Darth Vader puts the honesty of his newest ally to the test in Star Wars: Darth Vader #23 written by Greg Pak, art by Raffele Ienco, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
At this point, the series is six issues removed from the “War of the Bounty Hunters” crossover and deep in the “Crimson Reign” era. Six issues is, in modern times, the point in which most story-arcs wrap up, the better to fill a trade paperback or hardcover collection. Yet here, six issues out from the beginning of the series’ latest story, the arc of the plot is perhaps more unclear than ever (beyond the vague notion of “Vader is hunting Crimson Dawn”). Yet for all that, Darth Vader #23 is still largely an entertaining issue.
It opens directly after last issue’s cliffhanger. Sabé knows Darth Vader was once Anakin Skywalker. She’s sussed it out herself, because she was Padmé’s shadow (and thus learned a little about Anakin) and because she’s seen Vader react to various Padmé-related things (like freaking out about how she died). But she’s also cool with it, because she wants Vader’s help.
It turns out that once upon a time, Sabé led a group of Nabooians back to Tatooine to do what Anakin never did, and free at least some of the slaves there in the name of his mother (Sabé pointing this out must have burned Vader more than the lava of Mustafar…). Now, the freed slaves, living on their own on a colony world, are under the oppressive heel of an Imperial governor with ties to Crimson Dawn, and Sabé wants Vader to “bring order” to the colony by dispatching that governor.
The fact that the governor is part of Crimson Dawn is really the only thing connecting the immediate plot of this issue to the larger arc of the story; it’s suggested that Vader is only going along with this because Sabé looks/acts/sounds like Padmé, and the unstated question is whether Vader would go along with this if the Imperial governor wasn’t connected to Crimson Dawn and thus not part of Vader’s larger mission to end that group’s infiltration of the Empire. As is usual in this series, readers are left on the outside looking in at Vader; we aren’t made privy to his inner monologue and motivations. He claims to be testing Sabé for loyalty and honesty, and in the end, he does directly intervene to end an immediate threat to the colonists while providing Sabé the tools to help the colony herself (by basically giving her access to an Imperial shuttle loaded with weapons, prompting an end-of-issue makeover into “Dark Sabé”). Where this all leads – and, more importantly, how much Vader has bought what Sabé is selling – is left for future issues.
In a testament to how much the larger “Crimson Reign” arc takes a back seat in this issue, there’s only a brief check-in with Valance and his crew, who are meant to be ostensibly helping Vader in his mission, and they almost literally say how they don’t know what to do now that Vader isn’t paying attention to them (it frankly reads a bit like writer Greg Pak throwing up his own hands and admitting he’s lost the thread on this bunch). Even Ochi gets back-pedaled in favor of Sabé, something he hangs a lampshade on by flying off on his own, declaring he’s going to put himself back in the game, leaving Valance and the rest behind.
Yet for as muddied as the larger narrative and Vader himself are in this issue, it’s still a lot of fun. Some of that comes from the way Pak continues to lean into the Prequel Trilogy to push Vader’s buttons and test his character: amongst the colonists Sabé freed are Kitser and Wald, Anakin’s friends on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace who cheered him on in the podrace (they’ve even built their own pod as adults). Much of the tension in this issue comes from the fact that while Sabé is like Padmé, she’s not Padmé, and it’s only a matter of time before she hits the limitations of how far she can manipulate Vader.
This is also the second consecutive issue in which most of the action beats come from the characters fighting monsters, and while that repetition is getting old, Raffele Ienco continues to make them visually dynamic (while compensating for some of his own artistic stiffness): there’s one page in this issue, in which a static image of Vader is superimposed over a series of close-up panels showing his lightsaber slicing up the alien creatures in a variety of ways, that is particularly striking and engaging.
Ultimately, how this all fits into the arc of the “Crimson Reign” story and into whatever character arc Pak has planned for Vader overall remains to be seen. In the meantime, the tension between Sabé and Vader, and the way Sabé is consistently forcing Vader to confront his past in different ways, remains entertaining enough to carry things along. While the big picture remains unclear, that’s really only going to be a problem in the end if Pak himself has lost his vision of it.
Force Facts
- Sabé’s new look, the reveal of which closes the issue, is reminiscent of Mara Jade (in terms of the black, sleeveless tunic). Sabé was previously Handmaiden to Padmé, while Mara Jade was (in the old Legends continuity) one of the Emperor’s Hands; are we seeing Sabé’s transformation into a Hand of Vader?
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.
