New ‘Star Wars’ Comic Reveals Admiral Ackbar’s Last Words

Marvel Comics' Star Wars: The Last Jedi comic book adaptation reveals the last words spoken by esteemed Admiral Ackbar before his death at the hands of the First Order.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi #2, from writer Gary Whitta and artists Michael Walsh and Mike Spicer, revisits the bridge of the Raddus, which in the movie from writer-director Rian Johnson is fired upon and devastated by fire from two TIE fighters.

In the comic, Ackbar reports of "heavy damage to the fighter bay" before instructing the crew to "concentrate rear shields."

And then, with torpedoes inbound, Ackbar, recognizant of his impending doom, says simply, "It's been an honor serving with you all."

The bridge is struck and explodes, blowing Ackbar's body into space. Only General Leia Organa would survive the attack.

The Last Jedi editor Bob Ducsay later told the Huffington Post he regretted Ackbar's downplayed death in the film — the character's death comes offscreen, and is later addressed with just one sentence of exposition from Commander Larma D'Acy (Amanda Lawrence) — saying "that was how it was designed."

"I thought, hmmm, maybe that's too incidental," Ducsay said.

"It's a very funny thing about that because what happens — I don't typically watch movies that I work on much afterwards, because you're so familiar with it. But this movie I've seen now a couple times with an audience. And it occurred to me last night that what does happen when I watch movies ... is I generally find things that are like, hmmm, I wonder if I should do that differently. Which is some really horrible form of personal criticism because there's really nothing to be done."

"That's how it was designed," he reaffirmed. "That's how it was intended. But it is slightly incidental, isn't it?"

The Last Jedi went on to claim the lowest Rotten Tomatoes audience score of any live-action Star Wars film. Reception towards the film was mostly split and a subset of fans have since gone on to place blame on The Last Jedi for the poor box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story after the young Han Solo prequel suffered low returns.

The six-part The Last Jedi comic book adaptation next releases issue 3 on June 6 and continues monthly throughout the summer.