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Star Wars: The High Republic - The Finale (2025) #1
THE END OF THE BEGINNING! The final battle between the Jedi and the Nihil has been fought, sacrifices have been made and the dust settles. As friends and allies gather for one last celebration, a decision is made, and a fate sealed. Guest-starring faces from across the best-selling multimedia initiative. All roads lead to Dalna.
Kindle Edition
Published July 30, 2025
4 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Cavan Scott
846 books436 followersis a freelance comic writer and author. He is best known for his work on a variety of spin-offs from both Doctor Who and Star Wars, as well as comics and novels for Vikings, Pacific Rim, Sherlock Holmes, and Penguins of Madagascar.
Cavan Scott, along with Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Daniel Jose Older, and Charles Soule are crafting a new era in the Star Wars publishing world called Star Wars: The High Republic. Cavan's contribution to the era is a comic book series released through Marvel Comics titled Star Wars: The High Republic.
Cavan Scott, along with Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Daniel Jose Older, and Charles Soule are crafting a new era in the Star Wars publishing world called Star Wars: The High Republic. Cavan's contribution to the era is a comic book series released through Marvel Comics titled Star Wars: The High Republic.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 27, 2025
Live, Laugh, Lourna Dee (And yay, Dalna!)
December 9, 2025
A thrilling and satisfying conclusion to the High Republic. The Finale really only makes sense if you’ve been following the comics, but is a great bookend to the story overall.
As the last piece of THR media (at least as a part of the main run), I am bittersweet about its end. On the one and, phase 3 meandered a lot, but the story overall is some of the best storytelling I have ever read. I particularly like that this comic manages to come full circle to the very beginning of the story without feeling forced, something Star Wars regularly attempts and is not always successful in doing.
Thanks for the great time, we truly are all the Republic.
As the last piece of THR media (at least as a part of the main run), I am bittersweet about its end. On the one and, phase 3 meandered a lot, but the story overall is some of the best storytelling I have ever read. I particularly like that this comic manages to come full circle to the very beginning of the story without feeling forced, something Star Wars regularly attempts and is not always successful in doing.
Thanks for the great time, we truly are all the Republic.
August 18, 2025
2.5/5 stars
So that was the 'sad end' we were promised?!
I was expecting something more from a tease that people have been waiting for since 2019, since The High Republic was still only Project Luminous, a reference to the sad end of Master Trennis in Cavan Scott's audiodrama Dooku: Jedi Lost. It's been hanging over her arc since she was first introduced in Phase I's comic series. And now, as the series comes to an end, it lured me back even as I had completely given up (to the point that I didn't read Trials of the Jedi).
And it was decidedly... 'meh'.
Mostly because it could have been a genuinely good story, a heartbreaking tragedy, and instead what we got was... a monologue. At the end of the day, even Keeve's ending becomes emblematic of the issues that plagued The High Republic. The series sold itself as a multimedia endeavour that could be picked up at any point with no need to refer to other books, but the further we got into the series, the less it was possible to just pick up a book and read a fun, standalone story, close it and never think about The High Republic again. The Luminous authors seemed so desperate to create an interconnected epic that several stories that could have been good were sacrificed, or only got half told, in order to retain readers through delayed revelations, favouring Easter Eggs over proper worldbuilding, and cameos to make sure no one forgot that these characters weren't the only ones and that there were other books and comics out there. As the final test, I tried to read The Finale as a standalone, to see if it worked, but it doesn't. While the cameos go beyond just that, they still take away from the story The Finale is trying to tell, taking away from Keeve and making her disappear for a whole section of the story.
