Canon Comic Review: Dark Droids #5

– Spoiler Review –

As the Scourge escalates its plans to consume everything, can Ajax and a small squad of droids be enough to end its reign? Or will the galaxy, organic beings included, be forever lost to its hunger? Find out in our review for the finale of the latest crossover event, Dark Droids #5!

Due to the publishing pipeline, Dark Droids #5 came out much later in December than originally planned, meaning we’ve seen most of the other series move on or mostly wrap up their crossover arcs, while one even included a key, yet contextless moment from this finale. I figured in my Star Wars #41 (Vol. 2)’s review, as by writer Charles Soule, the context would matter greatly to what felt like too simple of an ending to this storyline and Dark Droids #5 proved me more than correct, as the full truth of what happens to end the Scourge’s plans offers something surprising along the way. It’s been a fun, weird, unique series overall, and a storyline that’s injected fresh adventure and a great horror tone to other stories, to the point they’ve had, for the most part, fantastic personal drama to play out with these events as the backdrop. But it in some aspects, Dark Droids itself falls short or points to cracks in the crossover format, which I’ll point out here and discuss a little more in my upcoming comics year-in-review in early January, though overall my impressions are favorable for the event.

As Scourge continues to work diligently to take over fully organic minds, having made it at least in cyborgs and the cyborgs it creates, the scale of the resistance to its machinations and the proximity to its goals has caused it to lash out with malice to those that would oppose it. In the process of doing so, we learn how the new destruction comes from its feelings towards how organics have treated droids, creating them and giving them the ability to think but stopping short of self-awareness. With so many minds to parse through, Scourge Prime, as Ajax later calls him, is having trouble holding back the sea of minds it controls, giving into its impulses and feelings of anger in the process, hence the malicious attacks against organics from dredged up feelings on droid sentience. This entire Saga has a complicated relationship with droid’s rights and sentience, always coming close to maybe discussing it but either stopping short or going in the wrong direction, so it was nice for this droid-focused story to take a few moments to dwell on it in the finale (but we’ll dive more deeply into its relationship with such a story thread in a moment).

I enjoyed how it questions again why it’s even doing this, with its last remaining sub-prime model holding up a blaster, telling the Prime he can kill himself to end it now if he’s not sure about continuing, but its programming, much like it complains about for the rest of droid-kind, won’t let him stop. So the experiments continue, its reach grows, and we watch it begin to consume even more and more…right up until it cracks the code, jumping fully into organics. Luke, Leia, Lando, and Chewie, whom are on Epikonia to rescue Lobot, are overwhelmed by its many vector droids and become one with the Scourge. Considering the Sith stopped it last time, its goal of taking over organics also meant taking over the Force, to prevent another loss like it suffered in the past, and having the Spark Eternal has helped make it all possible. With control of the Force, it realizes the scope of the mystical energy field, vowing to do what it’s done with the metal and organics, and become a new Force itself. It’s a spooky, frightening thought which dies the moment its dreamed.

Last issue, we saw R2-D2’s new D-Squad crew (QT-KT, Triple-Zero, BT-1, IG-88, and 4-LOM) visit Ajax Sigma at his Second Revelation Colony, convincing the broken-down droid revolutionary to fight again for their kind. He tries to get preachy with them, but Triple-Zero nips it in the bud immediately, just asking him to tell them how to kill Scourge Prime instead. After his failed attempt in issue #3, he knows a better plan of attack, spreading out their forces to locate Scourge Prime/act as a distraction until they do. With so many minds, and so many more joining it as it takes over organics, the Scourge is far too distracted for this little incursion anyways, giving Ajax the chance to sneak into its lair and take his giant, anime-like sword and shove it right through Scourge Prime’s chest, ending the threat and releasing its hold on the many minds across the galaxy. A sword to the chest feels like too easy of an answer to this threat, which is why it seemed very significant, and somewhat surprising, no one asked why Ajax’s sword was glowing the same purple as the Scourge after the deed was done. Considering their role in ending the Scourge and what happens next, how this all shakes out made the suddenness of the D-Squad miniseries ending before these events all the stranger, in fact proving sentiments shared by the Scourge and Ajax about organics’ feelings on droids considering organics didn’t let the only droid-spotlighted series complete their section of the tale in their own series.

As the organics move on, oblivious about what happened to free them but glad it’s over, Artoo and his crew get an offer from Ajax to come back with him, to help him spread non-organic sentience and reveal themselves when the time is right. The galaxy fought back when he tried many centuries before, though we still don’t have much context to those events, and it’s out of fear, with him assuming that maybe, if there are enough of them, organics wouldn’t be fearful and could be shown a new way to deal with droids because of it. The warrior inside comes out, however, even suggesting they could go so far as to teach organics through strength to accept them, but Artoo stops Ajax short, saying they did all this not for a cause, but to stop a threat to everything in the galaxy. It’s one of those scenes I would’ve LOVED to see played out in another issue of D-Squad, as Triple-Zero ends the scene saying they’d come for Ajax if he ever became the next threat to them/the galaxy, and then they depart, so we don’t get to see them discuss any further on the implications for the revolutionary’s offer or plans.

