A new Star Wars novel will address one of the biggest criticisms of Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. The Rise of Skywalker, the final film in the Skywalker Saga, received middling reviews and several plot criticisms. No further Star Wars films have been released since the movie's debut in 2019 (although a Rey-focused sequel is in development); however, Lucasfilm continues to build out its famous sci-fi world and characters in various TV shows, games, and novels.
A new novel from Lucasfilm Publishing, Star Wars: Legacy, will focus on the relationship between General Leia Organa and Rey between Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Played by Carrie Fisher and Daisy Ridley in the films, Leia and Rey established a close bond in The Rise of Skywalker, which picked up a year after the events of The Last Jedi.
In the wake of Luke Skywalker's death, Rey's master and Leia's brother, the duo had bonded offscreen, with Leia continuing to oversee Rey's Jedi training. Fisher tragically passed away after filming The Last Jedi, meaning the scenes she was in for The Rise of Skywalker were minimal and mostly comprised unused footage from Episode VII: The Force Awakens. This made establishing the relationship between Rey and Leia difficult, an issue Star Wars: Legacy intends to tackle.
The new novel, written by Madeleine Roux, will be released in 2026. However, Roux gave a preview of the new novel at the Lucasfilm Publishing panel at New York Comic-Con, telling StarWars.com that it was a challenge to get Rey and Leia to a "mother-daughter" type status.
The Last Jedi established a force dyad between Rey and Kylo Ren (aka Ben Solo, Leia's son), which led to a tentative friendship between the two force-users. That is, until Kylo killed his master, Supreme Leader Snoke, and betrayed Rey by taking his place as the head of the First Order. Roux said this was a "[messy] setup" to find Rey in, which led to a lot of "uncertainty" between her and Leia:
"To pick-up with Rey at a moment of a lot of doubt and weakness and confusion was a lot of fun because you couldn’t ask for a messier setup.You need to get these two people to like each other and be almost like mother daughter or mentor and apprentice. But this is the mother of the guy who she just had an incredibly messy situation with. It’s really fraught. It’s really confusing. And just the thought of being with that person’s mother is pretty intense. There is a lot of uncertainty."
Roux added that the book digs into how Leia and Rey become two people who "learn to lean on each other," adding that this period of time opens up a "great moment of character development" for Leia before her passing on-screen in The Rise of Skywalker:
"They have to go on this journey together and really learn to lean on each other through it. It’s sort of like a Get Along shirt. That’s the vibe of the book. They’re not actually at a good place with each other at first, and that was such a great opportunity to really have both of them grow. Even though Leia is so close to the end of her journey in a lot of ways, we can still have this great moment of character development for her."
According to Roux, Star Wars: Legacy is about delving into the details of "larger-than-life" characters. The novel will address two key aspects of Rey and Leia, respectively: Rey's setup as a potential future leader of the Jedi and Leia's mentorship as an untrained force user herself.
"It’s about getting to know Rey, specifically, a lot better and giving her more depth. What does she think about the Jedi? What does she think about leading them in a sense? What will that look like? What will that feel like?
You have these big characters who can seem larger than life, but I like to get into the nitty-gritty with them. I try to treat these characters as real people and explore them in a way that feels like they’re not just always doing the most heroic thing at every possible moment. They have moments of weakness or cowardice.
I don’t have this idea that Leia is perfectly fully formed, this sort of Buddha on the Mount dispensing priceless wisdom. I think she’d have a lot of insecurity, actually, about not being a trained Jedi and now having to become the mentor to this Jedi."
Star Wars: Legacy will be released on July 28, 2026. The book's official synopsis reveals the story will follow Rey and Leia on a journey to a long-forgotten Jedi temple to fix Rey's lightsaber. Roux previously contributed a Star Wars short story in the anthology collection From a Certain Point of View in 2017.
Rey and Leia's Relationship Is Finally Being Explored
While Fisher and Ridley shared several scenes during the Star Wars trilogy, their two characters' most pivotal relationship developments were forced off-screen after Fisher passed away in 2016. This led the audience to fill many gaps in The Rise of Skywalker, particularly with Leia's character, who was only confirmed to be a force user in The Last Jedi and then spent much of that movie unconscious.
Audiences were surprised to pick up with Rey and Leia a year later when they discovered that Leia had continued Rey's training as a Jedi. It was explained briefly via flashbacks that Luke had trained his sister in the ways of the force, but fans commonly griped that this area was not given sufficient time in the plot.
Several Star Wars novelizations have attempted to fill some of the plot holes in The Rise of Skywalker, including one that addressed Leia's Jedi training. However, Star Wars: Legacy will fill a unique niche by addressing Rey and Leia's bond specifically, which simply wasn't possible to explore on-screen due to Fisher's passing.
With full knowledge that a Rey-focused sequel film is now in development at Lucasfilm, it's possible that Roux's new Star Wars novel could also set up Rey's trajectory for that story in this new novel and establish a clear set of values for the character regarding the Jedi order and her place in it.
