Star Wars – A Mandalorian, Episode V: Surprise Cargo

The title page of the comic strip, the silhouette of a Mandalorian warrior walking alone. The title, “Episode V: Surprise Cargo,” is visible in the top-left corner of the image.

The heavy Mandalorian creeps through the halls of his ship - the YT-2400 freighter, “Clever Dragon” - in search of the noise he heard from the cockpit in the previous comic strip. When he arrives in the cargo hold, he’s surprised to come across an R5 astromech droid!

The Mandalorian’s helmet displays can translate the R5’s bleeps and bloops into a written display, so he asks the droid to tell him its story slowly.

This R5 was on the forest moon of Endor, as a member of the Rebel Alliance during the attack on the second Death Star. A scout trooper found it in the forest, alone, and nearly destroyed it!

The R5 was rescued by Cara Dune, when she snuck up on the scout trooper and blasted him to bits.

Furthermore, this R5 was the same R5 that blew its own motivator unit on Tatooine, when Owen Lars was set to purchase it and C-3PO, instead of R2-D2. On top of that, it was the astromech unit aboard a Rebel X-Wing that was chased by Darth Vader, in his advanced TIE Fighter.

Somehow, that X-Wing’s pilot survived the encounter with Vader. And, the R5 managed to roll away from a battle with an Imperial probe droid! The Mandalorian is amazed by its story.

The Mandalorian is so taken by the little droid’s tale that he offers it a home with him, aboard the freighter.

The credits of the comic strip, identifying where the stock photographs (for backgrounds) were sourced, crediting George Lucas for creating Star Wars, and identifying me (Phil Wrede) as the scriptwriter, character photographer, and letterer of the comic.

One of the things that I loved about The Mandalorian, at least in the first season, was that it existed more or less independently from the saga of the Skywalkers. Sure, there were references to other places and people we’ve seen and loved, but the events of a galactic civil war are bound to ripple out across the entire galaxy!

I wholly admit that my surprise introduction of the R5 that Luke and Uncle Owen almost bought from the Jawas here is spitting in the face of what I say “real” Star Wars stories should be doing. I, though, argue that I’m contributing to the great, grand Star Wars tradition of hapless droids being dragged through the seismic events of history! That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

[ADDENDUM: Obviously, the events of Season 2 of The Mandalorian have put my take on R5 completely out of canon, and my whole entire take on Star Wars here with it, but… oh well! I’m only in charge of my little comic, after all.]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply