Is Lucasfilm Setting Up a Star Wars ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ Movie?

We’ve already broken down how Solo: A Star Wars Story draws new ties to the both the Prequel Trilogy and Original Trilogy as well as the canonized Star Wars animated series. However, the film about Han Solo’s younger years may be also setting up the franchise for that long-awaited Knights of the Old Republic film series!

We just broke down how Solo: A Star Wars Story makes a popular KOTOR character part of official canon, but the larger question surrounding that move is: why? Is Lucasfilm taking the first subtle steps to setting up an official Knights of the Old Republic movie?

The character in question was Exar Kun, the Jedi Knight who fell to the dark side and became the Dark Lord of the Sith, starting a war against the Galactic Republic and Jedi, back in the era of the Old Sith Wars. In Solo, crime boss Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) has a penthouse on his yacht that’s adorned with all kinds of extravagant antiques — including the following piece, as explained in the official Art of Solo: A Star Wars Story book:

“The central desk, which represents the administrative seat of his power, is a bespoke piece of furniture. The stone base, that Dryden has plundered from the Sith temple of Exar Kun, is made from polished obsidian and decorated with carved hieroglyphs representing spells that protected its former home.”

That mention essentially makes the character of Exar Kun an official part of Star Wars canon. And though his backstory details will almost certainly change from its current “Star Wars Legends” non-canon telling, the question of interest is when that story might be told.

Every new Star Wars movie seems to be telling its own story while also setting up threads that will grow into bigger stories, elsewhere in this expanding Star Wars universe. Right now, there are two clear places where the story of Exar Kun could come into play:

Lucasfilm is currently developing a new Star Wars trilogy from Last Jedi director Rian Johnson – but that series is supposedly not connected to any previous storyline of the franchise. The more likely sustpect is the Star Wars spinoff series from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. We (along with many fans) have suspected that Benioff and Weiss are working on the Knights of the Old Republic film series, and introducing Exar Kun in Solo could easily be the first lead-in to the canonized story of the ancient era of the Star Wars Universe.

It’s so easy to see why Lucasfilm would make the jump to getting the Games of Thrones guys to handle a medieval sci-fi fantasy like KOTOR, and with this mounting evidence, do you think we should expect an official announcement soon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Solo: A Star Wars Story is now in theaters; Star Wars: Episode IX arrives on December 20, 2019. Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story is also in development.