Star Wars Just Revealed Its Newest Major Villains
Star Wars has just unveiled three of their new villains from their upcoming Star Wars: The High Republic series of books.
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In anticipation of Star Wars’ upcoming series of novels, comic books, and children’s books, known as the Star Wars: The High Republic, StarWars.com has unveiled some of the new villains that will be debuting in this latest series.
Star Wars has released the first look at two of the villains, and an antagonist group that will make their first appearances in Star Wars: The High Republic. As Lucasfilm Publishing creative director Michael Siglain has said, one of the biggest questions the writers asked when putting together this series is “What scares the Jedi?” These three enemies reveals begin to answer that question.
Maybe the most disturbing of these new villains are the Drengir, a giant green blog that looks like if a giant bush also had tentacles and teeth. Cavan Scott, who is writing Marvel’s The High Republic series, says of this new creature, “The Drengir are sentient plant-life who are looking to reap a terrible harvest across the galactic frontier.”
Scott continues to say that the Drengir came up early in the development of The High Republic and it hinted at being akin to a horror monster thrown into the Star Wars universe. Scott says Drengir are “sinister, unstoppable and, as we’ll find out, inescapably linked to the fate of one of our High Republic Jedi…”
While the Drengir are horrific amorphous blobs, the Nihil are more terrifying due to the way they cause havoc throughout the galaxy. The Nihil is a criminal organization, which in the Star Wars: The High Republic announcement trailer was described as “space Vikings.” Writer of the upcoming Light of the Jedi, Charles Soule says, “The Nihil are brutal, savage marauders, based in the Outer Rim.”
Soule continues to say that the Nihil is “the stuff of nightmares, able to appear anywhere almost at will. They use bizarre, intimidating tactics – chemical weapons, poison – anything that might kill you, they’ll use.” The description of the Nihil says that they are organized and known plotters. They’re organized into three divisions known as Tempests, each of which has their own captain. It is said that the code of the Nihil is simply that they take what they want. In the Star Wars universe bound by codes of light and dark, it makes sense why the Nihil is such a dark concept for the Jedi.
Finally, Marchion Ro, a leading member of the Nihil known as the Eye of the Nihil. Marchion Ro’s father also held the title of Eye before him, and because of Ro, the Nihil grew to be a major threat in the galaxy. While the writers of Star Wars: The High Republic aren’t saying much about Ro at this point, Charles Soule did say that Ro doesn’t give the orders but “in a very real way, everything revolves around him.”
These three villains seem like captivating new additions to the Star Wars universe, and it will be fascinating to see how these characters and groups strike fear into the Jedi order. We won’t have to wait much longer to dig into these characters as the Star Wars: The High Republic series will debut in 2021.
The first two books that kick of the Star Wars: The High Republic series are Charles Soule’s adult novel Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi and the middle-grade novel Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage from Justina Ireland, both of which will be released on January 5, 2021.
These will be followed by the young adult novel Star Wars: The High Republic: Into the Dark from Claudia Gray, coming out on February 2, 2021. Also coming in the near future are Marvel’s Star Wars: The High Republic series and Star Wars: The High Republic Adventure series, which have not received release dates yet.
