When Marvel relaunched the Star Wars comics line, the world was an easier place. Lucasfilm had simply rebooted its official continuity, there was room for brand new tales, new perception into acquainted faces, new alternatives to flesh out the house between the Star Wars motion pictures. And now, we come to this: zombie droids.
Okay so, sure and no. Yes: zombie droids are the principal impetus of Star Wars: Dark Droids, a brand new line-wide Marvel Star Wars occasion written by Charles Soule, kicking off with a solo miniseries with artists Luke Ross and Alex Sinclair (and lettering by Travis Lanham) earlier than disseminating throughout the remainder of the writer’s present Star Wars titles all through the remainder of 2023. No: they’re probably not zombie zombie droids, in the sense of the undead, however zombie-ish, given Star Wars’ usually bizarre method to droid sentience that for the most half is simply made weirder in Star Wars: Dark Droids, a brand new line-wide Marvel Star Wars occasion.
How we bought from there to right here—the right here being zombie droids, want I remind you—is a narrative of present Star Wars canon, an ode to the good concepts and ridiculous extra that Disney and Lucasfilm as soon as sought to excise with the transition of Star Wars’ previous Expanded Universe into this recent new continuity. It’s additionally a narrative about how Star Wars is nice, and extraordinarily foolish, and the way these issues are usually not diametrically opposed. But to chop a really lengthy story brief, zombie droids exist now—on this case, the interval the Star Wars comics presently happen in between the occasions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which I have to stress is about a yr—due to a Thing referred to as the Spark Eternal, which now is a Thing referred to as the Scourge?
What is the Spark Eternal/the Scourge, you ask? I’m so glad you probably did as a result of this can be a ridiculous quantity of set as much as ship earlier than we get to the correctly wild stuff. The Spark Eternal first appeared in the Doctor Aphra comedian sequence, an historic synthetic intelligence developed by a splinter Dark Side cult at struggle with the Sith referred to as the Ascendant. In the current day Aphra discovered herself quickly host to the Spark after by chance re-activating it, however lengthy story inside the lengthy story brief, it bought wrenched out of her and she or he’s okay now. At the identical time, Qi’ra—sure, Emilia Clarke from Solo, she’s again now, she has been for some time—had been utilizing the Crimson Dawn to stage an enormous struggle in opposition to Palpatine and Darth Vader, hoping to make use of a mysterious jail referred to as the Fermata Cage to lock the two in time and throw them right into a solar. Briefly allying with the Spark in her makes an attempt, as a result of it too hated the Sith, Qi’ra in the end failed because of a betrayal by the Knights of Ren (sure, these ones from The Rise of Skywalker; no, don’t fear about it), went into hiding, and the Spark now not had a physique. It’s an excellent job then that the Fermata Cage dropped a peculiar small disc of historic so-evil-even-the-Sith-forbade-it know-how that the Spark merged with, changing into the Scourge, and casually simply hanging out biding its time.
Phew! All caught up. We are actually on the identical web page, that web page being web page one of Star Wars: Dark Droids #1, out this week.
Which means, finally, zombie droids! Whatever the Spark did in changing into the Scourge, it has now developed the potential to infuse itself into not only a single host physique, however a number of—however in doing so, can seemingly now not inhabit natural hosts. So when Palpatine sends a cleanup crew to the station the place Qi’ra had simply tried to show him right into a time-popsicle, there are inevitably droids amongst the operatives, principally KX-Security Droids (you realize, K2 from Rogue One), and the Scourge instantly begins implanting itself amongst the droid contingent.
What follows from there in Dark Droids #1 is a really typical faux-horror zombie story with a sci-fi twist. The Scourge finds its means again to an Imperial Star Destroyer, and makes brief work of infecting the 1000’s of droids aboard, after which murdering the tens of 1000’s of organics aboard, gassing them, stabbing them, choking them to dying, venting them out into house, and so forth. And oh no, it sends an agent to begin infecting the Rebel Alliance whereas they’re planning destroy the new Death Star, beginning with, gasp, C-3PO! Like I stated (what seems like a really lengthy, very long time in the past because of all the background context), that is, the truth is, the least fascinating factor about Dark Droids. It’s all arrange, and there’s no actual engagement with the huge questions on droids in Star Wars, outdoors of a gap rumination by the Scourge about how the galaxy perceives and treats droids as a sentient species earlier than the Scourge promptly begins overriding their personhood anyway.
So far not less than—as a result of the precise fascinating factor about Dark Droids #1 comes at you fully sideways and out of nowhere for a couple of pages, disrupting the humdrum of zombie droids to tease an eventual means out of this calamitous new menace… and possibly even solutions to a few of these huge questions on droids. While the Scourge is busy doing a bunch of organic-murder aboard the Star Destroyer, the motion cuts to a mysterious place referred to as the Colony of the Second Revelation, the place a small group of droids is constructing a brand new member, and housing inside it a pc core made up of contributions from the group’s “own experience and understanding, shadings of our knowledge and hopes and self determination,” in accordance with their chief, Ajax, a droid in priestly garb.
Ajax himself is a personality acquainted to individuals who’ve in some way been in a position to sustain with Marvel’s Star Wars comics—a droid from the time of the High Republic who as soon as staged an rebellion in demand for droid rights, lower down by the Jedi after his rebels slaughtered the colony of organics they served—however that’s not the level right here, not like the remainder of Dark Droids, leaning on months and years of earlier comics setup. Neither is the level that, as Ajax goes on to elucidate, that they alone should now cease the Scourge from overriding the personhood of Droidkind throughout the galaxy. The level is these are Droids with religion. They have a faith, a perception system via which they create completely new life: not replicas of themselves, however new beings born from a collective amalgam of their very own historical past, expertise, and values. From their very own souls. It’s a creation fable for droids as a individuals past their literal development, however not an precise fable as a result of it’s actual.
Ajax notes that there are usually not many of those sorts of droids in existence throughout the galaxy, however even then, they do exist. This is the spark of one thing Star Wars has all the time skirted in its murky conversations of droid id and sentience—who will get to rely as individuals with regards to droids, and what does it say about how the organics of the galaxy deal with them no matter that? There are a zillion mines on this narrative area for Dark Droids to bounce round in discussing this, even when it deigns to take action a lot past what’s established on this difficulty in favor of its bigger zombie droid story. And even when it does set up no matter Ajax and his individuals have discovered for themselves as a seemingly steady droid tradition, what we all know of the remainder of the Star Wars galaxy past this second in time appears to point it’s going to by no means unfold far sufficient to affect the overwhelming majority of droids in the 30-odd-year window we’ve got for the post-Return of the Jedi period proper now anyway.
But even with these caveats, that is an space the place a whole lot of different current Star Wars materials has tried, and failed (or failed by not making an attempt in any respect, in The Mandalorian’s case), to dig deep into one in all the perpetually ethically difficult pillars of its worldbuilding. If Dark Droids tries to go deeper—even when it in the end fails like different Star Wars tales earlier than it—that’s frankly going to be a way more fascinating experiment to observe unfold than zombie droids.
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…. to be continued
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