Star Wars Is Finally Telling the Luke, Han, and Leia Story We’ve Been Waiting For

Ever since Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise, Marvel Comics has been hard at work telling the further adventures of the characters you know and love from the films. Comic books spanning the Original Trilogy and Prequel eras, as well as tie-ins to the Sequel films, have been key to expanding the current Star Wars canon, much in the same way the old Expanded Universe of books, comics, and games did pre-Disney—with one major difference.

While the now non-canon EU dove headfirst into stories about what happened to Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo after the events of Return of the Jedi, the Disney-era comics and books have largely shied away from fully exploring what happened next to our original trio of heroes after the trilogy. In fact, until now, the main Star Wars comic has focused on filling in the gaps between A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, essentially focusing on Original Trilogy side quests rather than pushing Luke, Han, and Leia’s stories forward. That changes this year with the arrival of a new Star Wars #1, which will kick off a new series of stories for the trio set in the New Republic era, after the fall of the Empire but many decades before the rise of the First Order, a time period in which these characters are still in their prime.

Written by Alex Segura and penciled by Phil Noto, the story picks up after the Battle of Jakku and the final surrender of the Empire. Luke, Han, and Leia are working to rebuild and usher in a new era of peace under the banner of the fledgling New Republic, but that’s not so easy when the scum of the galaxy are vying for control. The solicit on StarWars.com teases that our heroes will have to contend with pirates, thieves, and a “bloodthirsty gang of mercenaries” in the new series. The announcement also promises other returning characters like Mon Mothma as well as “new allies.”

“Now that we’ve put the period at the end of the Galactic Civil War with the Battle of Jakku, we can speed ahead into a new, uncharted era, with some new galactic threats, foes, and mysteries for our beloved heroes to grapple with, blending the familiar with the new and shocking,” Segura said in a statement. “These stories will be packed with action and the character moments Star Wars fans have come to expect, featuring twists on the galaxy and landscape we know, with an eye toward making sure people can jump in easily and with any issue. We can’t wait.”

While Marvel has definitely published some excellent Star Wars adventures over the last decade and change—particularly all of its Darth Vader books (seriously, go pick up all of those collections)—a New Republic ongoing about Luke, Leia, and Han feels like the true main event, what all of the Star Wars volumes that came before it have been working toward. It’s certainly the story fans were dying to see when Disney announced the return of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford in The Force Awakens (simpler times). But with the Sequels jumping ahead 30 years to focus on a new central cast of younger heroes, the New Republic years remain a chunk of Luke, Han, and Leia’s history that’s still largely missing in the current canon.

In the 2010s, Disney and Lucasfilm mostly abstained from fleshing out too much of the central trio’s story on the page in order to preserve a blank slate for future films—and later, the TV series. By completely wiping the continuity of Star Wars clean in 2014, Lucasfilm was free to make a new trilogy that wasn’t beholden to the story established by the many books and comics of the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s that covered similar material. Gone were fan-favorite storylines like the Heir to the Empire books that introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn as a new threat for the New Republic and the Dark Empire comics that resurrected the Emperor as a clone. No more stories of Luke forming the New Jedi Order and training a new generation of Knights or of Han and Leia and their Jedi children. Yes, some of those old EU stories were very silly or just plain bad, but many more took Star Wars in interesting and even daring new directions. Just look at how many ideas from the old EU stories have found their way back into the new canon (e.g. Thrawn, Han and Leia having a child who grows up to become an evil mass murderer, Luke’s Jedi Order getting blown up).

Needless to say, this new direction for Star Wars comics opens the door for some exciting new possibilities for the franchise’s first family. Although The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett did give us glimpses of Luke’s post-Return of the Jedi story, there’s still so much we don’t know about his life beyond the broad strokes in movie tie-in books, and we know even less about Han and Leia during this time period. As great as it’s been to see new characters—Rey, Finn, Poe, Mando, Grogu, Ahsoka—take center stage on screen, it’s good to know that Disney, Lucasfilm, and Marvel are finally ready to unlock a new era for Luke, Han, and Leia, too.

The new Star Wars #1 hits your local comic shop on May 7.

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