“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering,” Jedi Master Yoda told young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. There would be much suffering for the future Jedi Knight turned Sith Lord Darth Vader, whose story began as a slave boy on the remote planet Tatooine. The boy and his mother, Shmi, were sold to the gangster Gardulla the Hutt, who lost the slave Skywalkers in a Podrace wager with the Toydarian junk dealer Watto.
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But that was the past. And as Kylo Ren once told Rey, “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.”
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It’s advice that Ren, now Supreme Leader of the reigning First Order, has taken literally in Star Wars: Legacy of Vader. The ongoing comic from writer Charles Soule (Marvel’s Darth Vader) and artist Luke Ross (Star Wars: Jango Fett) follows Ren on his quest across the galaxy to kill the past. The series is set between the events of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, where Ren struggled with his own past and legacy as Anakin Skywalker’s grandson and to fulfill his vow from The Force Awakens: “I will finish what he started.”
After traveling to Fortress Vader on the planet Mustafar and slicing his way through the Alazmec of Winsit, Ren encountered Lord Vader’s servant Vaneé, a relic of the past who Ren sought to destroy to free himself from the Skywalker legacy. But Vaneé convinced Ren to spare him as he told the fallen Ben Solo that “Vader’s power was his past.”
“Darth Vader never allowed himself to forget his past, filled with horrors though it was. His loss, his pain, his rage at the things that happened to him became his fuel,” Vaneé said of the Sith Lord. “He never looked back, but he never let go either. This is why the dark side ran so strongly through him.”
Vaneé then offered to tell Ren how Darth Vader turned his past into his power by taking him to where it all began for Anakin Skywalker: Tatooine. Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #2 sees Vaneé and Ren — shedding his Vader-esque Sith robes for an all black, Han Solo-style outfit — return to the remote planet where Anakin and Luke Skywalker’s journeys began and where the Skywalker Saga ended in Rise of Skywalker.
Vaneé reminds Ren that the once Hutt-controlled planet is where a young “Ani” first met the woman who would become his wife, Padmé. It’s where Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi recruited Anakin into the Jedi Order. It’s where Anakin lost his mother.
And it’s where he turned the pain of that loss into power when the vengeful Anakin, feeling the dark side of the Force for the first time, slaughtered a tribe of Tusken Raiders when he returned to Tatooine a decade later (in Attack of the Clones). “Darth Vader was not forged solely in the fires of Mustafar. Your grandfather was an inferno. His past was the fuel. Do not dismiss this place, Kylo Ren. Without this backwater… you would not exist.”
Vaneé learned of Vader’s past from Emperor Palpatine, who manipulated the events that led to Anakin Skywalker’s downfall. Following the Emperor and Vader’s deaths during the Battle of Endor, Vaneé accessed Palpatine’s meticulous records documenting Anakin’s life. Vaneé is passing that knowledge onto Ren so that the “prince” may find his way and follow his grandfather’s path.
Ren and Vaneé first visit the Grand Arena of Mos Espa, where the nine-year-old Anakin was the first human to win the Boonta Eve Classic presided over by Jabba the Hutt. And it’s there that Ren is surprised to learn Anakin Skywalker was a slave, but less surprised to learn that the Jedi left Anakin’s mother in bondage on Tatooine.
Vaneé expects that Ren, like Vader, walked a path of pain, although the man once known as Ben Solo can only recall happy memories: Time spent with his mother and father, Han Solo and Leia Organa, as a child. Adventures with Chewbacca and play time with droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, both part of Anakin’s storied history. Uncle Luke teaching a young Ben the ways of the Force, and Han imparting to him how to fly the Millennium Falcon. Joyful family dinners with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Lando, Artoo and Threepio.
Ren then cuts down two would-be bandits and leaves the third alive to spread the word: “Don’t talk about Luke Skywalker,” he warns of the legendary Jedi who took out an entire First Order fleet by himself on the planet Crait. “Talking about Luke Skywalker can get you killed.” He then demands Vaneé take him to the slave master who owned his grandfather.
When Ren and Vaneé find Watto’s shop in ruins, Ren envisions Darth Vader returning to Tatooine to take his revenge and choke Watto to death with his unforgiving Force grip. He learns that Vader, in fact, did not kill Watto, and that the Toydarian who was resistant to the Jedi’s Force mind tricks was not Anakin’s only owner. Upon hearing that Gardulla the Hutt still lives and resides in a fortress in the Tatooine wastelands, Ren decides to erase Anakin Skywalker’s story.
Ren kills the Rancor-riding Weequay guards defending Gardulla’s fortress and confronts the Hutt. She says that slavery was not a crime in Hutt space, and then orders Ren’s death. “The past dies. That’s all that matters,” Ren says, igniting his unstable red lightsaber blade. “I will tell my own story. You will not be part of it.”
But as Ren attempts to slay Gardulla, a small but deceptively powerful creature uses the Force to disarm Ren. After a Jedi infiltrated Jabba’s palace years earlier, Gardulla decided to take precautions against Force users.
“You came here because you didn’t like your grandfather’s story. Thought you could kill the past,” Gardulla tells Ren in Huttese. “It’s not that easy, my young friend. The truth is… your grandfather’s story, it’s now your story, too.” And because like poetry — it rhymes — issue #2 ends with Kylo Ren a prisoner of Gardulla like his grandfather before him.
Marvel’s Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #2 is on sale now; issue #3 hits stands on April 16.
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