Star Wars: The High Republic Debuts Wookiee Jedi

At long last, Project Luminous has been unveiled by Lucasfilm Publishing and as many expected, it [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

At long last, Project Luminous has been unveiled by Lucasfilm Publishing and as many expected, it has to deal directly with the fabled High Republic Era of the Star Wars mythos. As fate would have it, one of the anchor parts of the project — Light of the Jedi from Ballantine Books — features one of the first Wookiee Jedi Masters. Little information remains about the character specifically but on the cover itself, a roaring Wookiee looms large in the background complete with a blue lightsaber.

It's expected this will be the first outright Wookiee Jedi in the Star Wars canon. There had previously been some characters in the Star Wars Dark Horse comics of yesteryear, but those have since been decanonized as a part of the "Legends" lore. Then there was Gungi, a youngling was was training to become a Jedi during The Clone Wars animated series and well...we all know what eventually happened to the younglings.

Beings the era was only first mentioned in a recent Rise of Kylo Ren comic from Charles Soule — who, coincidentally enough, is also writing Light of the Jedi — little is known about the era. It's set in a time where the Sith were thought to have been wiped completely into extinction so it's unclear how the franchise will insert antagonists into the mix.

Earlier this year, reports suggested the next batch of Star Wars films would be set in the High Republic, some 400 years before the Skywalker Saga began in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's sandwiched between that and The Old Republic, which took place upwards of 4,000 years prior to the Skywalker Saga. Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy had previously revealed her thoughts on branching out from the Skywalker Saga, something the outfit has done via The Mandalorian and will continue to do across it's various multimedia mediums.

"Obviously, that's what's we've been spending so much time talking about, and it's a really important transition for 'Star Wars,'" Kennedy said. "What we've been focused on these last five or six years is finishing that family saga around the Skywalkers. Now is the time to start thinking about how to segue into something new and different."

"I think it gives us a more open-ended view of storytelling and doesn't lock us into this three-act structure," she continued. "We're not going to have some finite number and fit it into a box. We're really going to let the story dictate that."

Star Wars: The High Republic is due out August 25th.

Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for the latest news regarding Project Luminous and the new High Republic era.

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