The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy finished a year ago and we’re still relying on tie-in books to help us fill in all the blanks that the movies created. The First Order, for instance, is only sketchily colored in across the three films, with it left to comics, novels and other materials to dig into their inner workings. A new SW book, for instance, explains a little about the political origins of the organization.
The Star Wars Book, published by DK and penned by franchise experts Cole Horton, Pablo Hidalgo and Dan Zehr, has a chapter all about the First Order. One intriguing extract explaining how it began reveals that the FO’s agents pulled a similar game of political manipulation within the New Republic to the one Palpatine played with the Galactic Senate back in the day.
“We know that the military might of the First Order was built up in the Unknown Regions by the escaping Imperial leadership in the decades after the Battle of Jakku,” the extract begins, referencing how the FO’s military force was made up of the Imperial leftovers that survived the final battle of the rebellion. However, the political power they gained came from other, subtler means.
“The First Order also had its start inside the New Republic,” the book notes, with agents said to have created “a political stalemate, forcing systems that fear losing control of their autonomy to break away from the New Republic – in a coalition called the First Order.”
This makes a lot of sense considering that Palpatine was the one secretly pulling the FO’s strings behind the scenes. After all, he’s always been good at using the democratic system against the good guys, so of course he’d use the same tricks he did in the final days of the original Republic. Tragically, he achieved the same result as he did the first time. But then again, the First Order ended up being defeated just like the Empire, too. Star Wars – it’s like poetry, it rhymes.
