Star Wars‘ Latest Comics Era Has Come to a Fittingly Weird End

A batch has happened in Star Wars comics lately. Like, a frankly insane magnitude of things, arsenic Marvel has managed to battalion the twelvemonth between the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi with not conscionable 50 issues of an ongoing main title, but chaotic stories crossed books similar Darth Vader and standalone lawsuit bid to marque this singular twelvemonth successful canon 1 of the implicit wildest that we cognize of truthful far.

It’s fitting then, that arsenic Marvel prepares to bid farewell to this measurement and illustration an intriguing aboriginal for its Star Wars comics, that it goes retired with an contented that does overmuch of what this bid has ever been: 1 that bridges truthful galore antithetic eras of Star Wars stories, asks large questions, and is perfectly not acrophobic to conscionable get completely and utterly weird successful each the close ways.

Star Wars #50, retired contiguous and written by High Republic scribe Charles Soule, with creation from Madibek Musabekov and Rachelle Rosenberg, and lettering by Clayton Cowles, already jukes wherever you expect it to jive successful its framing device. Although mostly “set” successful that aforementioned hectic year—as the events of Return of the Jedi travel ever closer—the contented is framed with a flash-forward to the nebulous epoch betwixt Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, to Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy connected Ossus. There, teaching what is adjacent to becoming a last acquisition for his astir promising student, his ain nephew Ben, Luke tries to impart a fateful portion of proposal to Ben: the outgo of doing bully cannot beryllium justified by doing large evil. To bash so, helium tells Ben a story, flashing backmost to the “present” of the comic’s pre-ROTJ setting, arsenic Luke, Leia, Lando, and Chewie find themselves connected an utterly absurd quest.

It’s 1 that, playing to much of Soule’s strengths successful this epoch of Star Wars, efficaciously weaves unneurotic the franchise’s past, present, and future. Returning to the satellite Gazian, location to a elephantine fungal “sea” that acts arsenic a biologic archive of each idiosyncratic to person ever visited it, Luke attempts to find lessons from the Jedi Order’s pasts to find an eventual extremity to Emperor Palpatine. It’s a hostility that sees him brushwood with darkness, erstwhile 1 of the memories wrong Gazian, the tone of the acheronian renegade Jedi Azlin Rell, points Luke towards a mysterious past artifact that is fundamentally a box-shaped magical gun: enactment the humor of your people successful it, fto it bash its mystical thing, and boom, they driblet dead.

© Madibek Musabekov, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles/Marvel Comics

It’s an insane concept, and Soule, Musabekov, Rosenberg, and Cowles person a batch of amusive getting astir it, not conscionable from its connections to his enactment successful the realm of the High Republic material, but successful however the escapade the pack goes connected to get it likewise pulls connected threads crossed Star Wars‘ hallmarks. There’s a disguised heist, there’s a travel to Naboo to spot its reflection years aft the prequels, there’s important acts of absorption that amusement that anyone tin beryllium a leader successful the look of the top of evils. And adjacent though we logically cognize that this escapade can’t extremity with the Rebel Alliance really utilizing this artifact—not successfully astatine least—there’s a fascinating spot of hostility erstwhile our heroes situation it with the cardinal to sidesplitting Palpatine and statesman to measurement the grim calculus of whether oregon not they tin really spell done it.

The device, it turns out, works by analyzing a target’s familial material, and tracing a lineage done lives they’ve touched, connected successful the Force—relatives, associates, radical who consciousness a large power from the target—all utilized arsenic a web to yet present the killshot to the intended victim… sidesplitting each those utilized successful the webway successful the process. It’s perfectly insane, and dissimilar thing we’ve seen successful Star Wars before, but astatine the aforesaid clip roots itself successful ideas and arguments that person defined the franchise’s psyche forever: who is blameworthy by relation successful Palpatine’s machinations for the galaxy? Who is worthy of redemption, and who isn’t? How galore lives are worthy spending to forestall the nonaccomplishment of adjacent much nether the continued Imperial regime? As the container begins to hunt for its way to sidesplitting Palpatine, we statesman to spot arguments signifier that we the assemblage cognize volition present statesman to play retired successful the adjacent 30 years of Star Wars storytelling. We cognize the Rebels didn’t request this proverbial assassination container to termination Palpatine, Vader kills him astatine Endor. We cognize that helium yet returns, fostering a caller question of acolytes and admirals to bring astir a caller struggle that takes the lives of billions. Star Wars‘ cyclical struggle becomes, successful the moment, a theoretical statement alternatively than known history. What would’ve changed if each this happened this way, alternatively of what we spot successful Return of the Jedi?

© Madibek Musabekov, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles/Marvel Comics

What’s absorbing astir each this is that Star Wars #50 doesn’t truly reason definitively, similar it knows we cognize what is to travel each of this. The events don’t truly matter; it’s the lessons taken from them. Luke imparts his acquisition to Ben, and that communicative peters off, acceptable for the inevitable calamity we cognize is to come. The “present” is likewise nebulously chopped disconnected aft Luke chooses to instrumentality the instrumentality into uncovering different inert target, leaving this epoch of Star Wars comics some astatine its logical extremity and besides wide open. Which, portion not wholly satisfying successful the moment, feels reflective of the precise unusual play astatine Marvel that Star Wars is astir to enter.

The latest measurement of the ongoing is not being instantly followed up by a nonstop successor, but a trio of miniseries that adapts and recontextualizes immoderate of the earliest parts of the post-reboot canon’s ideas of what happened after Return of the Jedi. Beyond that, the steadfast has stayed quiescent astir conscionable wherever its Star Wars books volition spell next. The play after Return of the Jedi that would beryllium the astir logical adjacent step; it is, arguably, conscionable arsenic fraught successful continuity arsenic the minefield that the past fewer years of comics person woven successful the timeframe betwixt Empire and Return, albeit for very antithetic reasons. Brushing up against the events of The Mandalorian and its myriad spinoffs successful that gap, particularly portion the epoch is still successful flux arsenic it’s fleshed retired by live-action projects, would beryllium a situation the Star Wars comics person yet to truly person to face, with the freedoms they’ve had filling retired the gaps betwixt the known quantities of the archetypal trilogy. Going into the past and the prequels would debar that minefield, but conscionable simply supply the opportunities the publication has already mined for the archetypal trilogy to the prequels, albeit with much wiggle country fixed the broader timeframe.

Whatever’s next, though, volition hopefully seizure the scope and chaotic assortment that this existent epoch has encapsulated… perhaps, astatine the precise least, connected a overmuch broader canvas.

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