Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes Needs Yaddle

The eyes of most Star Wars fans are set resolutely on the era following The Return of the Jedi and understandably so. The Mandalorian and Ahsoka continue introducing and reintroducing compelling characters and lore from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and the Original Trilogy. The rise of the First Order feels more and more inevitable.

But let’s not sleep on other eras from galaxies far and farther away.

With Phase III of High Republic storytelling launching this fall, John Jackson Miller’s pre-The Phantom Menace and Jedi Council-centric novel, Star Wars: The Living Force, set for publication in April 2024, and an as-yet-to-be-confirmed release date for the live-action High Republic-era show, The Acolyte, the time before Skywalkers and their sagas is becoming increasingly relevant—and detailed.

Just as 25,000-year-old Professor Huyang might prove to be a connective storytelling device across Star Wars eras, so, too, should we begin looking for other characters that can provide some narrative consistency from the Old Republic to the eventual New Jedi Order.

Your Yodas. Your Grogus. Your Maz Kanatas. Your Yaddles.

Let’s take Yaddle. Gone are the days when Yaddle was simply the “Yoda-with-long-hair” Jedi Master of The Phantom Menace. She has appeared in multiple High Republic stories—the Phase I young adult novel The High Republic: Out of the Shadows and the Phase II adult novel The High Republic: Cataclysm—and played a pivotal and fatal role in dueling a fallen Dooku in the episode “The Sith Lord” from Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, and has been mentioned in other books, video games, and comics alike.

So, let’s talk about the free-to-play mobile game Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes (SWGOH)—and why Yaddle needs to make her debut. Since November 2015, SWGOH has been giving fans a chance to collect and combine characters from across the Star Wars universe in a variety of battle modes. Brand new characters have been created for the game, and others have made their three-dimensional debut.

But the game’s strategy demands an understanding of the kinds of characters that work well together—and this cooperation is usually based on character factions. It’s why the Old Republic-era Dark Side droid HK-47 works so well with the Rebellion-era droid aficionado and rouge archaeologist Dr. Aphra. It’s why R2-D2 and C-3PO—tagged as “Galactic Republic,” “Rebel,” “Droid,” and “Resistance”—can be successfully integrated into most Light Side teams.

With faction tags like “Sith Empire,” “Old Republic,” and “Unaligned Force User” already at play and characters like Dash Rendar, Starkiller, and Darth Malgus already in the line-up, it’s only a matter of time before we see the High Republic faction introduced.

So, let’s get Yaddle in there: a recognizable face that can span eras and factions, that already has plenty of art on which to base an animated model and a character that both hardcore and casual fans alike know and appreciate.

And maybe with Yaddle comes both a “Jedi Council” faction and a “High Republic” faction—and a whole bunch of new characters and teams for her to join.