Star Wars is expanding once again, but this time into an age where the Jedi are at the peak of their power and influence within the galaxy. Announced back in February, Star Wars: The High Republic is set 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace but will also feature a familial connection to the original Star Wars film trilogy era that novelist Justina Ireland discussed in an hour-long panel at Disney-Lucasfilm Publishing’s Comic-Con at Home panel via THR.

　　According to Ireland, that link to the future will be seen in Avon Starros, an ancestor of Sana Starros whose first appearance came in Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars comic book series.

　　“If fans are familiar with Sana Starros,” Ireland said, “we know she’s the best scoundrel to ever have scoundreled, she has no shame, she’s out there to get what she needs to get, and she’s kinda ruthless. “She’s literally my favorite." "But The High Republic takes place many hundreds of years earlier before she exists, and so who we’re going to meet instead of Sina is her great, great, many-times-great ancestor — there won’t be a direct relation there because genetics are murky in the Star Wars galaxy.”

　　Avon Starros will be one of the co-leads of Ireland’s Young Adult novel The High Republic: A Test of Courage, who Ireland described as a scientist who is fascinated with uncovering a more logical explanation for how The Force functions.

　　“Avon is a 12-year-old girl, she has been sent to the edge of the galaxy by her mother who’s a republic senator because she’s just trouble,” Ireland explained. “She is a scientist and the only things she wants to know are the answers to the questions that drive her. So, ‘How does the Force work, from a scientific perspective?’ That might be something a scientist would want to know. ‘What happens if you take a khyber crystal out of a lightsaber, what does that look like?’”

　　Ireland’s YA novel will be but the first of many new books and comics when it arrives in January 2021, with writers such as Charles Soule, Claudia Gray and Daniel José Older all contributing to a new storytelling initiative that will cover “a more hopeful, optimistic time,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said during the debut announcement for The High Republic.

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