Warning! Spoilers ahead Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #8
Star Wars has just confirmed the greatest threat of the High Republic Era is the monstrous species known as the Drengir. The future of Star Wars lies in the past–specifically, in the High Republic Era. With the Skywalker saga now at an end, Lucasfilm is expanding the Star Wars franchise into new media, the Unknown Regions, and the distant past. The current stories set in the High Republic Era take place 200 years before Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, at a time when the galaxy was in a relative state of peace.
That peace was shattered by a band of outlaws called the Nihil, whom Lucasfilm have compared to space Vikings. But as intriguing as the Nihil may be, they aren't the only terrifying new threat to be revealed in this time period. The Jedi have unwittingly awoken a race of dark side plant creatures who even the Sith could not truly defeat–and the monstrous Drengir appear to have been unleashed across the entire galaxy.
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #8, by Alyssa Wong and Minkyu Jung, confirms the Drengir are the true threat of the High Republic Era. This story is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and it stars the rogue adventurer/archaeologist Doctor Aphra who is hired to investigate Nihil technology that is up for sale on the black market. Aphra's quest takes her to the remote world of Dol'har Hyde on the Outer Rim. Although Aphra doesn't realize it, it's clear this world was the site of a battle between the Nihil and the Drengir; the Nihil put up a fight, but it's clear a vast number of their vessels were downed by the forest, which the Drengir control using their mysterious Force powers. It seems that, when the Nihil and the Drengir finally went head-to-head, it didn't go well for the Nihil.
This is the brilliance of Lucasfilm's current transmedia approach, which spans multiple time periods at once. Doctor Aphra #8 essentially serves to whet readers' appetites, to give them a sense of a battle we have yet to see. Evidently the threat of the Drengir will expand across the entire galaxy in the High Republic Era, and they will ultimately wind up at war with the Nihil; that makes sense, given the Drengir consider all mammals simply "meat" to be devoured, and they wouldn't agree to a truce. But the interesting question is whether Dol'har Hyde is simply one world the Drengir visited, or whether it is their homeworld, briefly visited by a lone Jedi in Claudia Gray's novel Into The Dark.
The interesting question, though, is why Doctor Aphra doesn't know anything about the Drengir. It's possible that, after the Drengir's defeat during the High Republic Era, the Jedi will deliberately erase all record of the creatures; they may well represent secrets of the dark side the Jedi would rather be forgotten. There may well be a lot more twists coming in this grand Star Wars transmedia adventure.
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