100 years earlier than the occasions of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars‘ newest streaming sequence The Acolyte presents us with the tail finish of some extent in Star Wars chronology often known as the period of the Excessive Republic. Itself named for the transmedia initiative that started in 2021, a lot of the occasions of that initiative have taken place about one other century even earlier than The Acolyte, giving us a tough timeframe for the way the galaxy far, distant—and particularly the Jedi Order and the Republic—has modified from the apex of this quote unquote “golden age” to the transitory decline we see within the present. However this week’s episode additionally gave us a extra intriguing direct hyperlink to the Excessive Republic books… one which raises a number of extra questions on what The Acolyte is saying about these establishments.
Early on in “Selection”—which flashes again 16 years previous to the occasions of the remainder of The Acolyte—we meet a gaggle of 4 Jedi tasked with a analysis mission on the world of Brendok, the planet the place twin sisters Osha and Mae grew up. On the time, nonetheless, these 4 Jedi (Sol, Indara, Indara’s padawan apprentice Torbin, and the Wookiee Kelnacca) believed that Brendok was utterly uninhabited, with Indara explaining to her padawan that Brendok had beforehand been catalogued by the Jedi and the Republic as a dull world, after being ravaged by a “hyperspace disaster” a century prior.
The catastrophe Indara refers to—the Great Hyperspace Disaster—is a key occasion that kicked off the first wave of High Republic books and comics in 2021. Largely explored within the Charles Soule novel Gentle of the Jedi, the catastrophe happens when a transport ship, the Legacy Run, breaks up mid-hyperspace bounce. The Legacy Run, already a century previous by the point of the accident, shears itself aside trying to keep away from what its crew believed to be surprising particles alongside its hyperspace route, however was in reality one other ship, a raider belonging to the piratical Nihil, utilizing beforehand unknown and uncharted hyperspace bounce paths.
Not solely have been seemingly all arms on board—together with 9,000 colonists transferring to the sting of Republic house within the Outer Rim Territories—misplaced, by breaking up whereas nonetheless touring at lightspeed, fragments of the ship re-entered realspace at unpredictable places alongside Legacy Run‘s supposed hyperspace route. This particles would re-enter realspace practically sustaining the speed it had achieved traveling in hyperspace in occasions often known as “emergences,” changing into lethal meteors of molten slag that might seem at any time, virtually anyplace throughout the Outer Rim, and lay waste to whole worlds and programs in a close to occasion.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals died through the emergences, with worlds throughout the Outer Rim affected. Hyperspace journey throughout the fringes of Republic territory was briefly paused by its Supreme Chancellor, Lina Soh, and the Jedi Order, working from the Republic’s not too long ago constructed Outer Rim command station, Starlight Beacon, rendered support. The Jedi’s major reduction mission targeted on the Hetzal system—a key agricultural supply for the Republic and particularly for the then-nascent medicinal substance, bacta—that was particularly threatened by the emergences, safeguarding a lot of Hetzal Prime and its moons from whole catastrophe.
In keeping with Indara, Brendok was impacted by one in every of these emergences—rendering the world fully uninhabitable, and left alone by the Jedi and the Republic within the wake of the catastrophe. Someday over the subsequent century nonetheless, pure life returned to Brendok, together with it a coven of witches and Pressure customers who constructed their very own society out of mining services that have been deserted when Brendok was impacted by an emergence. The Brendok coven survived on the world in isolation for years, unknown by wider galactic society, till its existence was found by the 4 Jedi we meet in The Acolyte.
These Jedi have been there to research how pure life had re-emerged on the planet, surmising that in some unspecified time in the future within the final century—maybe as a response to the sheer pure destruction Brendok will need to have endured through the impression of the emergence—the planet grew to become residence to what’s often known as a “vergence” in the Force. A extremely highly effective and concentrated coalescence of the Pressure itself, vergences may focus on a location like Brendok or perhaps a singular particular person like it will definitely would with Anakin Skywalker, reflecting an historical Jedi prophecy a couple of chosen determine who could be highly effective sufficient to carry stability to the Pressure’s disparate gentle and darkish features.
The focus of Pressure energies may manifest life itself, because the Jedi found within the flora that had regrown on Brendok… or, within the case of the coven, may very well be harnessed alongside different religious magics and practices to help create sentient life within the type Osha and Mae: twin sisters whose biology revealed that they have been akin to the spirit of a singular being cut up throughout two bodily varieties
Except for being a enjoyable Easter egg to attach the unique Excessive Republic books to The Acolyte, the reply might be not a lot instantly. In spite of everything, the occasions of the Nice Hyperspace Catastrophe are actually firmly prior to now by the point of The Acolyte, and people occasions are primarily extra necessary due to the Pressure vergence that manifested on Brendok in its wake, moderately than essentially their literal, direct impression.
As an alternative, the occasion is primarily attention-grabbing for what it says about the Republic itself and the Jedi Order 100 years down the road, reflective of the rising stagnation that might ultimately lay each establishments low one other hundred years after within the occasions of the Star Wars prequels. That each the Jedi and the Republic deserted Brendok in its entirety after the emergence is an enchanting concept: if a previous mining facility was nonetheless left standing nicely sufficient the coven may come alongside and inhabit it, it’s clear that the world was not utterly destroyed by the emergence, so even declaring it utterly lifeless looks as if a transfer made by lax consideration or for focusing priorities elsewhere throughout reduction efforts. But it surely’s in that lax consideration that the coven managed to thrive, and provided that the Jedi solely returned to Brendok when it as soon as once more grew to become probably of curiosity and exploitation once more by its regrown flora (and, by the vergence, exploitable by a religious useful resource as nicely) it speaks to the type of ethical rigor each the Republic and the Order itself now face on this current second.
For a century, Brendok was nothing to those nice powers, till it confirmed that it may probably grow to be one thing once more to them—ignorant to the wants of communities that thrived with out their involvement there for years and years. How that performs into the best way these 4 Jedi reacted to the coven’s presence on Brendok weaves additional into The Acolyte‘s critique of those grand establishments, and the way in the end even the very best intentions can pave a street to darkness and tragedy.
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