Today saw the release of the third and penultimate issue of the Star Wars: Inquisitors miniseries from Marvel Comics, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
Inquisitors #3 begins on a casino ship in orbit around the planet Glee Anselm. Here, the Inquisitors known simply as the Seventh Sister and the Ninth Sister are in disguise, gambling on card games against a lizard-man (though non-Trandoshan) information broken named Eorgus. Once they’ve revealed their hands, so to speak, and threaten Eorgus’s life, he spills the beans about having helped on-the-run Jedi Knight Tensu Run seal himself up inside an abandoned temple in an Outer Rim location called the Deadlands. Of course the Inquisitors behead Eorgus anyway, and we cut to the Deadlands, where Run and his brother-in-arms Pan Delesec (another Jedi who survived Order 66) discuss the possibility of training a new generation of knights while they are in hiding from the Galactic Empire. Pan thinks it’s more prudent to focus on survival, but Tensu believes that the Jedi will become stuck in the past if they don’t actively strive toward their future.
Meanwhile on the star destroyer Devastator, the two aforementioned Inquisitors meet with their master Darth Vader, who evaluates their plan to capture Tensu Run. Despite having concocted “a well-conceived plan,” as he says, with a sound strategy, Vader still remains pessimistic that it will be successful. This is of course very reminiscent of what happened with the Fifth Brother in the previous issue, and though I believe that to be intentional, it does feel a bit repetitive to have pretty much the same story play out once again the following month. So Run and Delesec go into town for supplies, and while they’re there the Inquisitors attack the marketplace with a pheromone gas “that drives one to madness.” Amid the chaos, the two Jedi are forced to restore peace, exposing themselves while striving not to injure any of the innocent bystanders. And here, naturally, is where the Seventh and Ninth Sisters take the opportunity to attack our heroes.
There’s a decently fun battle scene (though there are a few panels in this issue where I wasn’t sure exactly what was supposed to be happening in Ramon Rosanas’s art) that incorporates some entertaining banter between the Jedi and Inquisitors thanks to writer Rodney Barnes, but as you might predict, it ends with the protagonists– like last time– gaining the upper hand. On the plus side, the issue does conclude with Tensu finally deciding that it might be time to meet Lord Vader face-to-face, but otherwise this chapter in the story feels like a wash. We do have the remaining question on the table of what happens to Tensu and friends in the long run– as Pan points out, the Jedi is “a legend in waiting,” so why haven’t we heard about him before and what is he up to later on in the timeline? My usual guess would be that he doesn’t make it out of this situation alive, but that hasn’t necessarily been the Lucasfilm playbook in more recent years. Now… could Tensu become an Inquisitor himself? That might be a whole lot more interesting, and turning to the dark side of the Force could make for a happy medium between life and death. Either way, I’m thankful we’re approaching the finale of this miniseries because I don’t want it to get too stale before it wraps up.
Star Wars: Inquisitors #3 is available now wherever comic books are sold.