Comic Review – “Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku – Last Stand” Concludes in Issue #4 with a Transition Into a New Era

The ultimate fate of Grand Moff Adelhard is revealed.

Today saw the release of the final issue of Marvel Comics’ Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku – Last Stand miniseries, which also serves as the grand finale of the larger The Battle of Jakku macro-series. Below are my brief recap and thoughts on this climactic installment.

This week brought with it the announcement that author Alex Segura (Star Wars: Poe Dameron – Free Fall) will be penning Marvel’s new flagship Star Wars title, set after the events of Return of the Jedi and The Battle of Jakku, when it launches in May. Naturally that meant I read Segura’s finale to The Battle of Jakku looking out for how the writer might approach the New Republic era of the Star Wars storytelling timeline. I had been so-so on the 12-issue macro-series up to this point, but I went in with an open mind hoping that the creative team behind the title would drive it home in the end. The Battle of Jakku – Last Stand #4 begins with concurrent meetings between Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and her troops, Commander Hux and Counselor Gallius Rax (along with a cool cameo by an Imperial Sentinel droid), and the Spice Runners of Kijimi, with each group plotting out their next moves in the ongoing conflict. Then Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker and rebel pilot Rynn Zenat arrive in the Anoat Sector to find chaos reigning among the combatants.

During the skirmish, as Rynn and Luke are attempting to board Grand Moff Adelhard’s Star Destroyer Scepter, they are assisted by allies including Eleodie Macavayna and Zenat’s girlfriend Theresa Alern, the latter of which is suddenly killed when the stolen TIE fighter she’s piloted erupts in flame. Rynn uses her fury over Alern’s death to gain access to the Scepter’s hangar bay, but Skywalker warns her against letting anger drive her actions. Meanwhile back on the planet Chandrila, temporary home of the New Republic, General Han Solo decides to join the fight so as not to let his friend Luke face Adelhard without more help. Above Jakku, the battle rages on with Admiral Ackbar barking orders and Commander Kyrsta Agate (from Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy of novels) doing her best to confront the forces of the Imperial remnant, plus Adelhard’s fleet that has just now joined the fray with our two heroes still aboard the Scepter. On Kijimi, Zeva Bliss gives the order for Acolyte of the Beyond Reyna Oskure to assassinate Adelhard and his second-in-command Purge Trooper Commander Bragh, though she only succeeds with the latter. Oskure is wounded by Adelhard, but that’s a minor and fleeting victory for the Grand Moff, who quickly realizes that the Spice Runners have turned against him, all but bringing his movement to an end.

Rynn encounter Reyna in the hallways of the Scepter, but opts to stay her hand in favor of assisting Luke in his pursuit of Adelhard, while out in space the Millennium Falcon arrives along with Lando Calrissian’s Lady Luck and a host of other New Republic starfighters to rescue Luke and Rynn and hopefully decimate Adelhard’s chances even further. Of course anyone who has read Aftermath: Empire’s End knows how most of this concludes, but we get to see the collapse illustrated in wonderful detail by artist Jethro Morales and colorist Jim Campbell. Rax’s flagship Super Star Destroyer the Ravager crashes into the surface of Jakku, coming to a rest in the desert, waiting to eventually pop up decades later in the timeline in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Meanwhile we get a bit of déjà vu as Luke clashes with Adelhard on the bridge of the Scepter, except this time the Jedi says he wants to save the manic Grand Moff, who himself claims he is quite beyond saving, thank you very much. During their standoff, a lone blaster bolt zaps through the air and takes out Adelhard, revealed to have been fired by Rynn. So a sad Skywalker and a still-angry Zenat escape aboard the Falcon, while Sloane executes Rax and gains the information on how to join up with Hux and the Imperialis (see Empire’s End as well for further details on this).

And in the final pages of The Battle of Jakku we see baby Ben Solo at his very earliest point in the timeline, spurring (probably misplaced) optimism among his parents and their friends, though Lando does deliver an ominous line pointing toward the future. And then there’s what I can only assume is a tease of Alex Segura’s ongoing Star Wars threat– someone called the Praetor (is this Reyna Oskure?) meets with another cloaked figure (who she calls the Prime Minister of Pirros) in a shadowy booth at a Fenril sector cantina. I ended up thinking this final issue was just okay, though I think I might appreciate the whole thing a lot more if I can find the time to revisit Aftermath– I just haven’t read those books since they came out nearly a decade ago, and a lot of the gap-filling here is reliant on me remembering characters and events from that trilogy. Otherwise Adelhard’s narrative still feels like it kinda went nowhere and I’ll stand by my assertion last week that this series would have been better served with Gallius Rax as its main villain instead. I’m crossing my fingers that Segura benefits from having fewer restrictions to work around in his framework for the ongoing series, but Charles Soule’s excellent writing on the previous run (and really, all of his stuff) presents some big shoes to fill. As always, I’ll keep an open mind for whatever comes next.

Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku – Last Stand #4 is available now wherever comic books are sold.

Mike Celestino
Mike serves as Laughing Place's lead Southern California reporter, Editorial Director for Star Wars content, and host of the weekly "Who's the Bossk?" Star Wars podcast. He's been fascinated by Disney theme parks and storytelling in general all his life and resides in Burbank, California with his beloved wife and cats.