Star Wars Daily: Galaxy's Edge reveals and Jar Jar Binks returns

In place of STAR WARS WEEKLY, the SYFY WIRE series that rounds up the most important news of the week from a galaxy far, far away, we’re doing daily roundups from Star Wars Celebration. We’re still your own personal Star Wars Holocron, just more frequently this weekend.

GALAXY’S EDGE

Disney Parks took a turn in the spotlight at Star Wars Celebration on Saturday, as the big panel of the day was dedicated to information about their new theme park, Galaxy’s Edge. Much of the information was old, packed with things we already knew, but it was coupled with some surprises and new announcements.

The panel was hosted by Josh Gad, who of course rose to fame first with Book of Mormon and then became a Disney fixture by voicing Olaf in Frozen. Some might question his Star Wars credentials, but they’d be wrong to do so. Gad is a massive fan and part of the universe himself, even playing a character that was killed by Hera Syndulla in Star Wars Rebels.

You can watch the full panel, but we’ll include some highlights below.

Perhaps the biggest bit of news was Coca-Cola's trip to a galaxy far, far away.

The design of the bottles is something unlike anything we’ve seen from Coke, and the stylized logo is both instantly recognizable and equally obscured behind its fashioning in Aurebesh, the alphabet used in the world of Star Wars.

Normally, I’d be cynical about such a corporate branding thing as this, and maybe I still am, but it’s a really cool thing to see Coke jump into Star Wars like this. The fact that it's Cokie at all is actually quite interesting, as Star Wars has had a long history with Pepsi, most notably its full-force campaign for The Phantom Menace. But Disney has been in business with Coke for years, and that’s what won out at the end of the day.

Music was another important component of the panel. It’s hard to separate Star Wars from its iconic music, and that’s why it’s delightful to find that John Williams came back to score the land.

They also talked about how there would be new tracks from Figrin Dan and the Modal Nodes, the band from the original Star Wars cantina. All played by DJ-Rex, the reprogrammed pilot from the original Star Tours.

They also offered a glimpse of the app, which would let visitors to Galaxy’s Edge turn their smartphones or tablets into datapads that can interact with the Star Wars universe, including an outpost control game.

Galaxy’s Edge opens in Disneyland on May 31. It opens in Florida in August.

STAR WARS: JEDI: FALLEN ORDER

EA finally let out some secrets about its upcoming game Jedi: Fallen Order. Including a new trailer:

The game is set in the days after Order 66 and follows a padawan on the run from the Inquisitorius, which was first established in Star Wars: Rebels and explored further in the pages of the second volume of the Darth Vader comic from Charles Soule. The padawan in question is a young man named Cal Kestis, played by Cameron Monaghan.

Jedi: Fallen Order hits consoles and PCs on November 15, 2019.

MARVEL COMICS

Marvel Comics had its panel today and revealed quite a bit of new information.
At the top of that list is the fact that writer Greg Pak will be taking over as the main writer on the flagship Star Wars comic. The company offered a number of reveals of issues of the Age of Rebellion series that Pak is working on as well.

The most oohs and aahs in the panel, though, came from the Age of Resistance reveals:

The new series will be written by Tom Taylor, with covers by Phil Noto, and offer ample backstory. We’ll see Finn in his janitorial days on Starkiller Base, as well as a prequel featuring Captain Phasma, among others.

Maybe the coolest bit of Marvel on the show floor today was the proliferation of Jaxxon cosplay:

AHMED BEST AT CELEBRATION 

Let's once again close with The Phantom Menace, this time with Ahmed Best’s debut on The Star Wars Show. Best is best known for his performance as Jar Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy and recently opened up about his struggles with suicide over bullying because of the character.