Writer: Greg Pak
Art: Phil Noto and VC’s Clayton Cowles
Cover Price:: $3.99
Release Date: November 20th, 2019

As we wind down this series with an oversized finale, can Greg Pak and company manage to tie up all the loose ends? Let’s go to a galaxy far, far away and find out!

I saw Star Wars in the theatre when I was 5 in 1977. It was just Star Wars then. Episode IV wouldn’t be thought of for years. I love Star Wars, and I have high expectations for Star Wars comics. In the last several months I’ve been fairly disappointed and critical of this series, so it was with a bit of trepidation as I sat down to read this series finale. Could Greg Pak pull it off? Let’s just say I came away surprised. In a very good way!

These images from the preview are extremely revealing. Phil Noto can sure draw space scenes. We also see Vader falling into his bad habit as he did in Episode 2/3 and Clone Wars of dropping his lightsaber. Not a huge deal, but something fans will surely notice.

The biggest reveal of the issue is that Vader and Luke come face to face before the epic battle on Bespin in episode five. I’m sure there were some very serious conversations with the brass at Lucasfilm to make sure this worked and worked well. It does work very well and I give Pak a lot of credit. The dialogue in Episode five where the Emperor summons Vader’s ship from the asteroid field to talk of a “disturbance in the force” and Vader’s response of “I have felt it” make it work perfectly. Of course, Vader would have felt the disturbance if he had already faced Luke, right?

The K43 storyline, of course, takes a backseat to anything involving Vader/Luke but is also tied up in a very slick way. C-3PO’s voice was expressed perfectly in this part of the issue.

I did literally “lol” seeing Vader floating in space on part of the rock planet. But again we saw Leia fly in space so there is a precedent.

I was a bit confused as I got to the end of the issue though. Even though the series is ending and our heroes ended up on Hoth, there’s an add saying that Destination Hoth concludes in Star Wars Empire Ascendant #1 on 12/18/19. Then Star Wars #1 drops on 1/1/20.

We also get some nice notes from the creators at the end which I always appreciate. It shows their personality a bit and that they’re real people doing their jobs. A nice tidbit of information from the creator notes is that Greg Pak will be writing Darth Vader starting in February! So I’m pumped about that!

Final Thoughts:

After giving some previous issues some pretty low scores, I couldn’t be happier with how this series ended. Greg Pak took a big chance with Star Wars canon and it worked wonderfully!