SPOILER WARNING: This article contains plot specifics from the new novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Into the Dark by Claudia Gray, which was released today, and the Marvel comic book miniseries Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule and Will Sliney, which has been available for over a year.
It’s true that Lucasfilm Publishing’s ambitious new multi-platform initiative Star Wars: The High Republic takes place hundreds of years prior to the events of the franchise’s more familiar “Skywalker Saga,” but that doesn’t mean these books and comics don’t have connections to the Star Wars era we know and love. There’s Yoda, of course– the Jedi Master who died at over 900 years old in Return of the Jedi pops up to train younglings in this period that sees the Jedi Order operating at its peak. Plus we meet ancestors of characters like Lor San Tekka (played by actor Max von Sydow in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Sana Starros, the smuggler who once claimed to be the wife of Han Solo in the current-canon Star Wars comics, not to mention visit planets like Naboo and Coruscant from the prequel trilogy.
But in the newly released Star Wars: The High Republic – Into the Dark novel by Claudia Gray, detail-oriented readers may notice another link to the Star Wars sequel trilogy era, especially if they’ve been paying close attention to relatively recent comic book tie-ins from other High Republic authors.
Early on in Into the Dark, a group of Jedi Knights and their hired transport crew arrive at an ancient, abandoned Amaxine space station after being detoured from their hyperspace route toward the ribbon-cutting event for a different, freshly constructed space station called the Starlight Beacon. The Amaxine station is made up of a giant center orb surrounded by metallic rings and overgrown with plant life. And as soon as I realized I recognized that the book, I ran to my comic book collection to fish out my copy of Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #1, written by Charles Soule with artwork by Will Sliney. Sure enough, the space station being used as a home base by eventual First Order Supreme Leader Snoke in the comics matched the description from Gray’s novel to a tee– though at that point the station is only referred to as “Elsewhere,” teasing its cryptic nature. Exploring the Amaxine station further in the book, the Jedi even come across the imposing stone throne we see being used by Snoke in the comics when a young, disenchanted Ben Solo flees Luke Skywalker’s Jedi training academy to find solace under the tutelage of this mysterious being.
In The Rise of Kylo Ren #2, Snoke says of his space station home, “The people who built it were trying to hold back the dark. That was the entire point. To create an oasis of light here in the great shadow. You see how well it worked. You see what denying the nature of things brought them.” He points to a brittle skeleton being crushed by the living tendrils of a large plant nearby, which also refers back to the events of Star Wars: The High Republic – Into the Dark and the Jedi’s simultaneous confrontation with the villainous marauders known as the Nihil and the plant-like creatures called Drengir, who were indeed strong in the dark side of the Force. It makes sense that Charles Soule and Claudia Gray would have worked together to set up the existence of this space station many months before The High Republic’s planned debut, as they have both played major roles in contributing to the project, but what does this connection with Snoke mean? Obviously the enigmatic Force-user (who was revealed to be bioengineered by the resurrected Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) chose the station as a base for a reason, as implied in the quote above, but is there a deeper significance to this surprising tie between distant eras of the larger Star Wars saga, or is it just a cleverly conceived Easter Egg for eagle-eyed fans? We’ll have to stay up-to-date on further adventures in The High Republic and other Star Wars media to find out for sure.
Star Wars: The High Republic – Into the Dark and Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren are both available wherever books and comics are sold.