Star Wars has a new, expanding timeline
The Star Wars timeline is expanding. At Star Wars Celebration 2023, Lucasfilm confirmed that there are two far-reaching eras arriving in the Star Wars cinematic universe, 25,000 years before the events of the current cinematic timeline and further into an undetermined future. Lucasfilm laid out the timeline, in Marvel Cinematic Universe fashion, for an easy guide to when new Star Wars stories will happen (but not when they’ll come out).
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy showed an image showing the newly expanded timeline on screen, leading from Dawn of the Jedi, through the Old Republic, High Republic, Fall of the Jedi, Reign of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, New Republic, Rise of the First Order, to the New Jedi Order.
The Dawn of the Jedi will act as the earliest era of Star Wars and will be explored in a new movie from director James Mangold (Logan, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate). Mangold’s self-titled Star Wars film will be a “biblical epic” about the rise of the Force and the first Jedi, set no less than 25,000 years before the events of the original film trilogy.
That puts the Dawn of the Jedi era before the Old Republic era that many Star Wars fans are familiar with through (decanonized Legends) stories in books, comics, and video games, such as BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic role-playing games And The Old Republic MMO.
The later era of the High Republic has been explored in a series of novels and comics in recent years, telling stories of the final golden age of the Jedi Order, before the institutional rot that left it ripe for destruction by Emperor Palpatine in the prequel -trilogy. That stage of the Star Wars timeline will be explored in The Acolytethe live-action series coming to Disney Plus in 2024.
The Fall of the Jedi, Reign of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, New Republic, and Rise of the First Order are very familiar to Star Wars fans, having been explored in Episodes I-IX, spin-offs such as Villain One And Soloand various TV series such as Andor, The Mandalorian, rebelsAnd Boba Fett’s book.
Farther in the future, a whole new era begins: the New Jedi Order. This stage takes place after the events of the sequel trilogy (after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), and will see Rey (Daisy Ridley) build a new Jedi Academy in an attempt to restore order to full strength. Very little is known about this new phase of Star Wars, except that it is apparently set 15 years after the events of Rise of Skywalker.