The distant galaxy, a barred spiral galaxy, existed as one of countless galaxies within the observable universe. It lay far away from the galaxy controlled by the New Republic. It was the location of the planet Peridea, the original home of the great Witch Kingdom of the Dathmiri, an ancient group. It also served as the place of Grand Admiral Thrawn's banishment. By that point, however, a war had devastated the galaxy, leaving it mostly lifeless and desolate.
On the planet Seatos in the main galaxy, there was a henge that marked the Pathway to Peridea. Morgan Elsbeth, a Thrawn devotee and a Dathomiri Nightsister, constructed the interstellar hyperspace transport ring called the Eye of Sion with the goal of rescuing Thrawn and his marooned forces.
The distant galaxy held the world of Peridea, which was the original world of the Witch Kingdom of the Dathmiri. The Great Mothers were the leaders of these people, and they built a large fortress that included an underground temple and a tall spire with a circular henge at the top. To traverse the Intergalactic void between galaxies, they used purrgil. They also placed a henge on the planet Seatos within the Nightsisters' galaxy to indicate the Pathway to Peridea. A star map pointing the way to Peridea was also hidden in a former Nightsister base on Arcana. Eventually, the Great Mothers went into a state of hibernation, during which time a war erupted, leaving the distant galaxy mostly destroyed. Planets such as Peridea turned into barren wastelands, and the Great Mothers' way of life vanished.
During the Liberation of Lothal, a group of purrgil took Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Jedi rebel Ezra Bridger to Peridea. Once there, Thrawn rebuilt his Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera, but the damaged ship was unable to go back to their original galaxy. Thrawn also woke up the Great Mothers and formed an alliance between his military and the ancient Dathomirians. Bridger managed to escape the Imperials and became the leader of a wandering Noti group.
Seven years later, in the time of the New Republic, Imperial loyalist and Nightsister Morgan Elsbeth gave the order to build a huge hyperspace transport ring known as the Eye of Sion to bring Thrawn back to the known galaxy. Around the same time, the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano found the star map on Arcana. Sabine Wren, her former student, was able to unlock the map, but Shin Hati, a mercenary working for Elsbeth, stole it. After a fight with Tano and Wren on Seatos, Baylan Skoll, Hati's master and another of Elsbeth's mercenaries, unlocked the star map and sent the hyperspace coordinates for Peridea to Elsbeth. Elsbeth's forces then left on the Eye of Sion with Wren as their prisoner, heading for Peridea. Using the pathway, Elsbeth's forces made it to Peridea, where they contacted the Great Mothers and Thrawn's forces. For three cycles, they loaded containers from the catacombs beneath the Great Mothers' Fortress.
Tano and the Jedi training droid Huyang also journeyed to the Distant Galaxy with the assistance of a purrgil group, where they reunited with Wren and Bridger. Following a battle with Tano, Wren, and Bridger, Thrawn, the Great Mothers, and his Star Destroyer Chimaera fled Peridea and traveled to Dathomir in the home galaxy via the Eye of Sion. While Tano, Wren, and Huyang found themselves stranded on Peridea, Bridger managed to sneak onto the Chimaera and reunite with General Hera Syndulla. Hati became a member of the Bandits of Peridea, while Skoll searched for a mysterious power on the planet that appeared to be linked to the mystical beings known as The Ones.
The Distant Galaxy was first shown in the Disney+ television series Ahsoka, which came out in 2023. However, the extra-galactic location had been in development since at least 2018. According to Timothy Zahn in a Dragon Con 2018 interview, the location where Grand Admiral Thrawn was sent by the purrgil after "Family Reunion – and Farewell," the final episode of Star Wars Rebels, had already been determined by that time. The term "far galaxy" was used in lowercase letters in both Ahsoka "Part Two: Toil and Trouble" and the galaxy's official Databank page. A capitalized version of the name was used in Star Wars Insider.