Shu-Torun has been pacified, Cylo is exposed as a traitor and on the run. Vader may finally be back in the Emperor’s good graces, and is on his way to Coruscant to meet with Palpatine. However, the identity of his secret ally, Dr. Aphra, is now known to the redoubtable Inspector Thanoth. This is Darth Vader Volume 4: End of Games by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca.
Synopsis (Part I)
In orbit above Coruscant, Grand General Tagge’s new flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Executor, is under construction. On board, Darth Vader meets with the Emperor. “It is time for you to understand," he tells Vader. Palpatine starts with a lecture about the history of the Sith. They fought each other as much as the Jedi, and failed; until the Rule of Two. His previous apprentices? “Darth Maul was a loss”, he says, “Darth Tyranus was a proton torpedo. He served his purpose and was gone. I had a superior candidate in mind." But then, Mustafar; Darth Vader failed, and was left beaten and broken. Vader had to survive for the Empire to survive, so Palpatine turned to scientists to save him. Among them was Cylo. The Emperor was impressed by his abilities and made the mistake of allowing Cylo to grow too powerful. He became involved with the Tarkin Initiative and couldn’t simply be done away with without risking a schism of the Empire’s great minds. In the wake of Vader’s failure at Yavin, Cylo came to Palpatine and offered one of his creations as a replacement. Here the Emperor saw his opportunity to make Cylo overplay his hand; and so he did. Driven by pride and desperation, he went too far, turned traitor, and is now in a position to be destroyed. Vader says he understands. He understands that if one of Cylo’s toys had succeeded, they would be hearing this speech. “That does not matter,” Vader says, “The Dark Side is strength. I am that strength.”
The endgame comes for Thanoth as well.
Vader heads off to do away with Cylo, but first he stops at Anthan 13. Inspector Thanoth is waiting for him there. Vader ignites his lightsaber and demands Thanoth tell him where Aphra is. Thanoth plays it cool. He knows how this is going to end, but he also knows that Vader won’t kill him before he reveals Aphra’s location. So Thanoth proceeds to tell Vader that he knows pretty much everything. Thanoth uncovered a series of trips, all places that led to one Luke Skywalker. Skywalker. Thanoth knows what that name means; knows Vader wants to find the boy, train him, and use him to supplant the Emperor. Thanoth knows that Aphra must be silenced so that the Emperor never learns of this. He knows, and he intends to tell Vader where she is. Why? Because Thanoth believes in the Empire, but believes the Emperor is weak. “You are better for the Empire...so your plan must succeed”, he says. Why didn’t he just send the location to Vader anonymously? Because he knows that Vader is relentless, and that he would never have let a thread dangling. He would have found out who sent the message, who knew, and he would have killed him eventually. So, Thanoth saved him time and effort, effort that can go into saving the Empire. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Anakin”, he says. He reveals Aphra’s location and is immediately cut down by Darth Vader. Did it ever occur to Vader that this guy just showed himself to be a potentially very powerful ally; and maybe he should have kept him around? No, because at this point in his life Darth Vader basically lives on murder. At the end of ROTJ, he didn’t die due to injuries sustained from the fight. It was because he realized that since he is a good guy now he could no longer engage in life sustaining murder and lost the will to live. Outside, Vader meets with BT and Triple Zero (along with Vader’s droid army and Black Krrsantan). He tasks them with finding Aphra and bringing her in, or failing that, silencing her; while he goes after Cylo.
It's okay that Triple Zero is a murderer, because he's also funny!
The droids arrive at the Cosmatanic Steppes in the Outer Rim. After meeting a local who tells them that Aphra is in the bar (and then killing him), they head into town and start shooting it up to eliminate any witnesses. They are about to kill Aphra when she wisely surrenders, forcing them take her into custody. Meanwhile, Vader, having learned Cylo’s whereabouts from a former colleague (yeah, he kills him after), arrives in the Crushank Nebulae in his star destroyer. There he finds Cylo and his fleet of cybernetically enhanced space whales. Vader leads a TIE squadron in the attack, the ISD Devastator is disabled by an ion pulse, and the whale fleet escapes into hyperspace; but not before Vader manages to blast a hole in the flagship and get on board. As he makes his way through the ship/whale he is confronted by Voidgazer (the one with the drones, and the thick lenses over her eyes; is she blind? Was she blinded by science? We may never know). “Do you think you can stand against a Dark Lord of the Sith?” he asks. “There’s no need to,” she replies, “Not when science can face you.” And with that, a door shuts, and Vader finds himself under attack by a cybernetically enhanced Rancor.
Vader lines up his shot.
Meanwhile, back at the in progress Super Star Destroyer Executor, Black Krrsantan and the Killbots (band name?) arrive with the captured Dr. Aphra and turn her over to stormtroopers for safe keeping until Darth Vader can arrive and commence to make what little is left of her life extremely excruciating. But rogue archaeologist Aphra has always got something up her sleeve, like that time she hid in a fridge to avoid a nuclear explosion (is that right?). She points out to Triple Zero that since she has been safely delivered to Vader the droid’s priority order is complete. He confirms this; so, she gives him a new priority order: “Get me out of here!”. Back inside the space whale, Vader is trying his usual tricks (amputation, Force choking) to best Voidgazer’s enhanced rancor; but failsafes against such things are keeping him from defeating the beast. Then, Vader chucks his lightsaber right into the things mouth and impales it in the brain. Problem solved. Voidgazer comes at him with her drones, but Vader takes control of one of them and Tulon Voidgazer suffers the fate of all who think that technology is the answer to every problem: she gets shot by her own laser gun wielding drone. Ah, the hubris. As she dies, we learn that she previously sabotaged the Executor when she was working on it for Tagge. Sure enough, just as the space whale fleet emerges from hyperspace, the Executor begins to fill with some sort of gas. Only the Emperor and his guards are unaffected since they are cut off from the rest of the ship. Vader makes his way to the bridge on the whale (there’s a glass floor and you can see the thing’s brain underneath--kinda cool); but Cylo and Morit Astarte have abandoned ship and left it on a collision course for the Executor. They watch as it explodes against the side of the Executor, with Darth Vader apparently still onboard.
Review (Part I)
Darth Vader Issue 21 Cover A
So the End Of Games for Darth Vader begins and gets off to a great start with Vader and Palpatine’s meeting followed immediately by Vader’s confrontation with Inspector Thanoth. While it sucks to see a great character like Thanoth go, you really have to applaud Gillen’s willingness to do it. A lesser writer would have kept milking him for all he was worth; but Gillen understands and respects his character. Thanoth is not like Aphra, he is not going to bargain and blackmail for his life. Cylo’s space whales make their return to the story, and while they are definitely my least favorite part of this whole series, they don’t really ruin the story. They make sense given what Cylo does, but they are also unnecessary. I mean, they ultimately don’t do anything here for which a normal ship would have sufficed. Triple Zero has some of his best psychopath lines of the series in these issues. Vader’s fight with the rancor is pretty good, and it’s refreshing that he is not able to take him out immediately. Larroca’s art is solid as usual, the layouts are good, and the action scenes flow well. At no point are you looking at something and having to decipher what you’re seeing. All the preceding elements of a tight, well crafted series begin to come together here. Next week, the conclusion.
Action Figure Comic Pack Wish List:
Comic pack wish-list: Grand General Tagge and Tulon Voidgazer.
