Review: ‘Darth Vader’ #40 – It’s Vader vs The Emperor in ‘The Master’s Trial’
Following on from the last issue, Darth Vader is ready to take on the Emperor in the 40th issue of this comic run. After some soul searching, Vader has realized that the Emperor is responsible for everything bad that has happened to him and is determined to kill him.
Obviously, that can’t happen yet but The Master’s Trial still manages to give us a cool and entertaining face off between master and apprentice, with both of them bringing the full scope of their power to the fore as the droid plague threatens to invade Coruscant.
It’s exciting and cathartic to watch Vader finally confront the Emperor, although the issue ends on a fairly dumb cliffhanger that only exists to feed into the Dark Droids comic series. If not for that, this would have been one of the best issues of the entire run, but unfortunately it is let down by its ending.
Spoilers ahead…
We start off with a short scene explaining that the Empire is now fully aware of the droid plague, even if it doesn’t know what is behind it. With Coruscant possessing the highest concentrated number of droids in the galaxy, a blockade is in place to check every droid that comes through the planet’s atmosphere and make sure none of them are possessed by the virus. Hilariously, Darth Vader bypasses that blockade completely as he flies through in his TIE Fighter, superbly navigating the orbital defences.
Emperor Palpatine is alerted to his imminent arrival and lightly chastizes Mas Amedda for failing to kill his apprentice. I like that we see Palpatine is still playing his minions off of one another. Presumably he still sees Vader as his most useful tool, but is still encouraging Mas Amedda to remove him from the board, likely assuming that surviving any assassination attempts will only make Vader stronger.
He also taunts Sly Moore, who is feeling the affects of the Force Wave still. I’m not certain what the purpose is in bringing this back up, other than to seed in Moore’s sickness for a later storyline. At the very least it’s a reminder that the Force Wave is still a thing that needs to be dealt with before the events of Return of the Jedi.
As Vader closes in on the Imperial Palace, Palpatine actually seems worried for a moment. It seems even he’s not certain he could survive bombardment from a starfighter. Vader is shot down and crashes into the Imperial Palace, warning his master that he has come for him. Palpatine is impressed that he has regained control over his Force abilities and is eager to test his apprentice’s strength.
Palpatine points out an important fact that Vader’s hatred usually makes him reckless, and his strength in the Force normally gets him through such carelessness. He seems to doubt that Vader has found a way to control his hatred in the same way that he has, and it seems that doubt is well founded.
The two of them square up to each other, only for Palpatine to remind Vader that he still holds complete dominion over Imperial forces. He orders Vader’s previously loyal Death Troopers to open fire on him and the apprentice immediately goes on the defensive. Vader makes short work of everyone, but that means little as Palpatine expected nothing less.
The Emperor unleashes the full power of his Force lightning on Darth Vader, who fails to keep it at bay as it reaches beyond his lightsaber and covers him in electricity. He’s pinned against the wall when a swarm of infected disk droids emerge from his TIE Fighter, possessing the Death Troopers in their armor.
Palpatine ridicules Vader for worrying about the Droid Scourge, accusing him of “fretting over innocents”, something unbecoming of a Sith Lord. But of course, the Emperor has misjudged Vader’s intentions, a nice foreshadowing of the very thing that eventually gets him killed. Vader brings out his infected droid army from somewhere and Palpatine realizes he has a problem on his hands. If the Droid Scourge is allowed to spread then Coruscant will be compromised.
Turning his attention from Vader briefly, he destroys all the droid soldiers with Force lightning, but is unable to prevent the disk droids from disappearing out of sight. They possess more droids and start killing hundreds of people in the nearby vicinity, so he makes the ultimate villainous call and orders a bombardment of the sector. With the Imperial Palace protected by shields, everywhere in the immediate vicinity is obliterated. Innocent civilians are massacred, but the droid plague is stopped in its tracks.
By the end, Palpatine has one more lesson to teach Vader, though he doesn’t understand it immediately. He explains that he thrives on Darth Vader’s hate for him, feeding off that energy to increase his own power. We know that Vader will eventually defeat the Emperor via the love for his son, but the character isn’t there yet and doesn’t understand how this admission can help him.
Instead, he allies with the Droid Scourge fully and allows his suit of armor to be hacked by a disk droid, becoming a part of the Droid Scourge’s army. This seems a stupid development to me; Vader should know better than anyone else that droids are no match for the power of the Force, yet he allows himself to be possessed by them anyway. To what end? What does he hope to gain by doing this? It certainly won’t make him any stronger. I can’t imagine what edge he possibly thinks he will gain by allying with them against Palpatine.
It seems that this happened simply because the writers wanted him to be a part of the Droid Scourge by the next issue of Dark Droids. After all, control of a cyborg who can use the Force is an incredible boost for the Scourge, who gets far more out of this alliance than Vader does.
Couple that with the Droid Scourge’s inconsistent decision to start killing every organic in sight in this issue when it has spared people in other comic series precisely because they are organics that pose no threat to it, and it casts a black mark on what was one of the best issues of the Darth Vader comic series until that point.
I’ve been enjoying the Dark Droids crossover for the most part, but now I can’t wait for Darth Vader to be free of it.
Rating: 7/10
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