Once more, my issues with The High Republic rear their ugly head. The Finale could have worked as a standalone, even as a one-issue story any fan could have picked up and enjoyed, but several things way against it from the start. Starting with its title: who, besides established fans, are going to pick up an issue called 'The Finale'? Look no further than the opening shot: a new fan would have been introduced to Jedi Master Keeve Trennis, Marshal of the Stormwall Defense Fleet, a warrior tried and true... at the end of a war. It wouldn't have even mattered what the war was. Trennis's arc, even for this issue alone, could have been unlearning how to be a warrior, dealing with the status of her military forces, haggling with politics to either maintain her fleet or disband it, then either quitting when faced with the special interests getting in the way of making sure her soldiers were taken care of (the Republic being modelled partly on Ancient Rome, it would have been a fun historical reference to have a general attempting to settle her soldiers in colonies as reward for their service). All the while, the Order would have been trying to call her off on other missions, causing her crisis of faith in the Jedi to increase as she is tugged away from the work she felt she needed to be doing. But no. Instead, Scott brings her back to Coruscant, wraps up a lot of other storylines, features his own characters as much as possible, then shifts into High Republic mode and drops a few teases (but nothing more) about what went down in Trials of the Jedi, namedrops a few fan favourite characters (Elzar Mann and Avar Kriss) just to lure stragglers into buying it, before finally remembering this is meant to be Keeve's story, offering her a choice () and, finally... making her disappear for half the issue.
And that means... a monologue.
One of the highlights of The High Republic at the start, something the Luminous authors forgot, caught up as they were in their interconnected epic, was that High Republic Jedi weren't the Jedi of the prequels... yet. The early books did a great job showing how they hadn't yet become the dogmatic enforcers who eventually fell prey to Darth Sidious's schemes. Keeve's monologue sounds like they forgot about this theme as they told their epic story and only just remembered now that the story was finished. What's truly disappointing is that the Luminous authors could have leaned into a genre Star Wars has definitely done before: actual tragedy (especially in 2025 and the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith). At the end of the day, Keeve's reasons for leaving the Jedi aren't even that interesting because they've been done before, usually a lot better (Ahsoka's departure was far more tragic and gutwrenching than Keeve's). Imagine what the ending of The Finale would have felt like if there had been another reason for Keeve's departure. What if she had had a vision about the path the Jedi were on and where it led to (she could even have had an exact vision of Order 66, a clear sense of the Jedi's path)? What if she had done everything right, disbanded her military, served the Jedi, ? What if everything had been working in her favour... only for the vision to destroy it all, causing her to question it all? In that case, walking away to follow the path the Jedi had abandonned would have made more sense and felt bittersweet (making it a decision Yoda couldn't understand). Alas, what we got was nowhere near that cool.
The High Republic, when it started, was exactly what I wanted: a series about the Jedi in their prime. Somewhere down the road, it got too caught up in wanting to echo Marvel that it forgot that it could tell simple, standalone stories and that not everything needed to be interconnected. It was too desperate to keep us interested that it ended up delaying answers way too long, made things worse by introducing mew mysteries before the old ones were solved, and lost me as a result. I went into The Finale hoping that Scott, one of the consistently good Luminous writers, would manage to make me feel like I had returned to those early days. Sadly not.
Fortunately, Star Wars has recently given us a series that has gone a long way to putting that to rights.
What The High Republic could have been lives on in Marc Guggenheim's Jedi Knights series.
So that was the 'sad end' we were promised?!
I was expecting something more from a tease that people have been waiting for since 2019, since The High Republic was still only Project Luminous, a reference to the sad end of Master Trennis in Cavan Scott's audiodrama Dooku: Jedi Lost. It's been hanging over her arc since she was first introduced in Phase I's comic series. And now, as the series comes to an end, it lured me back even as I had completely given up (to the point that I didn't read Trials of the Jedi).
And it was decidedly... 'meh'.
Mostly because it could have been a genuinely good story, a heartbreaking tragedy, and instead what we got was... a monologue. At the end of the day, even Keeve's ending becomes emblematic of the issues that plagued The High Republic. The series sold itself as a multimedia endeavour that could be picked up at any point with no need to refer to other books, but the further we got into the series, the less it was possible to just pick up a book and read a fun, standalone story, close it and never think about The High Republic again. The Luminous authors seemed so desperate to create an interconnected epic that several stories that could have been good were sacrificed, or only got half told, in order to retain readers through delayed revelations, favouring Easter Eggs over proper worldbuilding, and cameos to make sure no one forgot that these characters weren't the only ones and that there were other books and comics out there. As the final test, I tried to read The Finale as a standalone, to see if it worked, but it doesn't. While the cameos go beyond just that, they still take away from the story The Finale is trying to tell, taking away from Keeve and making her disappear for a whole section of the story.
