Artwork courtesy of Joshua Stolte
Welcome back to the Star Wars HoloNet Digest, a weekly feature where I bring you a recap of the latest news from the world of Star Wars. Whether it’s an Episode VII announcement or a noteworthy author interview, you’ll find it here. Let’s check the HoloNet and see what happened in the past week. We’ll begin this week with two more Star Wars Rebels character announcements. The Hollywood Reporter brought us Sabine, voiced by Tiya Sircar, who serves the rebels as a weapons expert while moonlighting as a graffiti artist. She wears pink Mandalorian armor, but don’t let the tough exterior fool you –– she definitely has an expressive side too. She’s "expressively creative through art,” CG supervisor Joel Aron said, “whether it's the color of her hair or what she's done to her armor.” The next day, Entertainment Weekly introduced Hera Syndulla, a Twi’lek and the pilot of the Ghost. Vanessa Marshall voices Hera, who Dave Filoni calls “a very strong-minded character” and “kind of the heart of the group.” Vanessa recently spoke to Newsarama about her character, becoming the first Rebels cast member to do an interview about the show. We’ve embedded both introductory videos below so you can get to know these latest additions to the cast of Rebels. Two days ago, Lucasfilm revealed a three-minute trailer for The Clone Wars: The Lost Missions, the name for the thirteen episodes of new content that will debut on Netflix when the entire series appears there on March 7. The trailer is a masterpiece of scoring and editing, suggesting that this unaired sixth-season material will be well worth the wait. I think it’s incredibly cool that these episodes will explore mysterious characters and circumstances like –– well, I don’t want to spoil anything. Watch the trailer for yourself and get excited for March 7! Speaking of getting excited, Star Wars Weekends is coming back to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and the Walt Disney Company recently announced that it is expanding the event to five weekends this year instead of four. The 2014 event will take place on May 16-18, May 23-25, May 30-June 1, June 6-8, and June 13-15, with the final weekend a recent addition. In its announcement blog post, Disney revealed that James Arnold Taylor will return as the Celebrity Host for all five weekends and promised “a gala fireworks show featuring Star Wars music” every night. (This was a Limited Time Magic exclusive event last year, but Disney is now letting everyone in on the fun.) We do have a few literature tidbits for you this week. io9 has gotten an exclusive look at William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back, featuring artwork and an excerpt from the adapted text. Artist Grant Gould revealed yesterday that he will be illustrating the upcoming Scholastic book Draw Star Wars Rebels, a follow-up to Scholastic’s Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars. No publication date for the Rebels drawing book has been announced yet. And speaking of future books, Del Rey’s next Expanded Universe novel Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves will be released on March 4. Have you been keeping up with the micro-excerpts? Their Star Wars Books Facebook page posted a third one last Friday. Check it out if you’re excited about James S.A. Corey’s debut Star Wars novel.Eric Geller is a college student majoring in political science whose interests include technology, journalism, and of course Star Wars. He co-hosts The ForceCast podcast and manages social media for Star Wars fan sites TheForce.Net and Rebelscum.com. He is originally from the Washington, D.C. area.
