Skip to main content

Star Wars: Aftermath novel will connect Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens

Last week brought some big news out of the Star Wars universe with Disney and LucasFilm revealing the title for the first standalone film, Star Wars: Rogue One. Just a few days later, Star Wars is back in the headlines with yet another big announcement, but this time it’s tied to the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and how it will connect with the established franchise continuity.

This week, LucasFilm and Del Rey Books revealed the title and synopsis for an upcoming novel set within the Star Wars universe that will bridge the gap between 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi and this year’s follow-up film, The Force Awakens, set many years after the events of its predecessor.

Recommended Videos

Here’s the official synopsis for Star Wars: Aftermath, which will be written by Blackbirds and Under the Empyrean Sky author Chuck Wendig and is slated to hit shelves this September:

The second Death Star has been destroyed. Rumors are flying that the Emperor and his enforcer, Darth Vader, are dead. A new government is forming to replace the Empire. But the galaxy is a big place, and the fallout of this cataclysm will affect different worlds in different ways. Does everyone accept the fall of Imperial rule? Has everyone even heard the life-altering news? What rushes in to fill the vacuum the Empire has left? And who will try to stop them?

The novel is one of more than 20 upcoming novels, comic books, and other media LucasFilm plans to release that span the time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and is expected to feature a mix of classic characters, new characters, and some of the characters making their big-screen debuts in The Force Awakens.

“My earliest — and still one of my best — movie-going experiences as a kid was being a four-year-old watching The Empire Strikes Back at a drive-in theater with my sister,” wrote Wendig in a statement accompanying the announcement. “My jaw dropped and I don’t think I’ve found it, yet. Those movies opened up a world for me, and my love of storytelling comes from them and from the galaxy of smaller, connected stories, too — from the toys to the games to the books. In fact, one of the first novels I ever read was the novelization of A New Hope. I have a son who will in a few short months be my age when I saw Empire, so to be involved with the Star Wars universe just as the new film is coming out — it feels like not only something akin to kismet, but a great and powerful privilege.”

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens will arrive in theaters December 18.

star wars aftermath cover
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Rick Marshall
Former Contributing Editor, Entertainment
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
Why Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Cal Kestis needs his own Disney+ show
Cal wielding his blue lightsaber and walking with BD-1 in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor key art.

As Lucasfilm finally seems to be getting the ball rolling again for Star Wars on the theatrical front, the video game space has been showing the franchise's continued narrative strength. The latest example is Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The sequel to 2019's successful Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order fleshes out the journey of Cal Kestis (voiced by Gotham and Shameless actor Cameron Monaghan), with his story feeling every bit as worthy of a live-action series.

Shows like Dave Filoni's Ahsoka look promising given Rosario Dawson's pitch-perfect performance in season 2 of The Mandalorian and Filoni's passion for the franchise. Should Lucasfilm want more Jedi-centric storytelling on Disney+, the Star Wars Jedi games have rich characters (all hail Turgle!) and intriguing storylines that could be an ideal fit for the episodic format that made Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andor so compelling.

Read more
Not even Nvidia’s RTX 4090 can handle Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Cal holding his lightsaber with BD-1 on his shoulder.

Nvidia's RTX 4090 is overkill for a vast majority of games, but it seems to have met its match in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. That's right -- even the best graphics card struggles to maintain more than 35 frames per second (fps) in EA's upcoming title.

Of course, this kind of performance is unintended, and it stems entirely from poor optimization. Will your computer be able to handle the game when it launches tomorrow?

Read more
James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi movie can save Star Wars
Cover art for the Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi comic book series by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema.

This year's Star Wars Celebration brought exciting new looks into upcoming projects ranging from TV to movies, as well as the announcement that James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari) will helm an origin story of sorts set during the Dawn of the Jedi. And while this film will be looking back to the past, being set a whopping 25,000 years before the Battle of Yavin depicted in Star Wars: Episode IV -- New Hope, it is already poised to be one of the boldest theatrical premises for the franchise.

Star Wars has always been a universe characterized by great potential that's gone surprisingly untapped, with virtually endless storytelling possibilities in the distant past and far future. To address the elephant in the room, Lucasfilm also has a shoddy track record of late in axing or shelving announced and reported projects more than actually developing others, but Mangold's deft direction could break tired conventions and pave the way for the exciting Old Republic era on the big and small screens.
Breaking away from the Skywalker formula

Read more