Rogue Squadron Remains A Deeply Underrated Star Wars Novel

What is the coolest thing about the classic Star Wars trilogy? Some might say the easy answer to this question is everything about lightsabers; it’s equally true that the starfighters of the first three films are just as awesome. In fact, one of the primary innovations of Star Wars in 1977 was the idea that it brought nimble space dogfights to cinema. Prior to Star Wars, space battles were more lumbering, depicting larger spacecraft duking it out in the style of nautical battleships. But thanks to George Lucas’ imagination and the wizardry of the early ILM pioneers, Star Wars basically invented the way we even interact with imaginary space combat.

It’s tempting to say that in the 1990s, when the torch of Star Wars was carried by video games, comics, and novels, the saga was honoring its 1970s and 1980s roots. But what was happening was a bit more nuanced than that. In the era before The Phantom Menace and the slight reinvention of the Force, the Expanded Universe (later called “Legends”), in various seminal works (like Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire), actually pushed Star Wars deeper into science fiction subgenres rather than, say, space fantasy. Like Rogue One and, eventually, Andor, one kick-ass Star Wars series positioned itself as sci-fi spycraft meets Top Gun, and that series was what we know and think of as Rogue Squadron.

By February 1996, hardcore Star Wars fans everywhere had almost certainly read the book X-Wing #1 Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole. And what this book did was to make the video game experience of flying an X-Wing into believable science fiction.

Set just two years after the Battle of Endor, Rogue Squadron focuses on Wedge Antilles as he builds a new version of the elite squadron that Luke Skywalker founded after destruction of the first Death Star. Today, snarky Star Wars fans would say that Rogue Squadron is the ultimate Glup Shitto party; the fact that Wedge is the most well-known OG trilogy character is either going to be something you’re into or not. But in 1996, Star Wars fans were eating it up.

In its opening pages, Rogue Squadron captured the starfighter mechanics fans were familiar with thanks to flight simulator games like Star Wars: X-Wing and Rebel Assault. Artist Colin Cantwell may have designed the X-Wing in the 1970s, and John Dykstra and ILM may have made it fly, but it was the Expanded Universe that made the workings of these starfighters explicable. Stackpole’s attention to detail on all the various technical rules of Star Wars canon is impressive, especially considering he’s not working with nearly as many Star Wars writers are now. Like Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy,” there’s almost a sense that Star Wars has more in common with Star Trek, at least in terms of science fiction explanations for its tech.

But Rogue Squadron became a fan-loved classic because it's partly Top Gun in space, and partly the beginning of a complex spy story. Stackpole gives us a tease at the end of this book that one person in the squad isn’t loyal to the Rebels, but instead, loyal to the Empire. This revelation doesn’t come out of nowhere either. From its opening pages, there’s a general paranoia within the ranks of the Alliance, which sometimes calls itself the New Republic, but sometimes not, because things are still very new. Even Admiral Ackbar is worried about spies and saboteurs, and at this point, though the war has been won, the capital planet of Coruscant has yet to be recaptured. (Again, this is before The Phantom Menace, so Coruscant only exists in books and comics.) And, interestingly, while this novel was brand new, Dark Horse Comics was publishing X-Wing: Rogue Squadron comics (starting in July 1995), which detailed the adventures of Wedge and a different group of pilots in the months just after the Battle of Endor. In February 1996, the Rogue Squadron comic book arc “The Phantom Affair” was on newsstands at the same time as the first Rogue Squadron novel. This specific storyline was all about Wedge and his team dealing with conspiracy theorists claiming that the Battle of Endor never happened. (Can’t keep saying this enough: This was 1996! Prescient!)

Were fans confused that the Rogue Squadron comics and the first Rogue Squadron novel took place in slightly different time periods and had different characters in the squadron? Yes and no. Stackpole’s most famous creation for Rogue Squadron was the character of Corran Horn, a former Corellian Security Force investigator, i.e., an ex-cop, who has become a starpilot for the Alliance. But, in the comics, Corran hasn’t joined the squadron yet, and other than Wedge and Tycho Celchu (a character retconned as an A-Wing pilot in Return of the Jedi), pilots from the comics and novels are separated by a few years.

And yet, all of this complexity was a feature, not a bug, of the Rogue Squadron phenomenon. In a sense, the first novel and the ongoing comics created a micro-fandom within fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Rogue Squadron book series eventually spanned 10 novels, some written by the late Aaron Allston. Meanwhile, the comics series lasted to November 1998, with 35 issues in total.

Has modern Star Wars ever really capitalized on this rich, basically unused canon? The short answer is no. Patty Jenkins was attached to direct a Rogue Squadron movie back in 2020, and as recently as February 2026, screenwriter Matthew Robinson claims that film is still in flux. But, the Rogue Squadron movie is planned to be set in the era of the sequel films, not directly after the classic trilogy. So if Wedge Antilles or Corran Horn shows up in that hypothetical film, they’ll be elder statesmen.

Lucasfilm may never recreate the magic of the Rogue Squadron years. But that’s okay, because all the books and comics are out there for new fans to discover. And once you do, you won’t believe you’ve never read these before. Star Wars is famous for high-octane space battles and fast starfighters. But that promise, maybe, never got better than in the pages of Rogue Squadron.

The first Michael A. Stackpole Rogue Squadron book is available for purchase at booksellers everywhere. It’s also an excellent audiobook, narrated by Marc Thompson. You can find various omnibuses of the X-Wing comics as ebooks from Barnes & Noble and elsewhere.