Star Wars: The next 100 days: Everything happening before The Rise of Skywalker

November 5: Resistance Reborn

Read the next line carefully, because it’s very important.

If you consume no other material before The Rise of Skywalker, make absolute certain you read this book by December 20.

Resistance Reborn is being marketed as the most significant story in the Journey to The Rise of Skywalker series. It features main characters such as Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, and Rey, and — as the book’s title implies — follows them as they work to rebuild the Resistance following The Last Jedi and leading up to The Rise of Skywalker.

This is the first time a full-length book outside of film novelizations has focused on these main characters, meaning there is likely a lot to reveal that the movies simply haven’t had space for.

Though there are many Star Wars fans out there who prefer only to watch the movies and cast the expanded universe aside — which you are totally welcome to do — one of the most frustrating things about mainstream movies like Star Wars is that they very rarely exceed three hour run times.

That doesn’t leave much time to include every detail of a character’s backstory or expand upon certain segments of information. The expanded universe exists as a way for fans to seek out more background, if they so desire.

Now, this doesn’t mean the movie won’t be able to tell a full, coherant story without expanded material. It can’t rely on the expanded universe or assume everyone reads all the books or watches all the shows — just look at what happened when Darth Maul showed up at the end of Solo. Fans who hadn’t seen him since The Phantom Menace would have assumed he was dead, having no idea he survived (as seen in both The Clone Wars and Rebels).

Books like this are there for the taking if you so choose to give them a chance.

But if not, you can always read the book after you watch the movie and enjoy it knowing where it’s leading to. Many die-hard Star Wars readers will probably read it again afterward anyway.

Other Star Wars books soon to hit booksellers:

• October 1: The Skywalker Saga — Delilah S. Dawson is the author of Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire as well as Phasma and several short stories set in the Star Wars universe. This book will be a retelling of the Skywalker stories in the form of child-friendly fairytales.
• October 4: Spark of the Resistance — Rey and Poe team up in this young adult novel to fight against the First Order.
• November 19: Force Collector — This will likely be a book heavy on Jedi lore and may give some background information on some of the Force-centric things The Rise of Skywalker will touch on a month later.