Yesterday saw the release of issue #48 in the current volume of Marvel Comics’ flagship Star Wars title, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
Star Wars (2020) #48 begins with a harrowing vision of the first Death Star’s destruction of Alderaan, only this time Princess Leia sees herself both as the person pulling the lever to activate the space station’s superlaser and as a child still remaining on the otherwise-peaceful planet with her adoptive parents Bail and Breha Organa as they are blown to smithereens. Leia awakens from her nightmare and startles C-3PO, who obediently fetches Jedi-Knight-in-training (and Leia’s twin brother, though neither of them know that yet) Luke Skywalker. The two have a heart-to-heart about Leia’s role in the Rebel Alliance and whether or not it’s time to go after Han Solo at Jabba’s Palace just yet, but they’re interrupted by a call from a rebel pilot named Evaan Verlaine with some news about Alderaan. This character was introduced in Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars: Princess Leia comic book and retconned to have flown in the Battle of Yavin, but she’s here to update Leia on the status of Alderaan’s “survivor fleet” (also from that same Princess Leia comic miniseries).
It seems the survivors of Alderaan have gone missing, having missed their last few scheduled check-ins with the Alliance. So both Leia and Luke agree to join Evaan in traveling to the fleet’s last known location (they were basically off the grid, hoping to avoid detection by the Empire) to investigate. When they find the transport ship called the Thranta, it’s seemingly abandoned except for one detectable life form: that of Jora Astane (see those Princess Leia comics again), whose body it turns out is being artificially kept alive as a trap. Here’s where all hell breaks loose in this issue– the Thranta is attacked by a number of non-Imperial raider starfighters, and Luke and Leia must scramble to escape the ship while Verlaine fights off the enemies from her X-wing out in space. When she’s injured in an explosion, Luke helps Leia to an escape pod and ejects her from the Thranta, but as that ship explodes (I think we can assume Luke is okay) the pod is immediately grabbed by a cable and yanked into the hold of another vessel– one captained by former Imperial Commander Zahra, who we have not seen since issue #24 of Star Wars (2020).
That’s the cliffhanger ending of this issue, with the reveal that Zahra is now evidently the leader of a pirate gang and at long last plans to exact her revenge on Leia and the Rebel Alliance. I’ll be honest, this is far from what I was expecting from this final arc of the current Star Wars comic, which is building toward the events of Return of the Jedi. I would have thought these last three issues would have focused on the plan to rescue Han, but this may well prove to be more interesting in the long run. I do always love when Star Wars content digs back deep into its own storytelling archive to follow-up on long-dangling plot threads, and the Alderaanian survivor fleet certainly qualifies as that. It also really makes me want to go back and reread that 2015 Princess Leia miniseries by writer Mark Waid. But here Charles Soule, along with artist Jethro Morales (Star Wars: The High Republic – The Blade), continue to prove their ability to deliver a consistently engaging and exciting story in A Galaxy Far, Far Away, and I’m very interested to see where this narrative goes next.
Star Wars #48 is available now wherever comic books are sold.