AUTHOR: GREG PAK | ARTIST: CHRIS SPROUSE | PUBLISHER: MARVEL | FORMAT: SINGLE ISSUE | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

We join Age of Rebellion: Luke Skywalker sometime between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and we find Luke out on the Outer Rim, helping Rebel soldiers take an Imperial refinery. Meanwhile, the Emperor calls to convene with Darth Vader, jibing him as he always does about his doubts and inability to bring Luke to heel. Vader is convinced turning Luke to the dark side is the way forward – and oddly, Palpatine seems to ponder on this as if it wasn’t the point of much of The Empire Strikes Back. He soon turns his attentions to Luke, sensing his feeling from across the galaxy that the Rebels, with the assistance of some Utapauans, complete the raid before Imperial reinforcements arrive.

A seed of doubt is sown in Luke, his intuition second-guessed and as those Imperial forces drop out of hyperspace a space battle begins, one that goes badly for the Rebels. With Palpatine in his mind, influencing his thoughts, Luke jumps away, heading to a distant world for a simple life away from the war with R2-D2, ditching his X-wing and leaving everything behind….

But it’s only a dream, one seeded in Luke’s mind by Palpatine and eerily reminiscent of his life in The Last Jedi, and you have to wonder if his decision to head for Ahch-To was influenced in this moment by Palpatine (this is all canon after all, everything counts towards the wider story). Instead, Luke works with the Major to steer the Imperial forces away from the Rebels, allowing them to succeed and making them heroes in the process.

It’s a basic story, but one that stylistically and thematically has some issues. Seeing Luke in his Return of the Jedi era black garb with green lightsaber months before the film – an iconic moment that signified to audiences of the day a dalliance with the darkness – is distracting enough, but the thought of the Emperor laying the seeds of Luke’s decision to leave for Ahch-To is a trickier proposition altogether. That’s a HUGE seed to sow, a choice that had enormous consequences for the galaxy. To blithely drop it mid-run into a Marvel mini-series seems wasteful and feels wrong to be placed here. It may not have been the intent of the writer or the story group, but to see Luke leave, find a distant island, ditch his X-wing in the ocean…. it seems pretty clear.

Once again, the second of the Age of series is an uneven collection of stories, some giving deft insight into the era and others presenting mundanity as adventure. Despite admirable intentions, this falls somewhere in the middle. A decent effort stalled by patchy execution.