Since the Skywalker Saga just came to a close late last year, the future of the galaxy far, far away on the big screens is still in ambivalence, though the grandeur of Star Wars: The High Republic will quench the thirst of the fans for the time being.
This new publishing initiative, consisting of a line of books and comic series, will take fans 200 years before the events of Episode I – The Phantom Menace and depict the High Republic era, a period where the Jedi are at the height of their power and the Galactic Senate is ruling over the Core Worlds in peace and harmony. Though, as we saw in the first chapter of Light of the Jedi, a galaxy-wide disaster is looming close. The series’ main villains, currently known as the Nihil, will surely challenge the Jedi in their own right, but what about the Sith and their influence? Can we expect to see them in The High Republic as well?
Well, Alexander Freed’s new novel Shadow Fall, which takes place after Return of the Jedi may have an answer to that question. In it, the New Republic and the Imperial Remnants are locked in a battle on Troithe, an unusual planet orbiting a black hole that looks like a burning eye. This was a prosperous world in the Mid Rim, but couldn’t compete with the power of Coruscant due to an influential family meddling in the affairs and changing the tide of politics.
Here’s an excerpt from the book that details the history of Troithe:
“As Coruscant’s production had waxed, Troithe’s waned due to factors both unavoidable (the exhaustion of precious mineral resources on the broken continent; the Cerberon system’s decreasing accessibility in a Republic expanding into the Colonies and the Inner Rim; the gradual decay of Troithe’s planetary orbit as it spiraled toward the black hole) and tragically preventable (a short-lived civil war between the mixed-species underclass and the majority human population – a conflict manipulated in part by an ambitious aristo-mercantile family seeking to profit.)”
The book further confirms this when a New Republic pilot stumbles upon a Sith stronghold hidden in the asteroid belt of the black hole. The place resembles Darth Vader’s fort on Mustafar and the pilot speculates that the place is of high value to the former emperor.
This makes sense with the Sith’s long-term plan of galaxy domination. They obsessively tried to bring inequality to the galaxy, while helping the rise of the Senate on Coruscant. This plan ultimately came to fruition when Palpatine used the Clone Wars to exert his influence across the galaxy. And it’ll definitely be interesting to see him and his master Darth Plagueis planning the demise of the Galactic Republic within the Star Wars: The High Republic continuity.