We do join Ajax back at his Colony, his sword still consumed by a purple flame, constructing a new droid. But as he talks to it, an unnerving feeling settled over me, followed by confirmation one definitely should feel uncomfortable with these actions: the purple flames were the Scourge/Spark Eternal and Ajax, as a fellow visioned droid, couldn’t actually kill it, instead placing it in a new body, mind-wiped seemingly, promising to it teach it everything it needs to know. Ajax begins to go over the revelations, the first being “I,” the second “we,” the third “them,” but in discussing them, the organics in the galaxy, he says they will consider how to act, much like he was telling D-Squad, because he has a FOURTH revelation now: “all,” seemingly inspired by the Scourge/Spark Eternal’s ability and drive and wanting to take over it all. For most of the series, Ajax made it seem like the Eye of the Webbish Bog, way back in Revelations (2022) #1, was wrong about him being a threat to the Force, and while it was certainly the Scourge to be worried about, Ajax’s new revelation, feeding into his revolutionary mindset, proves he was the threat the Bog warned Vader about all those months ago, and I loved this twist hiding in plain sight, yet not having more time with the character before takes some wind out of its sails. It’s an intriguing way to close out the crossover event, with the threat Ajax and the Scourge could return at some point, but it feels like punting the discussion on droid sentience for another time and place. As much fun as this horror-themed story is, not really lingering on this story and how organics feel about droids and droid’s sentience sort of robs it of some of its punch, once again proving the Saga isn’t ready or willing to dive into the issue of droids any time soon. If we knew for certain we’d have Ajax return and give the galaxy something to reckon with regarding droids, maybe it would help the whole crossover ending without any deep or meaningful discussion on it feel less incomplete, but as far as we can tell out to the Sequel trilogy, organics haven’t really changed their minds about droids terribly much (even if Rey was far more compassionate than most), so will we ever see Ajax return? And if he does, if nothing changes, does that say something about the Saga as a whole or does it say nothing at all?  We won’t know until we get there, but for now no change here doesn’t seem to say much, but it’s at least an intriguing, lingering thread I would be willing to see picked up again, only hopefully with a meaningful change at its end.

Once again, Luke Ross, colorist Alex Sinclair, and letterer Travis Lanham at least delivered on horror of the Scourge’s goals and its broken mind, while their art trick helped play into Ajax’s surprise at the end. One of my favorite things the art team did this series was the dark and grim colors for when we were dealing with the Scourge and bright, heroic colors while with Ajax, as if he was the clean and righteous one and the Scourge was deadly and villainous. While the Scourge was one, despite it just following its programming, Ajax hid in plain sight, both with his rhetoric and through the art’s help. The panel layout and overwhelming haze of purple this issue, as well as Lanham’s word bubble/box placements, really add to the Scourge’s fractured, overwhelmed mind. When there are pages with just the Scourge, the panels are overlapping, tilted, and going off the page, only Lanham’s placement of the bubbles enough to see us through the madness. It gets even tougher still in two big splashes, a web-like line weaving through panels, tangled around itself where it meets, all sorts of images through the Scourge’s eyes coming to life, taking us all over the crossover, where Lanham’s work almost isn’t enough to get us through, though this feels on-purpose, thankfully. The purple haze from Sinclair permeating panels as the Scourge begins to take over organic minds is oppressively creepy, adding to the sense they are all connected, as it begins to almost blend everything together, almost taking over the coloring of the characters as well.

Here are a few other things:

• The more recent Revelations (2023) didn’t tease another big crossover event, instead setting up new miniseries or upcoming threads in the remaining on-goings, and it was a nice change of pace. I’ll be curious how much longer this era will last now Dark Droids is over, with my bet remaining they’ll wrap it up at issue #50 for Star Wars (Vol. 2) and Darth Vader (Vol. 3), which would take us out to September 2024 or so, but they could sooner, like Doctor Aphra (Vol. 2) and Bounty Hunters are in January. Considering we have solicits out to March/April, expect to maybe hear what could come next beyond this era of storytelling sooner than later!
• Speaking of this era, from the Crimson Dawn/Qi’ra storyline to Dark Droids, I remain very interested to learn how much of these stories the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws will reference or deal with over the course of Kay Vess’ journey!
• It was a little odd to see some differences between what is depicted in this issue compared to other series: I liked the little scene between Sana Starros and Doctor Chelli Aphra talking about Magna Tolvan, but I was thrown a bit by showing Aphra Scourged, considering we just had her series’ penultimate issue and she wasn’t ever Scourged; Luke Skywalker jumps away and is on a roof in Star Wars #41 (Vol. 2) when the Scourge takes him and his pals, but here they are all standing with one another, which doesn’t matter much but was an interesting difference.

Dark Droids #5 brings the chilling spread of the Scourge to an intriguing end, though not dealing with the bigger discussion on droid sentience ensures not all its punches land.

+ Unhinged panels and other artwork tricks take us into the Scourge’s shattering mind

+ Ajax Sigma really was the threat all along

+ D-Squad rejecting Ajax…

– Punting on meaningful droid sentience discussion

– …yet doing it in this miniseries proves him right

Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.

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