Review: 'Star Wars' (2020) #50

Star Wars

Sep 13

This past week, the final issue of the long-running Marvel Star Wars main comic that began in 2020 was released! Issue #50 was a unique final installment, numbering around 50 pages of story, with many surprises in store. CultureSlate is happy to review this final issue and break down what it revealed about the galaxy far far away.

Warning: Spoilers for Marvel Star Wars (2020) Issue #50 ahead!

Summary

Issue #50 is an epilogue rather than a series finale, and features a flash into the future. We see Ben Solo training with Luke at his Jedi Academy and while the exact date is unclear, the comic revolves around Luke telling a story about his past. The tale involves Luke’s return to the planet Gazian, one of several locations Luke interacted with between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on his quest to learn more about the Jedi. Gazian is home to a sea of fungus that copies the conscience of an individual who has interacted with it, though sometimes also claiming the individual, keeping their body trapped until they’re nothing but bones. On the first occasion we saw Luke visit, he met a copy of the High Republic Jedi Elzar Mann and saw a copy of himself created too. This second trip, as told in Issue #50, was done soon after Luke’s encounter with the memories of an unknown Sith found within a bled kyber crystal in Issues #42 and #43.

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Rather than Elzar appearing to Luke, a copy of the fallen Jedi Azlin Rell does instead, and entices Luke into seeking out an arcane device called the Grim Rose. Capable of killing its target from a distance, the core group of heroes recover the Rose and decide to seek out a sample of Palpatine’s blood which is stored on Naboo. They successfully acquire the blood, but upon returning to the Millennium Falcon, begin debating the ethics of using the device. Chewbacca interrupts the discussion and inserts the blood into the device, stating he does so for his wife, son, and his enslaved fellow Wookiees. However, Luke realizes that the Grim Rose’s method of finding and killing its target will also kill an untold number of people who were impacted by the target.

The group discovers that the device cannot be destroyed or shut down, causing Luke to return to Gazian seeking help. There, he finds a copy of Lor San Tekka greeting him but forces the world to present him with Azlin. Gleeful to realize Luke has used the device, the copy is displeased when Luke realizes he can feed the matter of a long-dead individual into the Grim Rose to change its target and shut it down. Seeking to take something from the remains lodged in the fungal sea, it reacts violently, and Luke barely manages to escape though successfully shuts down the Grim Rose. The issue then ends with Luke wryly commenting, to Ben’s slight skepticism, that the story was true, all of it, mirroring Han’s line to Rey in The Force Awakens.

Pros and Cons

The quality of Issue #50 demands that our discussion focus on the many pros over any cons. A great element of this comic is that despite being an epilogue, it features many elements the wider comic run and Star Wars comics have dealt with for the past four years. The central focus is Luke seeking knowledge with other details like connections to the High Republic, a dark arcane object that can maybe take down Palpatine, some complexity for Lando in a scene where he is disguised as an Imperial officer, and just some classic strange Star Wars fun with our heroes. These elements were all present in the past four years of comics, and here, have been condensed down to a narrow frame of time, in a story meant to discuss the choices made by leadership with a young Ben Solo.

Another pro of the issue is the depiction of the relationship between Ben and Luke. The young man we see here is said to be close to taking his Jedi Trials, meaning he will graduate from Padawan to Knight, but he is still very much a teenager as, for instance, he complains that the story is taking too long. While he and Luke are close, some facial expressions captured in the comic panels suggest he had mixed feelings about the lesson being caught and some of the choices taken. The only con that can be discerned is that this comic is perhaps frantic in its pace. It is as if the events of an untold arc of the comics were compressed into one story, and then quickly retold. While the result is still an enjoyable tale, some more exploration of certain choices or characters, like Chewbacca, may have been a benefit. But, these are truly nitpicks to a great comic book issue!

Rating: 9/10

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