Once more, my issues with The High Republic rear their ugly head. The Finale could have worked as a standalone, even as a one-issue story any fan could have picked up and enjoyed, but several things way against it from the start. Starting with its title: who, besides established fans, are going to pick up an issue called 'The Finale'? Look no further than the opening shot: a new fan would have been introduced to Jedi Master Keeve Trennis, Marshal of the Stormwall Defense Fleet, a warrior tried and true... at the end of a war. It wouldn't have even mattered what the war was. Trennis's arc, even for this issue alone, could have been unlearning how to be a warrior, dealing with the status of her military forces, haggling with politics to either maintain her fleet or disband it, then either quitting when faced with the special interests getting in the way of making sure her soldiers were taken care of (the Republic being modelled partly on Ancient Rome, it would have been a fun historical reference to have a general attempting to settle her soldiers in colonies as reward for their service). All the while, the Order would have been trying to call her off on other missions, causing her crisis of faith in the Jedi to increase as she is tugged away from the work she felt she needed to be doing. But no. Instead, Scott brings her back to Coruscant, wraps up a lot of other storylines, features his own characters as much as possible, then shifts into High Republic mode and drops a few teases (but nothing more) about what went down in Trials of the Jedi, namedrops a few fan favourite characters (Elzar Mann and Avar Kriss) just to lure stragglers into buying it, before finally remembering this is meant to be Keeve's story, offering her a choice () and, finally... making her disappear for half the issue.
And that means... a monologue.
One of the highlights of The High Republic at the start, something the Luminous authors forgot, caught up as they were in their interconnected epic, was that High Republic Jedi weren't the Jedi of the prequels... yet. The early books did a great job showing how they hadn't yet become the dogmatic enforcers who eventually fell prey to Darth Sidious's schemes. Keeve's monologue sounds like they forgot about this theme as they told their epic story and only just remembered now that the story was finished. What's truly disappointing is that the Luminous authors could have leaned into a genre Star Wars has definitely done before: actual tragedy (especially in 2025 and the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith). At the end of the day, Keeve's reasons for leaving the Jedi aren't even that interesting because they've been done before, usually a lot better (Ahsoka's departure was far more tragic and gutwrenching than Keeve's). Imagine what the ending of The Finale would have felt like if there had been another reason for Keeve's departure. What if she had had a vision about the path the Jedi were on and where it led to (she could even have had an exact vision of Order 66, a clear sense of the Jedi's path)? What if she had done everything right, disbanded her military, served the Jedi, ? What if everything had been working in her favour... only for the vision to destroy it all, causing her to question it all? In that case, walking away to follow the path the Jedi had abandonned would have made more sense and felt bittersweet (making it a decision Yoda couldn't understand). Alas, what we got was nowhere near that cool.
The High Republic, when it started, was exactly what I wanted: a series about the Jedi in their prime. Somewhere down the road, it got too caught up in wanting to echo Marvel that it forgot that it could tell simple, standalone stories and that not everything needed to be interconnected. It was too desperate to keep us interested that it ended up delaying answers way too long, made things worse by introducing mew mysteries before the old ones were solved, and lost me as a result. I went into The Finale hoping that Scott, one of the consistently good Luminous writers, would manage to make me feel like I had returned to those early days. Sadly not.
Fortunately, Star Wars has recently given us a series that has gone a long way to putting that to rights.
What The High Republic could have been lives on in Marc Guggenheim's Jedi Knights series.
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September 2, 2025Star Wars: The High Republic – The Finale | Comic Review
Cavan Scott was given the privilege of ending the publishing initiative of The High Republic with Star Wars: The High Republic – The Finale. We finally got our answer to “When will Keeve Trennis leave the Jedi Order?”
Keeve Trennis leaves the Order.
While there were major hints throughout Phase I, I was still waiting through Phase III to find out what was happening with Keeve. How did she become a member of the “Lost Twenty” — Jedi who left the Order on their own accord.
Phase III showed us more of how she was losing her faith in the Jedi Order and what they were becoming. When Star Wars: The High Republic: The Fear of the Jedi ended, I was shocked that we didn’t get the “conclusion” to her story.
