'Star Wars' Shows Off Darth Vader's Visit To Exegol In New Comic Book Cover
At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader reveals the truth to Luke Skywalker about who his his real father is, offering his son to rule the galaxy together as father and son. Everyone knows how the movie ends, with Luke jumping and hanging below Cloud City, until the rescued by Leia, Lando, and company.
We know what happens with Luke after that: he becomes a Jedi Knight and saves the galaxy from the Empire and its dark forces; but were not given the full canonical story of what happened with Darth Vader. However, Marvel Comics have been releasing another Darth Vader comic series. This one is written by Greg Pak and follows the Dark Lord of the Sith after his son escapes his clutches.
Darth Sidious sees the weakness of Darth Vader after his confrontation with his son Luke, so Vader is sent to Mustafar as a test for him to figure out who he is and to finish killing what is left of Anakin Skywalker. Over the course of his trials, he then he has to go to Exegol, to find the secrets and mysteries of his master Darth Sidious.
For those who are not aware, Marvel started releasing the comics in this series at the beginning of the last year, but because of the pandemic, they had to shut down and stop publishing comics for a while. The first two issues were released in February and March 2020 respectively, and then the series did not resume until the end of July. As the series has progressed, we have seen cover art for upcoming issues, such as #11, which is due to come out toward the end of April.
But what does this cover art mean, you might be asking? As we know, Vader visits Exegol, the Sith world that appears in The Rise of the Skywalker, when Kylo Ren visits and tries to kill Darth Sidious, because he sees him as a threat to his ambitions. On the cover, we see Vader surrounded by warriors with red lightsabers. Perhaps they are part of the Sith Eternal cult and are the new enemies of Lord Vader.
In this case, a lot of theories and questions emerge from this cover. First off, if Darth Sidious has all these loyal servants as an army on Exegol, ready for anything for their lord, why did he not use them during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, or any other battle, and secure the existence of the Empire? Maybe because Darth Vader kills all of them.
The other question is, if Darth Vader knows about Exegol, and the loyal warriors of Sidious, why does he never appear as a ghost to warn Luke about the existence of the Sith planet and the army, to prevent the events that lead to Sidious orchestrating Ben Solo's corruption?
Another question might be, why does The Rise of Skywalker not answer any of this? The may be that perhaps this backstory was not fully fleshed out as the movie was being made.
There are a lot of questions coming out as we discover what happens next as the comics are releasing. But for now, we just have to wait for #11 to be released on April 28, and find the answer for these questions. Or maybe we will end up with more questions.
What started with three singles movies in a galaxy far, far away has grown a lot into what we now know as the Skywalker saga consisting of nine films. And in addition to that, we have a lot of other stories, such as these Darth Vader comics and The High Republic publishing initiative. The universe of Star Wars continues to take shape, with many stories wonderfully filling out the galaxy.
Source(s): The Direct