trilogy and thought backward from there, finding something that would pre-date the hand-crafted, glistening sheen of The Phantom Menace and its sequels while still fitting into the overall design aesthetic of the Star Wars universe.

“We all found a lot of inspiration in how the prequels opened up a more refined era of the galaxy, but by virtue of those films’ proximity to the originals, it had to start showing early signs of corruption. By moving further in time, away from that downfall, we’re able to see the Republic at its height in this storytelling,” Pablo Hidalgo of the Lucasfilm Story Group tells StarWars.com. “In the Core Worlds especially, that’s reflected in fashion and technology. A lot of the visual exploration in the High Republic is taking what we know, but idealizing it.”

Take a look at some of those new starship designs below. Star Wars: The High Republic launches in January. Pre-orders for the books are live on Amazon now.

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Jedi Vector Starfighter

The Jedi of the High Republic era have specialized starfighters called Vectors. They’re somewhat mosquito-like in their design.

“Taken as a whole, the prequels track the march from hand-crafted artisan technology to machine-stamped assembly line tech, so given we were dialing the clock to before Episode I, there were a lot of design explorations that had that delicate, streamlined feel that felt relevant,” Plablo Hidalgo tells StarWars.com. “Even heading into Episode III, there were Clone Wars designs that had a foot in the past and a foot in the future, and from there we found a great contender for the Jedi Vector. It looks very insectile — slim and delicate but with a definite sting.”

Nihil Tempest Runner

The Nihil are new villains introduced in the first wave of Star Wars: The High Republic stories. Their ship design reflects their brutal nature.

“For the Nihil, their look derived from art developed specifically for The High Republic initiative. There were some pieces from The Force Awakens and the current Star Wars movies that explored pirates, scavengers, and basically Star Wars survivalists,” Hidalgo says. “That pointed in the direction of a patchwork force that was uniform in its non-uniformity. The Nihil have a design language with a big vocabulary.”

Nihil Stormship

Republic Longbeam

The Republic has its own ships. The Longbeam is based on an unused design from Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

“I love that an unused James Clyne ship design for the Resistance bombers from Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now our Republic Longbeam,” says Lucasfilm creative arts direct Phil Szostak. “James did a series of beautiful early concepts for that vessel, some of which you can see in The Art of The Last Jedi, before he turned the whole idea of a bomber on its head with a vertical bomb clip.”

Legacy Run

The Legacy Run is another discarded sequel trilogy design. It had been an early design for Han Solo freighter.

“The Legacy Run was derived from an unused design for Han Solo’s freighter in The Force Awakens that I always liked,” says Hidalgo. “There’s a blunt simplicity to it: a flying box of boxes. It tells a story that this isn’t a luxury passenger liner, but it’s all some people can afford. You can tell how it operates just by looking at it. And it isn’t fancy. In this case, it didn’t matter that it came from the Resistance/First Order era, because this design is likely hundreds of years old. Star Wars designs are shaped more by culture than they are by innovation, so this is much more a working ship.”

Starlight Beacon

The Starlight Beacon isn’t a ship, but a space station. It’s design as an original High Republic creation.

“The Starlight Beacon is a good example, I think, of a design telling a story,” he says of the station, which was designed specifically for The High Republic. “The top of the station is a deliberate echo of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and imagined to be this iridescent monument that shines in the dark. The underside of the station is the utility, the industrial foundation that keeps the station chugging along. It’s the plumbing. Those who are allied to the ideals of the Republic can look at it as an inspiration example of balance, of working together. Those against the Republic can get riled by what they see as a statement of class and divisions. There’s a lot going on there.”

Starlight