A few months ago, Qi’ra made her stunning return to Star Wars storytelling in the ongoing War of the Bounty Hunters crossover. But it seems her story is just beginning.
IGN revealed today that a new comic miniseries focusing on Qi’ra will be coming later this year, titled Star Wars: Crimson Reign. The series will run for five issues and will debut in November, and the story is being written by the ever-excellent Charles Soule – who is also writing the War of the Bounty Hunters story. The story is being teased as something that will “reshape the history of the Star Wars Galaxy during the Age of Rebellion,” and Soule mentioned that it’ll all be connected to why Qi’ra kicked things off in War of the Bounty Hunters in the first place. But whereas the main focus of that story is on Boba Fett, in Crimson Reign it’ll be on Qi’ra.
Interestingly, Soule mentioned that this whole story is part of a trilogy. Here’s what he told IGN:
“From the moment I took the gig writing Star Wars, I wanted to do new things in the Star Wars timeline between Episodes V and VI, using new characters from all eras of the galaxy far, far away. Crimson Reign, which continues what I plan as a trilogy that began with War of the Bounty Hunters, is a great example of how I like to write Star Wars stories. Everything and everyone is fair game, and I think people are really going to enjoy it. Await the Reign.”
Note that he said Crimson Reign continues the trilogy, so it seems that War of the Bounty Hunters is the first chapter, and then Crimson Dawn is the next one. But what’s the final installment? I don’t think we know yet. But it is very interesting, and it means all of this is leading somewhere. It also sounds like this Qi’ra story will continue on the story of War of the Bounty Hunters, which seems to confirm when it’ll be set in the timeline.
I think this is super exciting, and I can’t wait for it. I think of this miniseries in a similar vein to The Rise of Kylo Ren (not surprisingly also written by none other than Charles Soule, who stays quite busy with Star Wars) in the sense that it is a major addition to the story of a character first introduced in a film. Sometimes comics can feel like they tell marginally connected and largely insignificant stories, but that’s not the case here. And, well, there’s one other connection to The Rise of Kylo Ren as well: on the cover of Crimson Reign is Ren, the previous leader of the Knights of Ren. And that’s really fascinating.
I really can’t wait for this. The story sounds like it’s something significant and important, the teases we’ve gotten so far sound very interesting, and Charles Soule has done a great job with pretty much every other comic series he’s written, so I have no doubt that this will be fantastic as well.
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