Star Wars has a new, expanding timeline

The Star Wars timeline is expanding. At Star Wars Celebration 2023, Lucasfilm confirmed two far-reaching eras are coming to the cinematic Star Wars universe, stretching out 25,000 years before the events of the current cinematic timeline and further into an indefinite future. Lucasfilm laid out the timeline, in Marvel Cinematic Universe fashion, for an easy guide to when new Star Wars stories will be taking place (but not when they’ll come out).

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy showed an image with the newly expanded timeline on screen, leading from Dawn of the Jedi, through the Old Republic, High Republic, Fall of the Jedi, Reign of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, New Republic, Rise of the First Order, to the New Jedi Order.

The Dawn of the Jedi will act as the earliest age of Star Wars, and will be explored in a new film from director James Mangold (Logan, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). The untitled Star Wars movie from Mangold will be a “biblical epic” about the emergence of the Force and the first Jedi, in a setting no less than 25,000 years before the events of the original movie trilogy.

That places the Dawn of the Jedi-era before the Old Republic era that many Star Wars fans are familiar with through (de-canonized Legends) stories in books, comics, and video games, like BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic role-playing games and The Old Republic MMO.

The later High Republic era has been explored in a series of novels and comics in recent years, telling stories of the last golden age of the Jedi Order, before the institutional rot that made it ripe for obliteration by Emperor Palpatine in the prequel trilogy. That phase of the Star Wars timeline will be explored in The Acolyte, the live-action series coming to Disney Plus in 2024.

The Fall of the Jedi, Reign of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, New Republic, and Rise of the First Order are very familiar to Star Wars fans, having been explored in Episodes I-IX, spinoffs like Rogue One and Solo, and various TV series like Andor, The Mandalorian, Rebels, and The Book of Boba Fett.

Further out in the future is an all-new era: the New Jedi Order. This phase is set after the events of the sequel trilogy (after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), and will see Rey (Daisy Ridley) building a new Jedi Academy in an attempt to bring the order back to full strength. Very little is known about this new phase of Star Wars, other than that it will apparently pick up 15 years after the events of Rise of Skywalker.