The High Republic: The Hunted: Chapter 6: Jedi Lost and Found
What is it ? : The Ataraxia arrives around an asteroid having followed the tracking beacon that Lourna Dee planted on the kidnapped child, and they take a shuttle down to the surface when they discover and old Nihil bolthole from before the Stormwall.
Someone inside lowers the energy shields, and Keeve thinks it's likely to be Sskeer, and they discover the kidnapped child has snuck aboard their shuttle.
Keeve and Orbalin try to locate Sskeer, while the others follow the tracking beacon, and discover Terec and Lourna waiting for them, as it was them that lowered the shield.
Ceret questions Terec as he thought he was dead as he couldn't sense him through their twin bond, but Terec tells him that he cut off the bond as he didn't want the pain he was feeling to disable Ceret as well, so he snuck off aboard Baron Boolans ship. When Ceret probes further, Terec admits it's something he's been trying to do for a long time as he wants his privacy and his own mind.
They discover an experimental patient of Boolans in a storage tank, but he dies as they try to free him, and Tey comforts Lourna, telling her that they did their best. She tries to pretend to not care about anything, but cuddles the child obviously caring for them.
Keeve discovers Baron Boolan getting Nameless to attack Sskeer in an attempt to get him to feel his connection to the force, but she intervenes to help her friend. But Sskeer acts in defence of Boolan as he believes this is the only way to reconnect with the force, but as the two fight he realises that despite the Nameless using the Force to attack him, he never felt anything so Boolan was lying and has no way of restoring his power.
He siezes a control unit Boolan wears to control the Nameless and turns them on Boolan, rendering him unconscious, and then sends the Nameless away to allow the Jedi to operate more easily. Keeve suggests they are done now, so should return to the Republic, but Sskeer is sceptical they will be accepted as he is not really a Jedi anymore, and she disobeyed orders. But she points out that they'll be bringing Boolan as a prisoner, who may be the way to turn the tide against the Nihil. . .
To be continued in Star Wars: Tempest Breaker and The High Republic 2025.
High Points : So we get an ending of sorts, with Keeve and Sskeer perhaps being vital in the battle against the Nihil by capturing Boolan, who might be able to help them find a way around the Nameless and some of the other Nihil technical innovations.
And we get a nice reason for the continuing redemption of Lourna Dee, that she has connected with a child, something she expressed last issue, hating that Boolan and the Nihil had fallen to experimenting on children. So her actions begin to make sense.
Low Points : But so much else doesn't make sense, they are tracking the beacon Lourna placed on the child, but the child is hiding on their ship? So did Lourna remove it and take it with her?
And as I thought, the deaths of Lourna and Terec were fake outs. But Terec cuts himself off from Ceret to stop his pain disabling his brother through the bond, but manages to sneak undetected aboard Boolans ship before Ceret wakes and notices he's gone? And Lourna claims she snuck aboard Boolans ship as well, but the last time we saw her she was in a Jedi Vector Starfighter crashing into the transport, not sneaking aboard it?
I often feel like the writers aren't reading their own comics, but this is the first time that the cliffhanger between 2 issues hasn't made any sense at all.
So what do you really think ? : And so this series stumbles to an end, while Boolan might prove to be a vital part of the series, it really feels like his capture was an accident rather than the heroes having any plan apart from rescuing Sskeer. And I've made it clear that I think Sskeer had a near perfect arc in the first High Republic series, where his disconnection from the Force became his superpower when the rest of the Jedi were incapacitated by the Nameless. He managed to save a lot of the Jedi, but at the expense of his life, a heroic ending.
Final Words : In the interest of completeness, I'm going to follow up and read the Star Wars: Tempest Breaker series, and obviously I'll read The High Republic 2025 series when it is released, but the fantastic ideas of the first series seem to have been long left behind, and these characters now feel very generic. Even the last minute addition of the idea of Ceret and Terec separating their mind bond and becoming individuals, somehow weakens their characters not strengthening it, but I suppose we'll have to see what they do with that plotline in the future.
Score : 7.5/10
Comments made about this Article!
There are currently no comments for this article, be the first to post in the form below
