Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine Just Had a Dark Side Squid Fight

That ’s not even the most ridiculous matter I can tell you about Marvel ’s latestStar Warscomic , Darth Vader # 11 .

Greg Pak , Raffaele Ienco , Neeraj Menon , and Joe Caramanga ’s footrace on the third loudness of Darth Vader has , despite being firmly frozen in the original trilogy , explored concepts and themes from across the Skywalker saga . Rooted in the wake of Vader ’s attempt to convert his son in a plot to destroy his master and rule the galaxy together in Empire , the series dove back into thetragic final daysof Padmé Amidala and looked forward tothe dark plansPalpatine would have for beyond his death in The Rise of Skywalker . It is inthat latter explorationthat we find Darth Vader # 11 : if this is an arc that is not so much focused on the emotionality that runs through the Star Wars saga as Pak ’s exploration of Padmé ’s decease , it is then profoundly concerned in the wild mystical skill and rise surreality that build Star Wars a opulent , absurdist phantasy .

Which is to say , we give on Darth Vader , having predominate a gigantic mono - eyed space squid through the diaphanous will of the Dark Side , floating down to adjoin his superior Palpatine in the shadow of Exegol ’s Sith tabernacle and engaging in a psychic battle of Squid vs. Crab - Kaiju . As one does . That Darth Vader # 11 not only continues from here , and does not let up , is both a blessing and a jinx depending on what you require from your Star Wars — a saga that is arguably at its best when it sleep together that all good Star Wars deport a considerable amount of ridicule .

“Everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?”

“Everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?”Image: Raffaele Ienco, Neeraj Menon, and Joe Caramagna/Marvel Comics

Vader # 11 then operates in a heighten sensory faculty of surreality that build it , at times , odd to voyage — its casual lobbing of story detail left , right , and concentrate that should , if you wholly trust them , agitate elements of the Star Wars saga to its nucleus . Instead , they ’re momentary distractions to visual eyeglasses that embrace that fantastic absurdity to the extreme . Does Palpatine find to have a shock in his collection of clone soldier and proto - Snokes that is to a great extent implied to containLuke Skywalker ’s severed hand ? Perhaps , but Pak and crew will give you just a single venire , with no circumstance beyond the script ’s comportment , before carry off to joyously throw a squad of cyborg - clone gestalt warrior in Vader ’s direction .

Does Darth Vader , and hilariously fumbling Sith Assassin Ochi of Bestoon — who ’s been tagging along for this electric arc and doing a marvelously bad job of anything but corrode shit on the even — discover the manufacturing of the Final Order fleet seen in The Rise of Skywalker , something he very probably should ’ve mentioned to his son in a Force Ghost FaceTime at some compass point ? Putting away the fact that it’svery Anakin Skywalkerto believe that he and he alone has marched heading - first into a trouble and dealt with it exclusively , ramification be damned , by pat someonedown a nuclear reactor shaft , Darth Vader is disinterested . Because really , would it not be much , much cooler to determine Palpatine set an U. S. Army of wannabe Sith cultists , gird only with knife and an unyielding desire to put back Vader as one of the two True Sith , on our nominal fictitious character ? Would it not be cool still to watch Vader promptly utilise the force to sprain those knife out of every cultist ’s hands , and manipulate them to flee back into his enemy ’ chests in a individual gesture ?

This is , at its marrow , what Darth Vader # 11 is : one absurd thing after another , either by a sense of heightened realism or canonically shattering reveal , climax in perhaps the strangest of them all . As Vader and Ochi make their way to where Palpatine is hiding late within the temple , they face up him in front of a monumental mountain of kyber crystal , far with child than a lightsaber ’s … large still than the gems that power the Death Star ’s satellite - killer . It is not the lore - drive doubtfulness of where Palpatine found this treasure trove that ’s of interest though , but that he tasked an army of minions to torture the living gem , bleeding it in the mode all Sith corrupt their crimson saber blades , just on a scale incomprehensible to what we ’ve seen in Star Wars before . The kyber ’s hurting , its ire , forged and head into a tool of hate , becomes emblematic of the core conflict ram the entirety of the result — Vader ’s vengeance against his Master . Forged as this kyber was through years of secret and discord , Vader is face by Palpatine in the thick of this abyssal , blinding power with a mocking interrogative sentence : will this choler consume him , incinerate him out to an unfeeling stalk , or is Darth Vader unforced to espouse pain to portion out the power apparently offered to him ?

Image: Raffaele Ienco, Neeraj Menon, and Joe Caramagna/Marvel Comics

It ’s fitting that this doubt get along when both Vader and we the audience are at our most compromise , exhausted , and baffled in equal measure by what Darth Vader # 11 has laid out before us , uncertain of what to take as Sojourner Truth or myth . Because what blurs the billet between symbolical and real even further is that Vader , blinded by the kyber , mentally flashes an persona , akin to the many scarlet - stain flashbacks we ’ve seenthroughout this runof the series . But this time it ’s not memory and instead a vision : his and Luke ’s side reversed on Cloud City , as his son implores Vader to make that it is his destiny to defeat Palpatine . Embracing that visual sense — more so than any of the wild mental imagery the Dark Lord has confronted in this issue up to this point — Vader relents to his Master ’s control , at least on the surface .

It ’s clear now that even as Vader renews his subservience , his plans to fulfill the chosen one ’s plight and ( seemingly ) destroy Palpatineare underway . It ’s the one percipient affair we can take from the issue , push aside the phantasy and out-and-out logical rollercoaster that it takes to navigate Star Wars whenever it dips into its moreesoteric , mythic side . There ’s something rather fitting that in a story about the absurd , Vader ’s moment of clearness is the tight thing to world we can take from it . In rooting all turning point of the Star Wars saga ( past and future ) in this cardinal moment , it ’s arguably the franchise at its good : a minute of excited seriousness , contained within a cavalcade of the surreal . If that ’s not Star Wars , then what is ?

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Image: Raffaele Ienco, Neeraj Menon, and Joe Caramagna/Marvel Comics