See the concept art for Young(er) Yoda in Star Wars: The High Republic

We’ve all met Baby Yoda. Now, Star Wars: The High Republic introduces us to…middle-aged Yoda. See what the green guy looked like 200 years before the movies:

We won’t be getting any new Star Wars movies for a while, but Disney is still giving fans plenty of opportunities to visit that galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: The High Republic is an upcoming publishing initiative that will tell a story set about 200 years in the franchise’s past, when the Jedi Order were at their height and delivering on their promise of peace and justice for all.

The High Republic will be told across a collection of interconnected books and comics, with several authors working together to bring it all together. Among them is Daniel José Older, who is writing The High Republic Adventures comic. Although most of the characters we got to know in the last nine Star Wars movies haven’t been born by this time, The High Republic Adventures has a major role for a familiar face: Yoda.

“Well, Yoda is not that much younger — around 700 years old instead of about 900. But we thought that with it being hundreds of years earlier, he would definitely have a different outfit, maybe even more than one,” Lucasfilm art director Troy Alders told StarWars.com. “His age, as far as the way that his hair and face look, is maybe just slightly younger, but fairly close to his look in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.”

Several artists got to work on what a middle-aged Yoda might look like, with Star Wars: Dark Legends artist Grant Griffin’s conception eventually winning out:

“This mission outfit, with just tonal markings on the robe, are inspired by the Jedi Temple architectural details,” Alders said. “Many new fans may not even notice these very subtle additions.”

“The temple attire, however, from this special time of the golden age of the Jedi, feels so right with its elegance, and we are all extremely grateful for the artists that helped us arrive at such a beautiful solution for this important milestone in the Star Wars timeline,” he continued. “Dressing Yoda for this epic time period, and creating designs adorned with gold, using beautiful fabrics and details, is something that he and all of the Jedi very much deserve, and the end result, I think, is gorgeous, and really celebrates this exciting and visually rich, gilded era.”

But of course, how Yoda looks is only part of the equation. What is he getting up to during this period of Star Wars history?

According to Older, he’s already a respected member of the Jedi Council by this point, and has long since found that he enjoys being a teacher. In The High Republic Adventures, he’s overseeing “a group of Padawans traveling around the galaxy to learn the ways of the Jedi with a hands-on approach…The Force study abroad program, basically.”

Older’s The High Republic Adventures will be released in 2021, along with the rest of the The High Republic works.

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