Daniel José Older is writing IDW’s Star Wars: The High Republic: Adventures and we spoke about how he approached creating the new era of Star Wars.
With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ending the end of the Skywalker Saga, the next era of Star Wars is beginning in The High Republic. The new era will stretch across both comics and prose in a massive publishing crossover. Now, writer Daniel José Older, best-selling author of Star Wars: Last Shot, and artist Harvey Tolibao bring IDW into The High Republic with the upcoming series Star Wars: The High Republic: Adventures
Star Wars: The High Republic: Adventures takes place 200 years before the adventures of Luke, Han, and Leia, when the Jedi still stood as a beacon of peace and hope across the galaxy until a new threat known as the Nihil arrives. Now a group of young Padawans, training under Master Yoda, must protect the Republic while learning the lessons that will one day lead them to become powerful Jedi in their own right.
CBR spoke with the writer, Daniel José Older about his experience in helping take part in the creation of this new era of the Star Wars franchise.
CBR: When you started working on The High Republic, codenamed Project Luminous, what was something of importance to see in this new era of Star Wars?
One thing that’s so exciting about writing in the High Republic era is that, while there is conflict and strife, we also get to envision what it looks like when things are working well when the Jedi are at their height and they’re truly serving their mission as beloved peacekeepers. So it’s great to be able to explore that, including thinking through how things ultimately ended up going so wrong down the road. That’s something we haven’t gotten to see in Star Wars much — even the New Republic starts showing its cracks pretty early. Now more than ever, it’s an important time to imagine ways that different worlds can work together amidst crisis, and that’s what we get to do here.
It’s also just been so much fun figuring out what the parts of the galaxy that we know so well would look like centuries earlier.
With building this time period as a team, what was that creative process like? Did you create and swap characters or did you take more control of individual projects?
It’s been very collaborative throughout, and that’s truly been one of the great joys of this project. From the beginning, it’s been a fun pot to toss different ideas into and then mix them all up and see what comes up, whether it’s with Story Group, the publishing team, or each other. There are so many new characters and creatures and planets, and I think most of us have lost track of who came up with which, in part, because they’ve all changed and grown with the project over time. It’s also great to be able to bounce ideas and doubts and possibilities off each other in our meetings.