Star Wars (2020) #41
LANDO LOST
After Lobot’s neural implants began to fail him, Lando took his unwell friend to Jabba the Hutt’s palace, where the Talky droid who once helped them resides. There, the duo was accosted by several scourged droids, which took over Lobot’s mind.
The evil entity known as the Scourge has been gathering its horde of one-minded droids on the planet Epikonia, where it’s conducting experiments to find a way to spread its consciousness to organic beings.
Now Lando and a small team of rebels must fight to save their friend….
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Madibek Musabekov
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover artist: Stephen Segovia
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: December 6, 2023
Lobot is in peril and thankfully for him he has some powerful friends, and after the scroll-up we dive right into the action as the planet Epikonia plays host to Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian holding back the fighting hoard of scourge-controlled droids who are closing in thanks to weight of numbers. Leia isn’t sure they csan save the cyborg even if they can get to him, but Lando refuses to give up and we see our heroes fight on as Luke tells them to remian calm and focused. Suddenly, the droids begin to celebrate, and we hear that ‘the final barrier has been broken, all of you will be me.’ We see a wave of the small spider droids, usually used to turn droids and cyborgs advance in a wave, and the quartet begin to blast them as they swarm in. There are too many of them, and even Luke is unable to help as one by one they are injected and we see the prime scourge control Luke, claiming that he will be the new Force.
Thankfully, this is the moment that Ajax Sigma arrives, plunging a huge double-bladed sword through the chest of the prime scourge, and the connections are broken. Luke rises as do Leia, Lando and Chewie, and kicking away the small fallen droids they head in to find Lobot, and we see injured, tortured people coming round as the connection ends and Lando finds a gravely ill Lobot on the ground. Asking Chewie to carry his friend back to the Falcon where he has equipment to help him, Luke and Leia tell Lando they need to stay and help the injured, and Lando and Chewie get back to the Falcon where Lando opens a hatch to reveal the ancient Talky Droid.
Rebooting it, he tells the droid that if he doesn’t help and heal Lobot he’ll make his life a living hell, just as Luke and Leia return, with Leia demanding answers. The Talky Droid has no leverage, and also no requirement other than self-preservation. It also has secrets Lando wouldn’t want revealing, so it makes it clear to Lando – if he reveals his secrets, then he will heal Lobot. Lando hands his blaster to Leia and begins to talk.
He explains how he had trouble with Jabba, and how in order to get away from the Hutts clutches he agreed to send back info about the Alliance. he didn’t do that, but knew Jabba would want something, so he stole the Talky Droid from the Alliance and gave it to Jabba before realising the talky Droid could repair Lobot. With that situation laid out he had to gain their trust enough to use the Falcon. To stunned silence, he orders the Talky Droid to fix Lobot and we cut to later at the Rebel Fleet where Lando explains to his old friend why he did what he did, telling him how he’d rather be a new Lando who cares for his friends rather than the old Lando who would run from his responsibilities just as Leia enters the Falcon to tell him he’s being charged with treason, and the sentence is death….
As usual this is big-feel storytelling, with our familiar heroes on the edge of peril and struggling with the weight of the task ahead of them, but there is something oddly ‘off’ about the Rebellion doling out death penalties, especially for such an act as saving a stricken friend (surely exactly what Leia, Luke and company do for Han Solo at the start of Return of the Jedi). Of course, that hasn’t happened yet and this may well be a flagpost in the road to that decision, but that aside, this is another fast-paced and insightful issue that rolls towards the conclousion of the dark Droids storyline and surely brings us within sight of the finish line of that classic Empire to Jedi era, one that we may never visit again in-depth as the broader Star Wars story continues to evolve and grow.
