The High Republic: Fear of the Jedi: 5
What is it ? : While some of the Republic forces now see through the illusions, and can see the Scav droids scrapping their fleet, many are still seeing the illusions of the things they fear most and with a communications jamming field in place they cannot warn all of their fleet or call for help. But enough are available to start attacking the giant droid attacking the Gios.
When more Nihil forces arrive through Hyperspace, and Keeve gets an idea, ordering Cibaba to continue trying to locate Sister H'Tar, she cuts her way into the giant droid on their hull and take the journalist, Rhil Dairo, with her. When inside they locate the droids communications system which is powerful enough to break through the jamming. While Rhil slices the system, Keeve defends them from repair droids that attack.
Cibaba communicates with Sister H'Tar who is trapped inside the fear machine in terrible pain and wants him to help her. Rhil gets control of the communications system, and Keeve sends a message to the galaxy, that the Jedi are fighting for them, but she needs everyone's help, as they are all the Republic. And in responce a massive fleet of Republic vessels come to their aid from Hyperspace.
Keeve and Rhil return to the Gios as the giant droid gets destroyed, and K'Tar tells Cibaba where she is. Keeve orders them to not engage that vessel so they can free K'Tar from the Fear Engine, but Lourna Dee disobeys and destroys the ship containing K'Tar ending the fear effect.
Keeve is angry at Lourna's action, and Lourna tells her that she just did what was needed, which is supported as the Nihil across the galaxy surrender or flee into Hyperspace as the Nihil war ends. . . . .
High Points : We get some nice moments, Keeve taking control of the droid's communications system to call for help from the people of the galaxy is a nice callback to the way that Keeve used to be. In the early stories, she used to find allies in the strangest of places, the weakest and most ignored would provide her with help, so Keeve calling on all of those people in the galaxy makes a huge amount of sense, even if her speech isn't really written that way.
Low Points : But, it's very reminiscent of the end of Rise of Skywalker where the people of the galaxy all come together to fight Palpatine's forces, so feels that it's just borrowed from there.
And the Nihil, who have conquered a large section of the galaxy, admittedly by denying access to that section to the Republic fleet, now just surrender. The heroes have defeated H'Tar and the fear engine, and can engage the Scav droids, but the Nihil had none of these when they took over the Occlusion Zone.
A couple of issues ago, I made the jokey comment that "Somehow" the Stormwall had disappeared (potentially trillions of Stormseeds sealing off a large section of the galaxy), now "Somehow" the Nihil surrender. I'm guessing Marchion Ro, the leader of the Nihil, was defeated in another story somewhere, but we don't even get a mention of the Nihil falling into disarray due to his defeat, they just lose H'Tar and give up. It just feels clumsy and rushed.
So what do you really think ? : Well, it's an ending to the Nihil War, not a well written ending, or a satisfying ending, but at least I suppose they got chance to close off the most major storylines in a way that the abandoned Acolyte series didn't.
Final Words : The series has had no real structure except, the Jedi are fearing things due to H'Tar's various Fear Engines. We get no real exploration of those fears, nothing about Sskeer's fears at all, perhaps he could fear losing control again, perhaps we might discover something deeper about why he was so protective of Keeve and the little girl he'd been protecting in the last series, we could have had a revelation about him losing some family. But instead we got more about Tey Sirrek and his dead husband, which felt like a repeat, and we got them defeating H'Tar twice in this series of only 5 issues alone.
And now we've only got Finale to go, a single issue to wrap everything up, and I really doubt it's going to even attempt that in a satisfying manner. But I could be wrong, and often are, so we shall see.
Score : 7/10
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