5 Years Later, Star Wars Just Highlighted A Bizarre Timeline Problem
Canon history is much murkier than you may realize.
Maul: Shadow Lord takes place at an interesting point in the Star Wars timeline, in the handful of years after Order 66 but before the start of the Rebellion. Like the rise of most fascist regimes, it initially seems like the dawn of a new age, but that image quickly sours. It’s an interesting inflection point for the series, but it’s also relatively early in Star Wars canon. Before this, there was the prequel trilogy, the events of The Acolyte, and then the High Republic saga — that’s pretty much it.
That fact makes one line in the series much more confusing — and, potentially, reveals an entire chapter of Star Wars canon we haven’t seen yet.
In Episode 5 of Star Wars: Maul —Shadow Lord, Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki is reflecting on the slow, gradual takeover of the Empire. “Worry not,” he says. “Throughout my long life, I have seen the galaxy endure many changes. Tyranny is always defeated. We must remain hopeful.”
Eeko-Dio Daki has clearly seen a few things in his presumedly long life.
This doesn’t seem out of place for a Star Wars line — hope is, after all, the most prominent theme in the entire saga. But when Daki describes seeing the galaxy endure many changes, what does he mean? The first question is just how old he is in the first place. His species, Mosyk, has never appeared in Star Wars before, but we can get some clues about how long the species’ lifespan can be from a meta detail. In a trivia post on StarWars.com, it was revealed that the crew behind the show nicknamed him “Dino Jedi.” If he’s the Star Wars equivalent of a dinosaur and still kicking, then it’s probably safe to assume he measures his life in centuries.
With that in mind, what big changes could he have witnessed before Order 66 and the rise of the Empire? There’s not much within canon. Currently, the earliest we’ve seen in the official timeline is The High Republic: Convergence, which takes place 382 years before the events of A New Hope. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not long at all — Yoda was still very much middle-aged at that point.
Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki may be foreshadowing more Star Wars projects set in the distant past.
And within The High Republic series of books and comics, tyranny isn’t exactly a pressing threat. While there were plenty of terrifying villains, they were more akin to pirates and raiders than powers looking to rule over the entire galaxy. The High Republic is the era when the Jedi were at their peak, and that reign lasted until the Empire rose up.
So if Daki isn’t referring to anything that happened after the High Republic, what could he mean? Is this our first sign that the Star Wars universe will expand to ancient history? We know that James Mangold’s upcoming movie will cover the beginnings of the Jedi themselves — perhaps that will serve as a prelude for one of the other epic wars in the Legends continuity, like the treacherous fight between the Jedi and Sith for control of the galaxy itself.
It’s easy to forget that by the beginning of the prequel trilogy, the Republic had existed in an era of (relative) peace for centuries. If tyranny has been defeated after changing the galaxy more than once, then it’s clearly something that happened before anything we’ve seen before. But as always, history holds more than you could ever realize.
