Warning: this text comprises spoilers for Star Wars #38! The viral AI often known as the Scourge has unfold its affect throughout the galaxy’s droids, and is now targeted on making the bounce to Star Wars‘ non-artificial life. Nonetheless, even with the data and processing energy of its countless legions of droids, there’s one character the Scourge isn’t keen to lose out on possessing.
In Star Wars #38, Lando Calrissian continues his quest to repair current malfunctions in his previous ally Lobot. It seems the one one who will help is the traditional Talky droid who Leia beforehand used to create new codes for the Rebel after the Empire cracked their earlier encryption, following the occasions of The Empire Strikes Again. Sadly for Lando, he offered the droid – which is the only repository of its historical data, together with languages now not recognized by anybody else within the galaxy – to Jabba the Hutt. As the difficulty from Charles Soule and Madibek Musabekov begins, followers meet the Talky droid once more, this time having its reminiscence wiped by Jabba’s lackeys. Whereas it protests that its historical data is just too precious to lose, Jabba’s droids clearly don’t agree… however the Scourge does.
Because the droids put together to wipe the Talky’s thoughts, the Scourge’s rising military of thralls assault. Whereas they’re completely satisfied to break a few of Jabba’s different droids and kill his guards, they affirm that the Talky’s data is just too precious to lose, chasing the unit deeper into Jabba’s palace. On the identical time, Lando and Lobot arrive to get the droid’s assist, with the three ending the difficulty trapped deep throughout the construction, because the Scourge’s military attracts close to. The Darkish Droids occasion has seen the Scourge invade the minds of droids serving the Empire, Rebel, and each different faction within the galaxy, always rising its energy and affect.
The Scourge is a sentient, formless hivemind on a mission throughout the cosmos to assimilate as many droids and cyborgs as potential. In Star Wars: Darkish Droids #2 (Charles Soule, Luke Ross), it revealed that it has now introduced so many droids into its shared thoughts that its very life is at risk. The ocean of information it has collected is so huge that if it explores too deep, its sentience will probably be subtle, leaving it completely weak to assault – the Scourge is now so good, it’s at risk of shedding itself to the sheer quantity of knowledge it has gathered (therefore why it desires to take over all life – it wants extra processing energy, and to ensure its security ought to its thoughts grow to be misplaced.) Nonetheless, even with this big quantity of information at its fingertips, the Scourge nonetheless admits the traditional Talky is irreplaceable.
A lot of Star Wars lore is worried with data handed down over immense intervals of time – whether or not it’s the Jedi texts or Sith holocrons, the secrets and techniques of the previous typically resolve the longer term. The Scourge’s curiosity within the Talky exhibits how irresponsible Lando was in making a hasty take care of Jabba, and now he’s paying for that mistake with Lobot’s life on the road. Lando is at present present process his personal redemption arc, as he faces as much as the implications of his repeated betrayals of the Rebel. Now, he’s trapped in Jabba’s palace as a galaxy-consuming mind targets the one one who will help his pal. If the guilt of promoting out Han Solo wasn’t sufficient to make Lando change, this confrontation certainly will probably be.
Nonetheless, the story additionally units up the Talky droid as an ongoing artifact of immense worth. Whereas the droid was in a position to give the Rebel a preventing probability by offering new codes, that’s apparently just the start of the worth its distinctive data has. Hopefully, the traditional Talky will survive the Scourge’s efforts to take management of all data within the galaxy, and Star Wars followers will get to see extra of what it is aware of in regards to the franchise’s distant previous.
Star Wars #38 is accessible now from Marvel Comics.