Star Wars: Endor’s Shadow #2

Under the title of the comic series - “Star Wars: Endor’s Shadow” - our heroine, Tyria D’Lace, stands mostly covered in the shadow of something undefined, beside Princess Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker. In the bottom left corner of the image, the issue number - 2 - is visible, and at the very bottom are the words, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede.”

The Millennium Falcon, a U-Wing, an A-Wing, and an X-Wing all travel through, and eventually exit from hyperspace. The time period in which this comic is set is 3+ years after the Battle of Yavin (so some time roughly before the events of Return of the Jedi).

The spaceships approach the planet Chandrilla. Aboard the Falcon, Luke and Leia prepare to enter the planet’s atmosphere.

In the big open gaming/cargo area of the Falcon, recent Rebel recruit Tyria D’Lace has a conversation with the trooper Gavin Derlin, who, like Leia, is also from Alderaan.

The ships enter Chandrilla’s atmosphere, and head for their destination, a secret Rebel base.

The X-Wing, piloted by Wedge Antilles, and the A-Wing (whose pilot isn’t identified) head off to their own landing area, while the Falcon and the U-Wing are directed to land at a site at the edge of the compound.

Doing as they’re told, the two ships extend their landing gear, and set down on the ground.

Luke and Leia exit the Falcon first, while Tyria and Gavin have a conversation about the logistics of creating a space station that could blow up a planet. Gavin suggests Tyria ask Leia about the destruction of Alderaan, as she saw it firsthand.

Before they can begin recounting the events of the original Star Wars film, Wedge approaches, asking Luke for help.

The U-Wing, Wedge says, needs some specific care. A Wookie and a droid are seen standing atop the craft, analyzing it. Luke leaves with Wedge. Tyria guesses that the Wookie aboard the U-Wing was Chewbacca, but she’s wrong.

Just as Leia’s about to introduce her other Wookie friend to Tyria - his name is Tawnie, apparently - a B2 droid (like B2EMO from Andor) arrives to collect Gavin for a meeting.

It’s clear that Gavin and this B2 know one another, as they exchange a few witty remarks as they depart.

Leia takes Tyria for a walk through a garden area as they begin to discuss what Tyria thinks happened to Alderaan, versus what Leia knows happened.

Tyria thinks about Alderaan through the lens of her home planet, Thyferra, which has been occupied by the Empire for (presumably) her entire life, as it controls the production, extraction, and sale of bacta.

Leia argues that Thyferra has something the Empire wants, whereas Alderaan, ultimately, didn’t. Tyria just can’t accept that the Empire would spend the money and resources to produce a Death Star, when it so ruthlessly extracts every micron of value it can from Thyferra. In a flashback, we see a Star Destroyer orbiting her home planet.

Still in flashback, TIE fighters fly through the Thyferran sky ominously, and the man who would become Grand Moff Trigit (“played” here, in his younger days, by an action figure of Charlie Cox from the MCU) stands beneath the streaking TIEs, flanked by stormtroopers.

In the present, Leia tries to comfort Tyria, but her sympathy is rejected. Their conversation is interrupted by the approaching Admiral Ackbar.

Ackbar has come to collect Leia for an unspecified meeting. Tyria attempts to tag along, but both Ackbar and Leia roundly refuse to bring her along.

Muttering in curiosity and irritation, Tyria sees a roaming R5 droid, and gets an idea. She approaches it, kneeling down to face it eye-to-eye.

She takes out a tool and performs a quick procedure on the R5, which sprays some sparks, but doesn’t seem to actually affect the droid in any way. As the droid departs, Tyria takes out a little personal video device, through which she can now see and hear whatever is around the droid.

The droid, apparently knowing exactly where she wants it to go, travels through the Rebel base, and arrives at Ackbar and Leia’s meeting at the same time as Luke, who happily reports that they finished their repairs on the U-Wing.

Ackbar darkens the meeting room, and requests a technician off-panel to pull up a “schematic.” Tyria stares at her video screen in shock, and realizes that Leia had been telling the truth about Alderaan, as the problem that Ackbar has brought Luke and Leia together to discuss is the construction of the second Death Star!

The credits for this comic, including the usernames of the Unsplash contributors whose photographs provided the background images (as well as images from NASA/JPL, and StarWars.com), the use of stock visual effects made by Action VFX, the use of fonts by Blambot, the character and certain background photography, plus script and lettering by me (Phil Wrede), and recognition of the creation of Star Wars by George Lucas, as well as its current ownership by Disney. Finally, special thanks to authors of the classic Rogue and Wraith Squadron books, Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston, whose ideas I have definitely built upon in this story.

It took a couple of months to return to my latest Star Wars comic story (go back and read the first installment, if you haven’t – I think it’s pretty good!), so I hope the second episode of Endor’s Shadow was worth the wait!

I spent a lot of time trying to refine my spaceship model photography back in my Mandalorian toy comic – I have a sizable collection of Star Wars Micro Machines from the 90s, plus a stash of X-Wing and Star Wars Armada miniatures, from when I thought I was going to be a serious player of those games. I’m not, but I’m glad I have all these pieces I can use for my Star Wars toy comics! Obsessive collecting paid off, in this one very specific instance.

I didn’t begin this project intending to explore how information gets communicated in the Star Wars universe – a lot of other people have done it already, from this great essay on Rogue One, to this excellent review of the ‘Nobody’s Listening’ episode of Andor, to an article about the Jedi books Luke had collected before the events of The Last Jedi, to the numbers of ways people have explored that line of Rey’s from The Force Awakens (“Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth!”) – but 2025 is, unfortunately, an interesting time to be considering how people consume and critically engage with information, and through what vectors and why that information reaches them.

The How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie was one of the sparks for this story; the movie was attacked by some people as propaganda when it came out (I prefer this article from Teen Vogue to any of those hack jobs). The movie, of course, is based on a book that’s more of an argument than an actual guide; if you’re interested in the ideas inside them, but not enough to read the whole book, I think this review of the book in the New Republic* distills a lot of them effectively. Obtaining information you feel you can trust is difficult enough on one planet, and the Star Wars universe has dozens, maybe even hundreds of them (or more). If Luke Skywalker, and the Jedi generally, can pass into folklore after a couple of decades, who’s to say that the Death Star couldn’t be dismissed as easily by people who weren’t there as we dismiss… a lot of tragedies that are going on in front of us, every day?

*No, I didn’t just pick a piece from the New Republic because this is a Star Wars toy comic, but it was a nice convergence.

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