The joy of reading Star Wars comics is the slow deepening of understanding they bring. Creators go to incredible lengths to deepen characters and explore events that won’t be touched upon in any other medium. They’re a valuable resource to connect with a beloved world that is slowly becoming more and more expansive.
Sometimes the realizations made are major: you might come to understand the ultimate fate of a minor character from one film or another. Other times, the realization is much more minor, less than epic but nonetheless revealing.
Marvel
In Star Wars: The Legacy of Vader – The Reign of Kylo Ren Vol. 1, the revelation is that that final force of the Sith is a petulant child; the looming evil over an entire trilogy of films can be best summarized as having been the temper tantrum of a brooding, over-privileged boy.
This might not be overly new information – Ren’s presence in the final trilogy simmers with a sort of childish pouting – but Reign illustrates how undeserved his claim to the Dark Side might ultimately have been. When faced with his grandfather’s history of enslavement, brutality, and loss, Ren is faced with the realization that nothing major had happened in his life to lead him to his Dark Side strengths; his was a life of privilege and love. He had never been “turned”; he simply was evil.
Marvel
Throughout the book, Kylo Ren lacks sustainable friction: he has no true conflict of his own, no whetstone of resistance against which to sharpen himself. The capital-R ‘Resistance’ itself does little for him: that was a conflict inherited from Snoke, his grandfather, and the Empire at large.
Which means that Ren is forced to invent himself a conflict; coming upon a planet which accepts the subjugation of the First Order with little to no resistance, Ren seeds his own. Posing as a freedom fighter, Ren teaches the people of Naboo the basics of revolution, of fighting back. He leads them against his own forces and, in the end, turns on them.
He is a boy at play; the lives of the people of Naboo are his playthings. What’s worse is that this is Naboo: even this playground was inherited, is unearned, means nothing to him.
Marvel
This is only the beginning of this story. As one of Lord Vader’s retainers, Vaneé, leads Ren through the landmarks of Vader’s past, Ren continues to measure himself against that titular legacy. This volume leaves off with much more of that path to walk. The narrative question left lingering by the end of the book is this: will Kylo Ren discover a purpose within himself, out there in the past? Will he earn a right to the destruction he causes?
It seems unlikely, but it’s a compelling train wreck to watch. Kylo Ren may be a petulant boy pretending at greatness, but it’s a joy walking the long shadow of Vader with him.
You must be logged in to post a comment.