Now the conclusion of Yoda’s Secret War by Jason Aaron and Salvador Larroca from Star Wars Volume 5.
Synopsis (Part II)
Everybody must get stoned!!
Yoda and Garro have found the heart of the mountain. More than that, they have discovered that it is an actual heart; because the mountain is a living creature. A creature of stone that is now only barely alive. Yoda meditates for days and nights, communing with the mountain, sharing his life force with it, exchanging recipes. Yoda hears the mountain speak, telling its story. Once this planet was populated by these giants of living stone. Then people came and drove the giants to their knees out of fear and greed for power. It was then that they crawled underground and became mountains. An opening appears in the mountain and Yoda and Garro return to the Rockhawkers who exiled them. The Rockhawkers demand to know the secret of the heart of the mountain, but Yoda refuses to tell them. They threaten to kill Yoda if he doesn’t reveal the secret, and Garro tells them that the mountain is alive. Yoda returns to the Muckwhackers and tells them they must prepare for a war. “But we’ve been at war for years,” one of them says. “No. Begin now the real war does,” Yoda says. Meanwhile, Garro is teaching the other Rockhawkers how to commune with the mountain. They infuse the mountain with anger, hatred, greed, and thirst for revenge. The mountain emerges from the ground and heads off to destroy Yoda and the Muckwhackers. Yoda has been showing the Muckwhackers how to meditate and direct their feeling deep beneath the ground: “Not so dead is this world. Help it wake we must. Help it to rise.” Yoda tells them to continue as he moves to face the oncoming giant. Displaying his Force and Stonepower, he stops the mountain in its tracks. He encourages it to fight against the anger and hatred that the Rockhawkers are using to control it. The scene now switches to the “present” as Luke and S4 arrive in the Vagadarr system and enter the atmosphere of the planet in question. From the sky, Luke searches for the great living mountain he has been reading about, but lifeless stone remains. As he exits his ship, Luke is approached by a singular figure in a red hooded robe. “I knew someday there would be another Jedi,” he says. This is the same person that we saw talking to Obi-Wan on Tatooine in a previous flashback. He introduces himself as Garro, the last of the Rockhawkers. “You’re going to help me do what I’ve been trying to do for many years now. You’re going to help me finish this war.”
Does this guy wonder why nobody wanted to share a planet with him?
So, Luke is on that planet that Yoda used to be on; and the guy who used to be on it, but was also on Tatooine for some reason, is back on it, too. Hey, it’s all comin’ together, man! Not really, but let’s forge ahead and save all questions/exasperated sighs for the end. Adult Garro (he probably just goes by Gar now) attacks Luke with his floating blue stone knives. He asks him if Yoda trained him and if he told him the truth about this place. “Did he tell you how he ruined it all?” he asks. Garro then calls forth some as yet unseen companions. From the ground emerge three small blue rock creatures. They look rather pathetic, nearly dead. Garro says Yoda never came back to see what his presence there wrought. “Look upon all that’s left of our once-mighty living mountains. And then get ready to help me kill them,” he says. The scene switches back the past. Yoda is still holding the mountain that is under the Rockhawkers’ control at bay. It tries to smash him, but Yoda Force pushes it back. Then, from the ground emerge more rock creatures; these have been revived and summoned forth by the Mudwhackers’ meditation. They, uh, beat the crap out of the other rock creature, and Yoda goes to confront the Rockhawkers. Now back to Luke: Old Garro tells him that after Yoda left the planet so long ago, the kids now had the knowledge that there were other worlds. Little by little they left. They built ships (how?!) and left. Without its people the world itself began to die. Now, all that’s left are the malnourished looking rock creatures and Garro. Garro tells Luke he intends to use his life force to kill the last of the creatures so that all the stonepower that’s left will belong to him. Luke decides that’s not really how he wants to spend his afternoon, then the scene switches back to the past: Yoda tells the Rockhawkers it is time for them to live in peace with the stone and with themselves. He tells young Garro to heed the same teaching he gave Yoda in the mountain: to feel it living all around him. “Put down the spear and help me end this war,” he says. The present: “Die you wretched Jedi? And help me end this war!”, Garro yells. The past: “They were right about me all along. I am a coward,” says Garro as he drops his spear and walks away. We are told that the war between the rival factions ended and that the giants lived in peace with each other and with man. Back in the present, Luke valiantly fights off Garro’s attacks and protects the rock creatures. In fact, Garro is so moved by this, by the fact that Luke reminds him of himself as a child that he totally gives up on his plan. “Do you know the only thing I was good at when I was a child? Walking away.” And walk away he does; he walks over to one of the dead rock creatures, puts his hand on it, and I guess lets it absorb his life force(?) Anyway, he disappears in a flash of blue. In a final scene from the past we see Yoda leaving the planet and the children being reunited with their parents. In the present, Luke and the Rock Babies (band name?) go inside the mountain to find the heart and “get it pumping again.” Finally, on Dagobah, we see Yoda standing, looking up into the sky. “Soon ready he will be. As ready as he will ever be. Find me then, he will.” I mean, that’s kind of the exact opposite of what he says when he actually meets Luke, but whatever.
Review (Part II)
So, this story starts of kind of weird, off the wall; then just unravels to the point of utter nonsense. If St. Elsewhere was all a dream inside the imagination of an autistic kid, then Yoda’s Secret War was the fever dream of a prom night dumpster baby. I thought about making the summary go in chronological order rather than the way it’s presented in the book, but I don’t think it would have made any difference; and it was important to convey it the way it was intended. There’s a right way and a wrong way for a story to raise more questions than it answers; this is a good example of the wrong way. Why was Garro on Tatooine? How did the other people of the planet build ships? It pretty explicitly says Yoda didn’t tell anyone but Obi-Wan about this planet when he left. So, no one else ever visited and the people were basically living in the Stone Age. How did the people drive the giants “to their knees” in the first place? A rather big deal is made of Yoda becoming young Garro’s student, but what did he really teach him? How to commune with the stone and control it? Wouldn’t Yoda have pretty much already known how to do that? Neither young nor old Garros' motivations are ever quite made clear, as far as I can tell. What’s left of the stone creatures look to be nearly dead when Luke arrives, so why does Garro so badly need Luke to help him finish them off? In short, Yoda’s Secret War should have remained a secret. Next week we will take a look at Star Wars Annual 2, an unrelated story that was included in this volume.
Action Figure Comic Pack Wish List:
You really want to be reminded of this? Look, this wasn’t easy on any of us; here’s something to start the healing:
