Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge kicks off while The High Republic gets delayed

Time again for STAR WARS WEEKLY, the SYFY WIRE series that rounds up the most important news of the week from a galaxy far, far away.

Think of us as your own personal Star Wars Holocron.

STAR WARS: JEDI TEMPLE CHALLENGE

The Star Wars Kids YouTube channel announced a new show coming this week and it seems tailor-made to kids of the '80s and '90s to share with the kids of today. Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge is a throwback to shows like Nickelodeon staples Double Dare and Legends of the Hidden Temple — only this one is set in the Star Wars universe.

Hosted by Ahmed Best, the man behind Jar Jar Binks, the show takes kids through Jedi trials and grants them the rank of Jedi Knight for their troubles. He's joined by Mary Holland (Veep) as a protocol droid. Sam Witwer, the voice of Darth Maul in the Star Wars animated universe and Solo: A Star Wars Story, provides the voice of the Dark Side. It's produced by the Emmy-award winning minds behind The Star Wars Show and looks to be exactly the sort of thing Star Wars needs.

The show debuts on Wednesday, June 3 on the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel with the first two episodes. The season consists of 10 episodes in total.

Why is this new series hitting YouTube instead of Disney+? Lucasfilm's Mickey Capoferri has this answer: "With so many children and families home and looking to Star Wars for hope and entertainment, we wanted to make Jedi Temple Challenge available to as many young fans as possible by airing the series on our Star Wars Kids network for everyone to enjoy."

STAR WARS: TALES FROM GALAXY'S EDGE

If you've wanted to step into the world of Galaxy's Edge but haven't been able to make it to Disneyland or Disney World (especially given the pandemic), the wonders of VR will soon make it possible. ILMxLAB announced this week there is a VR adventure set in Galaxy's Edge coming soon that will expand the storytelling and lore of the theme park setting, bringing it right to your living room.

Continuity-wise, the adventure takes place between Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, just like the theme park does. It's set in the outskirts of Black Spire Outpost where you'd normally find other Disney themed areas. The intention of the game, according to StarWars.com, is to put you in a VR environment where your decisions drive the action forward in an unprecedented way. The game will also feature new characters as well as legacy characters, giving us some hope of getting to interact with Rey or Kylo Ren.

Star Wars: Tales From Galaxy's Edge is scheduled to come out later this year.

THE HIGH REPUBLIC, DELAYED

The next big storytelling initiative from a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars: The High Republic, was set to start in just a few months. The multi-media project would look at a never-before-seen part of the timeline. We've been covering it in this space for a while, even while it was still known as the secret "Project Luminous."

Fans are just going to have to wait for this exciting chapter of Star Wars to begin, though. The High Republic has been delayed until next year due to "general marketplace delays" stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

"Given these unprecedented times," Lucasfilm Publishing's Creative Director Michael Siglain wrote in a press release," we have made the decision to move the launch of Star Wars: The High Republic to January 2021 to ensure that the launch is as grand and epic as it deserves to be."

STAR WARS UNDERWORLD

Ronald D. Moore is a well-known name to most fans of science fiction. He was one of the chief architects of Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: First Contact, and SYFY's Battlestar Galactica. It's slightly less well-known that George Lucas hired him and others to write more than 50 episodes of a never-produced Star Wars television series dubbed Underworld.

Star Wars Underworld remains a bastion of ideas that are still being mined for Star Wars lore even today; Coruscant's Level 1313 and Palpatine's first name, Sheev, both came from Underworld.

Moore recently had a wide-ranging interview with Collider, and the subject of Underworld came up — which is good news for anybody who wants to know more about tantalizing Star Wars what-if.

"It was pretty much one big storyline," Moore said. "It was one long tale with episodic things that would happen. You know, there would be certain events [that] would happen in this episode or this episode, so it was sort of an episodic quality to some of it. But it was telling a larger narrative, in terms of the story of those particular characters in that setting."

THE MAILDALORIAN

In these days where wearing a mask in public is mandatory for those wanting to prevent the spread of coronavirus, one letter carrier at the USPS went viral for the mask he chose.

This is the way.

THE BIG MAN

John Boyega produced a social media video that Star Wars fans are going to want to watch over and over again. It's George Lucas giving in to the power of the Dark side, one might say.

Boyega's social media presence since completing his work on Star Wars has been at times raw and emotional, but also funny and heartfelt. And the videos he makes are incredible. And, more than anything, he tells it like it is.

Until next week: May the Force be with you!