How Marvel's Star Wars Finale Connects to the Sequel Trilogy

Always two, there are. Marvel's Star Wars comics will end in September with two giant-size grand finales -- Star Wars #50 by Charles Soule and Madibek Musabekov, and Darth Vader #50 by Greg Pak and Raffaele Inco -- and a new era of the galaxy far, far away will begin in October with a line-wide relaunch bridging the age of the New Republic and the Rise of the First Order. Wednesday's Star Wars #50, titled "The Path of Hope," concludes the era of comics set in the time period between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi , before the Rebellion defeated Emperor Palpatine and the evil Galactic Empire.

The story begins some time before The Force Awakens , when Jedi Master Luke Skywalker has taken Ben Solo as his Jedi apprentice at the First Temple on the Outer Rim planet Ossus. Believing Ben could become a leader in the New Jedi Order, Luke recalls on a story that may guide his nephew in the future. Leaders have to make "choices about life and death," he tells his padawan, reflecting on a time when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite as a prisoner of Jabba the Hutt .

In a flashback to the Age of Rebellion, Luke returns to Gazian, a planet in the galaxy's Middle Rim. (Through a living vergence in the Force, the younger Luke met an echo of the High Republic Jedi Elzar Mann, who would eventually lead Luke to Ahch-To and the sacred Jedi texts seen in Star Wars: The Last Jedi .) The planet is covered by a network of fungus that imprints and records a duplicate of any alive mind it encounters -- including the fallen High Republic-era Jedi Azlin Rell.

Luke went to Gazian seeking knowledge to defeat the Sith, but Rell explains it was the collective-mind presence of the Jedi who helped him before. The eyeless Jedi offers his own knowledge: "A way to end your enemies with no risk to you or those you care for." Rell sends Luke's rebels -- Leia Organa, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, and R2-D2 and C-3PO -- to the frozen-over Inner Rim planet Niraya, where they defeat an Imperial garrison and unearth an ancient artifact buried deep within the tundra.

Threepio translates the ancient text and reveals the artifact is a weapon: a device known as the Grim Rose. Decades before the First Order would weaponize its own planet-destroying superweapon , the Rebellion possessed a weapon capable of killing anyone -- and any where -- in the galaxy. Once supplied with a person's genetic material, the Grim Rose uses "arcane mystical power," according to Threepio, to search the galaxy as it follows a path through lives that have been touched by the intended target: Emperor Palpatine.

Luke suspects the Grim Rose doesn't utilize technology or science, but the Force. Leia realizes that they can find Palpatine's genetic data on his home planet of Naboo, where Sheev Palpatine served as senator before becoming chancellor and then emperor. Senators are required to provide two sets of genetic samples for biometric identification within the Galactic Senate, so Lando infiltrates the royal archives and retrieves a portion of Palpatine's samples from a records clerk sympathetic to the Rebellion.

Luke, Leia, and Lando debate the ethics of using the device to assassinate Emperor Palpatine, but Chewbacca has no such reservations and enters Palpatine's genetic data into the killing machine. Translating Shyriiwook as he speaks for Chewbacca, Threepio relays that the Empire seized Kashyyyk and enslaved the Wookiee homeworld. "You said this thing would kill Palpatine," Chewbacca says, "so I killed him."

Threepio discovers that the mechanism doesn't just kill its target, but every person along the path it followed to get there. Luke and Leia want to stop the assassination device, but Lando argues it will be Imperial officers, dignitaries, and bureaucrats caught in the crossfire -- not innocents. "I don't care if it kills a hundred people. It's worth it," Lando declares. "Let it run." Luke senses the Grim Rose path is growing into the thousands and must be switched off before it zeroes in on other targets, so the Jedi attempts to shatter the weapon with his own: his yellow-bladed lightsaber .

Returning to the Living Sea of Gazian once more to find Azlin Rell and question him about the Grim Rose, Luke meets for the first time a young explorer named Lor San Tekka (who will hide Luke's location from the Sith Kylo Ren decades later in The Force Awakens ). Rell reappears and gleefully tells Luke that the device will run until it finds its target -- and the ensuing cascade of mass deaths. Luke learns that the target can be changed, however, and realizes that the path can be redirected to someone who is already dead... like the long-decaying bodies preserved in the Living Sea.

Back at the Jedi Temple on Ossus, Luke explains to Ben that he gave the Grim Rose a piece of bone from an ancient skeleton to change the device's target. As soon as the box realized that the target was already dead, it deactivated, and the Emperor would eventually die alongside Darth Vader aboard the second Death Star. The lesson, Luke tells his apprentice, is this: "Don't become evil to defeat evil." When asked if his tale was true, Luke responds: "Of course it was true, Ben. All of it."