Lit Books Star Wars Master of Evil

If it's a sequel to his last book, I'm all in. I mean, honestly, with that title, I'm probably in either way, but I really want one of the novels to just explain Snoke to me (and maybe slightly retcon Rise of Kylo Ren or whatever the mini was called)

ETA: the Fall catalog also confirms the 3 leaked Legends Essential books, has FACPOV:ROTJ in trade, and a $60 Deluxe Edition of Stover's RotS novelization

 

Palpatine around ROTS or after ROTJ leading up to the ST

 

It is about Vader... refering to Kenobi quote from ANH: "Only a Master of Evil, Darth!"

 

Awesome. Shadow of the Sith was really good. I imagine it's a sequel to that book.

 

The safe (and boring) answer is that it’ll be a Vader novel, set within that infernal Dark Times era that I so despise.

But I certainly hope it’s something to do with Snoke/Palpatine/Plagueis.

 

I hadn't thought of Plagueis, although I think it's probably too near Acolyte's cancellation for them to greenlight something about him in that time frame, a different version of Luceno's novel that is focused on what becomes Project: Necromancer would be dope and a great lead in to Snoke....

 

Even a Palpatine novel that has some Plagueis (in flashbacks or whatever) would be interesting, but you’re probably right. They’ll keep the Acolyte stuff on a shelf for a few more years until it’s collected enough dust and it’s clear no one else is doing anything with it. I do think we’re long overdue for a Snoke novel though.

Another mad guess is it’s a distant prequel about Exim Panshard during his lifetime, however many thousands of years ago that was.

 

The best time to go back to where the Acolyte left off is after the movies have started back up and people are mainly focused on them. They should eventually go back to that story even if it will be told in books. But probably not until the people that wanted the story to continue in visual format have other things to focus on.

 

If Solo’s anything to go by, it’ll be a dog’s age before they go back and pick up live action cliffhangers, even with a plethora of other projects coming to screen.

 

There is a difference between the two though. Solo underperformed at the same time other Star Wars movies were making a billion dollars or more.

Fewer people tend to be watching Disney Plus programming for non children in general. It seems most people tend to be paying for Disney Plus for their kids these days more than they are for themselves.

Disney Plus has to count viewership by minutes watched for crying out loud whereas Max lets people know how many actual viewers watched their material.

 

I’d imagine the character of Darth Maul is probably more popular/marketable than anyone in the Acolyte cast. If after 7 years (and counting) they haven’t put out a book or comic with his big red face on it following up Solo I’m not sure that the Acolyte’s hypothetical literary sequel will come swifter.

Lucasfilm will absolutely let it sit until they’re well and truly certain there’s no possible way of getting an onscreen follow up before pulling the trigger on a smaller medium continuation.

 

Can you, though?

 

Guesses:
Darth Plagueis novel (Unlikely)
Vader (Likely but hoope not
Palpatine novel (Would be awesome)
Maul mentoring Qi'ra while flashing back to his own apprenticeship? (Peak cinema)
Acolyte continuation (Maybe)

 

It's all rather intriguing but I can wait.

 

Obviously, this will be about the last ruler of the Rakatan Infinite Empire before it went into decline.

On the off chance it winds up being Vader, what would they focus on?

 

One assumes it'd take place before the Andor/Rebels/Thrawn era Rebellion really gets going - Vader's a bit busy in that time, and there shouldn't be that many Jedi left to hunt down or atrocities to commit. I'd guess it's more parallel to the Soule comic series of Vader in full Jedi hunting mode or maybe tracing certain artifacts Sidious wants/needs, but I don't feel strongly about it. Maybe it parallels Mask of Fear, timeline wise . . .

 

Del Rey/Random House and Marvel work very closely together (they are really just down the street from one another) so I don't really see Random House doing anything that conflicts with the Vader comic lines Marvel has done. The Soule Vader comic took place within about the first five years of the Dark Times and the original Vader canon comic obviously took place after ANH. The Andor series takes place from 5BBY to the time of Rogue One/ANH.

So there would be a time period of about ten years (from 15-5 BBY where we know very little about what was going on during the Dark Times so that would be where I would imagine this book would be placed if it is indeed a Vader novel.

 

I mean, this is 100% a Vader novel. No question about it.

 

It will be about Vader taking night classes in evil so that he can get his Masters certification to comply with the new regulations for his job-level. He'll be frustrated that he has more real-world evil experience than his professors, and in a seemingly tragic turn goes on to slaughter the entire faculty, the student body, their families, their pets, and their pets' families. Except it turns out the Emperor was an honorary member of the school administration, and he awards Vader a Doctorate in evil. The epilogue reveals that when Obi-Wan says Vader is "only a Master of Evil," he's bringing up long-running gossip that Vader's Doctorate isn't legitimate and that's why Vader is so ticked off at him, bringing new insight to a key scene in a beloved Star Wars movie.

 

Yeah my first thought when I read this was "I didn't spend 6 years in Evil Medical School to be called Mister, thank you very much."

 

This is a very standard metric all streaming services use. When Squid Games Season 2 game out it was cited in minutes watched. I don't know what Max does in particular but I wouldn't be surprised if they also use that metric.

https://www.imdb.com/news/ni65009313/?ref_=tt_nwr_1

Looks like they use both, which I'm sure is reasonably standard.

What's your source for people watching D+ less for non-children programming?