While discussing Mandalorian + Grogu bombing (very deservedly!) in it's second weekend, my husband asked me what Star Wars story I'd be excited to see in the same time period, in the ashes of the Empire, with a fledgling, ultimately doomed New Republic. So here goes:
The Jedi were legend, rumor, superstition under the Empire (handwaving about how prequel trilogy timeline really doesn't mesh with OT at all), but everyone knows there was something Jedi-relevant about the fall of the Empire, even if everyone is fuzzy on the details.
The trouble is, there's only one Jedi in the galaxy, he doesn't actually know much about how to be one, and there's a lot to keep Luke busy. Which means the New Republic is very annoyed by the range of grifters, cultists, and petty warlords positioning themselves as Jedi successors and trying to establish non-New Republic sanctioned sources of power and legitmacy.
Our heroes are a pair of investigator/debunkers, who travel planets outside the core to find and expose Jedi fakers who are getting a little too popular and/or a little too political. Think of them as a Houdini/Arthur Conan Doyle pair—one firmly convinced there are no real Jedi, and even the legendary Luke is doing it with bits of wire, etc; the other taking on the duty of debunking out of some loyalty to what s/he imagines the Jedi to be, not wanting their legacy to be sullied.
Plenty of room for capers, heist-like-zaniness, and shootouts as our debunkers take on people in it for the money, for the fans, for the political power, or the genuinely deluded. But the story really begins when they find a grifter who is pulling off their scams with a little help from the genuine, no-kidding Force, and does not want to get drawn into anything bigger than a penny ante shell game...
