One hundred years before the events of The Phantom Menace, Star Wars‘ latest streaming series The Acolyte presents us with the tail end of a point in Star Wars chronology known as the era of the High Republic. Itself named for the transmedia initiative that began in 2021, much of the events of that initiative have taken place about another century even before The Acolyte, giving us a rough timeframe for how the galaxy far, far away—and in particular the Jedi Order and the Republic—has changed from the apex of this quote unquote “golden age” to the transitory decline we see in the show. But this week’s episode also gave us a more intriguing direct link to the High Republic books… one that raises a few more questions about what The Acolyte is saying about these institutions.
Early on in “Choice”—which flashes back 16 years prior to the events of the rest of The Acolyte—we meet a group of four Jedi tasked with a research mission on the world of Brendok, the planet where twin sisters Osha and Mae grew up. At the time, however, those four Jedi (Sol, Indara, Indara’s padawan apprentice Torbin, and the Wookiee Kelnacca) believed that Brendok was completely uninhabited, with Indara explaining to her padawan that Brendok had previously been catalogued by the Jedi and the Republic as a lifeless world, after being ravaged by a “hyperspace disaster” a century prior.
What Is the Great Hyperspace Disaster?
The disaster Indara refers to—the Great Hyperspace Disaster—is a key event that kicked off the first wave of High Republic books and comics in 2021. Largely explored in the Charles Soule novel Light of the Jedi, the disaster occurs when a transport ship, the Legacy Run, breaks up mid-hyperspace jump. The Legacy Run, already a century old by the time of the accident, shears itself apart attempting to avoid what its crew believed to be unexpected debris along its hyperspace route, but was in actuality another ship, a raider belonging to the piratical Nihil, using previously unknown and uncharted hyperspace jump paths.
Not only were seemingly all hands on board—including 9,000 colonists moving to the edge of Republic space in the Outer Rim Territories—lost, by breaking apart while still traveling at lightspeed, fragments of the ship re-entered realspace at unpredictable locations along Legacy Run‘s intended hyperspace route. This debris would re-enter realspace nearly maintaining the velocity it had achieved traveling in hyperspace in events known as “emergences,” becoming deadly meteors of molten slag that could appear at any time, almost anywhere across the Outer Rim, and lay waste to entire worlds and systems in a near instance.
Millions of people died during the emergences, with worlds across the Outer Rim affected. Hyperspace travel across the fringes of Republic territory was briefly paused by its Supreme Chancellor, Lina Soh, and the Jedi Order, operating from the Republic’s recently built Outer Rim command station, Starlight Beacon, rendered aid. The Jedi’s primary relief mission focused on the Hetzal system—a key agricultural source for the Republic and especially for the then-nascent medicinal substance, bacta—that was especially threatened by the emergences, safeguarding much of Hetzal Prime and its moons from total disaster.
How Does the Great Hyperspace Disaster Connect to The Acolyte?
According to Indara, Brendok was impacted by one of these emergences—rendering the world entirely uninhabitable, and left alone by the Jedi and the Republic in the wake of the disaster. Sometime over the next century however, natural life returned to Brendok, along with it a coven of witches and Force users who built their own society out of mining facilities that were abandoned when Brendok was impacted by an emergence. The Brendok coven survived on the world in isolation for years, unknown by wider galactic society, until its existence was discovered by the four Jedi we meet in The Acolyte.
Those Jedi were there to investigate how natural life had re-emerged on the planet, surmising that at some point in the last century—perhaps as a response to the sheer natural destruction Brendok must have endured during the impact of the emergence—the planet became home to what is known as a “vergence” in the Force. A highly powerful and concentrated coalescence of the Force itself, vergences could center around a location like Brendok or even a singular individual like it eventually would with Anakin Skywalker, reflecting an ancient Jedi prophecy about a chosen figure who would be powerful enough to bring balance to the Force’s disparate light and dark aspects.
The concentration of Force energies could manifest life itself, as the Jedi discovered in the flora that had regrown on Brendok… or, in the case of the coven, could be harnessed alongside other spiritual magics and practices to help create sentient life in the form Osha and Mae: twin sisters whose biology revealed that they were akin to the spirit of a singular being split across two physical forms
What Does the Great Hyperspace Disaster Mean for The Acolyte Going Forward?
Aside from being a fun Easter egg to connect the original High Republic books to The Acolyte, the answer is probably not much directly. After all, the events of the Great Hyperspace Disaster are now firmly in the past by the time of The Acolyte, and those events are primarily more important because of the Force vergence that manifested on Brendok in its wake, rather than necessarily their literal, direct impact.
Instead, the event is primarily interesting for what it says about the Republic itself and the Jedi Order a hundred years down the line, reflective of the growing stagnation that would eventually lay both institutions low another hundred years after in the events of the Star Wars prequels. That both the Jedi and the Republic abandoned Brendok in its entirety after the emergence is a fascinating idea: if a prior mining facility was still left standing well enough the coven could come along and inhabit it, it’s clear that the world was not completely destroyed by the emergence, so even declaring it completely lifeless seems like a move made by lax attention or for focusing priorities elsewhere during relief efforts. But it’s in that lax attention that the coven managed to thrive, and given that the Jedi only returned to Brendok when it once again became potentially of interest and exploitation again through its regrown flora (and, through the vergence, exploitable through a spiritual resource as well) it speaks to the kind of moral rigor both the Republic and the Order itself now face in this present moment.
For a century, Brendok was nothing to these great powers, until it showed that it could potentially become something again to them—ignorant to the needs of communities that thrived without their involvement there for years and years. How that plays into the way those four Jedi reacted to the coven’s presence on Brendok weaves further into The Acolyte‘s critique of these grand institutions, and how ultimately even the best intentions can pave a road to darkness and tragedy.
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