What We Learned About the Future of the Star Wars Galaxy in Aftermath: Empire’s End

While not answering every question, Empire’s End provides the most complete picture to date of the status quo in the galaxy in the 30-odd years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and offers up compelling clues as to the fates of some of our favorite characters (and…others). Here’s what we’ve learned.
Major spoilers ahead.
The Emperor’s Back-Up Plan
This has been hinted at in earlier books, but Empire’s End makes explicit that Emperor Palpatine did not exactly go gentle into that good night. From the movie alone, it seems as though the master manipulator became overconfident and was therefore unprepared for the Rebel assault that ended his plans and his life. Not exactly.
Here we learn Palpatine knew something was up—that Luke Skywalker represented a variable that couldn’t be entirely accounted for. He absolutely had back up plans, which he placed in the care of Gallius Rax, plans that play out over the course of Empire’s End. It turns out that Palpatine’s plans aren’t exactly what the Imperial remnant had in mind, but that’s what you get for putting too much faith in that guy.
For fans of the old Expanded Universe, especially the Dark Empire trilogy: said plans do not involve an endless series of clones.
A Hutt Ten
We’d never never dare objectify a Hutt woman, particularly when she’s one of the most vicious and resourceful of her kind anywhere in the galaxy. In Empire’s End, we find her consolidating her power among the downtrodden people of Jakku, but even more striking is her appearance: unlike other Hutts we’ve met in canon media and otherwise, Niima is…skinny. Which was something that we didn’t really know that Hutts can be. It’s not really a qualification for anything, but indolence certainly didn’t do Jabba any favors when Leia’s chains were wrapped around his girthy neck. Niima, on the other hand, is described as looking a bit less like a slug than a snake, and moves in much the same way. Jabba was gross, but Niima is altogether more terrifying.
Niima Outpost, by the way, is the name of the settlement from which Rey and Finn escaped early in The Force Awakens, so the Hutt clearly left her mark on Jakku. Also their slime trail.
But don’t tell her I said that.
The Return of the Lumpy

The revised Star Wars canon hasn’t entirely expunged elements from the old Expanded Universe: elements (such as popular villain Grand Admiral Thrawn) have been incorporated into the new stuff, even if not always in expected ways. But surely they wouldn’t reference the legendarily bad/awesome Star Wars Holiday Special, that iconic bit of cheese that to this day serves as a warning that there are lines which even the most popular franchises ought not cross? (I adore it.) While the canon status of Diahann Carroll’s softcore erotic-dancer character Mermeia remains ambiguous, not so with the wookiee named Lumpy. Lumpawaroo, to be precise, is the son of Chewbacca in the special as well as in Empire’s End. We don’t get much on Lumpy’s mom, but Chewie saves the kid’s life following the liberation of Kashyyyk in the previous book. Yup, Chewie has a kid. And yup, his name’s Lumpy.
Meanwhile, I’ll be pitching my full-length novel about Bea Arthur’s singing bartender Ackmena.
Meesa Sad
When last we saw Jar-Jar Binks, he was serving as a pall bearer for the former queen of Naboo, Padmé Amidala, she having died of sadness or something. There’s a weirdly poignant interlude here, during which we briefly catch up with Jar-Jar, outcast and forgotten, doing tricks for no one in particular in Naboo’s capital, Theed. His sad-clown fate almost makes you feel bad for hating on the character for so many years. Almost.
Whill Power

Another interlude takes us to the planet Christophis, a crystal world that you might remember from the Clone Wars TV show. The planet is host to pilgrims who honor both light sides of the force, with elements that recall Rogue One. The light-side force-wielders are there to return Kyber crystals taken to power the Death Stars (in Rogue One, the moon of Jedha had similarly been a source of the Force-sensitive crystals). They also refer to something called The Journal of the Whills, a book of Jedi wisdom that suggests ill-fated companions (or more?) Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, described as “Guardians of the Whills” in the latest movie (and about whom we’ll learn more in an upcoming novel).
Similarly, a Sith cult has arisen on the world of Devaron. The Acolytes of the Beyond are collecting powerful Sith artifacts and using iconography related to Darth Vader. There’s also a mysterious Sith lightsaber of some importance, and they’re lead by a powerful dark-side adept named Yupe Tashu. One could probably draw a straight line between these cultists and the later Knights of Ren in The Force Awakens. And, just a theory: Yupe Tashu is as good a candidate as any to become Supreme Leader Snoke.
The Foreshadowing Awakens
It’s not just the Knights of Ren. There are several other bits that presage the events of The Force Awakens: Temmin Wexley, son of the main protagonist Norra, comes into his own as a pilot during the course of the book, and even grows a scruffy beard by the end. Wexley (also known as “Snap,”, you may recall, grows up to become a member of Poe Dameron’s elite Black Squadron, played by Greg Grunberg.
There’s a fair bit of ambivalence about the virtues of democracy in the post-Jedi books to date. The split that we see between the New Republic and General Leia’s paramilitary faction seems to have been the result of the slow and messy process of deliberative government. Lead by the stern-but-moral Mon Mothma, the New Republic Senate isn’t a place of unalloyed virtue, and corruption almost derails the climactic battle to end the empire. Even by this point in the timeline, the Princess is beginning to tire of politics. Leia’s successful effort to free Kashyyyk in the previous book, Life Debt, has made her a hero in some quarters, but distrusted as a maverick in others. But a woman’s place, after all, is in the Resistance.
Bad Baby
There’s are other hints about the future of the Organa family: Ben Solo is born at a key moment. It’s joyous, of course, but Leia’s burgeoning Force sensitivity had given her insight that she brushed aside: a streak of darkness in the child. I’m sure that will all work out fine.
We also get to see where strain might develop between Leia and Han: it doesn’t play out here, but Han’s devil-may-care willingness to fly into danger clearly conflicts with Leia’s self-control, as well as a self-sacrificing nature that can sometimes endanger those closest to her. Again, I’m sure that will turn out fine.
(In the Old Expanded Universe, Jacen Solo and his twin sister Jaina were born in the concluding chapter of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. Much like Ben, Jacen eventually went bad, becoming Sith Lord Darth Caedus. To date, there’s no timeline in which parenting works out all that well for Han and Leia.)
Finally, we’ve met Brendol Hux. He’s the father of Armitage Hux, Domhnall Gleason’s character in The Force Awakens. Here, Brendol is in the last stages of his plan for a new generation of Stormtroopers: children taken at birth and taught to serve Hux and what will become the First Order. Undoubtedly, stormtrooper FN-2187 (aka Finn) is part of the program.
Empire’s End is available now in an exclusive edition from B&N with a pull-out poster.