When Keeve announced her decision to leave to Yoda and Sskeer, it made sense. Everything was leading to this moment. She was concerned with what the future held for the Jedi and didn’t believe she could be apart of it any longer.
A future story with Keeven helping on Dalna at The Beacon would be fun. What does a Jedi do when they leave the Order?
Lorna Dee shines until the end.
When Lorna Dee was introduced early in the High Republic, I thought she was going to be a one-note villain. She was a cool villain, but a simple one nonetheless.
Leave it to Star Wars to make her one of the more interesting characters into the entire journey.
Dee’s transformation from vicious killer to helping to rebuild Dalna (that she partially destroyed) was a fun road to travel on with her. Whether it was the comics, books, or audio dramas, every time that Lorna Dee made an appearance it enhanced the story. That’s all you can ask from a character.
OrbaLin lives! Nubs Nation represent!
I was so excited to see some of my favorite characters from the High Republic make appearances in this book.
I was convinced that ObraLin was dead. After his continual division in The Fear of the Jedi series, I was convinced that he was dead at the end. His character was super fun, and I hope that we see him pop up in a few more things.
And, finally, we can’t end this without talking about the appearance of Nubs. He’s so much fun in Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, so I hope we see all three of the young characters from that show appear in more things going forward.
Cavan Scott was given the privilege of ending the publishing initiative of The High Republic with Star Wars: The High Republic – The Finale. We finally got our answer to “When will Keeve Trennis leave the Jedi Order?”
Keeve Trennis leaves the Order.
While there were major hints throughout Phase I, I was still waiting through Phase III to find out what was happening with Keeve. How did she become a member of the “Lost Twenty” — Jedi who left the Order on their own accord.
Phase III showed us more of how she was losing her faith in the Jedi Order and what they were becoming. When Star Wars: The High Republic: The Fear of the Jedi ended, I was shocked that we didn’t get the “conclusion” to her story.
When Keeve announced her decision to leave to Yoda and Sskeer, it made sense. Everything was leading to this moment. She was concerned with what the future held for the Jedi and didn’t believe she could be apart of it any longer.
A future story with Keeven helping on Dalna at The Beacon would be fun. What does a Jedi do when they leave the Order?
Lorna Dee shines until the end.
When Lorna Dee was introduced early in the High Republic, I thought she was going to be a one-note villain. She was a cool villain, but a simple one nonetheless.
Leave it to Star Wars to make her one of the more interesting characters into the entire journey.
Dee’s transformation from vicious killer to helping to rebuild Dalna (that she partially destroyed) was a fun road to travel on with her. Whether it was the comics, books, or audio dramas, every time that Lorna Dee made an appearance it enhanced the story. That’s all you can ask from a character.
OrbaLin lives! Nubs Nation represent!
I was so excited to see some of my favorite characters from the High Republic make appearances in this book.
I was convinced that ObraLin was dead. After his continual division in The Fear of the Jedi series, I was convinced that he was dead at the end. His character was super fun, and I hope that we see him pop up in a few more things.
And, finally, we can’t end this without talking about the appearance of Nubs. He’s so much fun in Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, so I hope we see all three of the young characters from that show appear in more things going forward.
August 17, 2025
A decent ending to this long running series, but one that doesn’t hit as hard if you’ve not kept up with the various tie-ins and additional series.
(I find Thomas’s lengthy review quite agreeable for the most part.)
(I find Thomas’s lengthy review quite agreeable for the most part.)
August 29, 2025
A bit meh and unnecessary other than finishing off the coming story's characters. and to be honest, I've not cared much for this cast. Keeve is mediocre, and her leaving the Order felt a little forced if you ask me.
July 31, 2025
My babies! 🥹😭 what a wonderful end to this long running series. I loved following Keeve’s journey and she’ll forever be one of my favorite Star Wars characters. Thank you Cavan Scott! 🖤
August 7, 2025
The end is really here now. Keeve's decision was one I wasn't expecting, but it makes sense. It's wild to think it ends here, but for now, it has!
November 9, 2025
3.75
A decent ending the the overarching HR story. I didn't read most of it, but I read enough to get the message of this final.
I'll read it all. Eventually.
A decent ending the the overarching HR story. I didn't read most of it, but I read enough to get the message of this final.
I'll read it all. Eventually.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews