Review: ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Empire’ Is a Sad Story of an Outsider in The Empire
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi: Empire is the latest in a series of one-shot comics that brings us a unique story related to the events of Return of the Jedi. While the last few have given us stories starring Lando and Ewoks, this one shows us what it’s like when an outsider is brought into the Empire.
The outsider in question is a comms technician called Rilo Grenth, who has been forced to work for the Empire after they took control of his family’s company. He is quickly shipped out to Endor to work on the shield bunker, tasked with making sure all of the bunker’s systems are working well with each other.
If that sounds boring, it’s because it is. Rilo’s job is dull and he has no friends on Endor. He quickly chafes under the rules and restrictions of Imperial life, realizing how miserable it is to be a cog in the Imperial machine. Maybe that’s why stormtroopers are so mean; the working culture is just awful. Rilo makes for a very sympathetic character; you increasingly get the sense that things won’t work out for him in the end.
Ultimately, this story is a good example of how the Imperial machine crushes everyone in its way and stifles creativity. It’s not quite as jaw dropping as Andor, but it’s certainly as bleak as you watch the Empire slowly grind down its new employee.
Spoilers ahead…
Rilo comes into life in the Empire optimistically. He’d never left Hosnian Prime before this and had presumably led quite a sheltered life before the Empire acquired his father’s company. He eagerly tries to make friends on the transport shuttle over to Endor, only to be mocked for telling a scout trooper and an Imperial Officer his “life story”.
Rilo acts as a sort of narrator for most of the story, sending letters to his father that subtly let him know just how terrible his life is there while maintaining a positive tone on the surface. His living space is tiny, his bed is uncomfortable, the food is terrible and no one wants to be his friend. The only person who does talk to him on a regular basis is the droid who helps him fulfill his tasks, E-7Y, who is far more concerned with hitting their targets than striking up friendly conversation.
One time, Rilo tries to sit down with the officers in the mess hall and laughs when they tell him they’re discussing the latest holotexts (the officer he approaches already seems to exclude him from the conversation by saying “we” already read them, giving him nothing to contribute to the topic) only for the officer to bristle at the suggestion that Imperial protocol is something to be mocked.
Later on, he notices that a colleague has developed a soft spot for the same Imperial officer. Bored out of his mind at his desk, he decides to play matchmaker instead and hacks the systems to send the officer a message on his colleague’s behalf, hoping to spark a workplace romance that might give the Endor bunker a cheerier atmosphere.
He is dismayed to learn that his plan backfires. It turns out the officer is already married and assaults her not-so-secret admirer for approaching her.
Giving up on his coworkers entirely, Rilo decides to take lunch outside. He sits outside the bunker’s front door, taking in the lush forest scenery that he admired so much when he arrived. Unfortunately, he finds no solace here either and gets attacked by an Ewok lurking nearby. He’s about to get skewered by a spear before the Ewok is shot by a scout trooper, who berates Rilo for heading outside when there are hostile native species nearby.
At this point Rilo has been beaten down and it’s hard not to sympathize with him. We can be safe in the knowledge that he didn’t ask for this; he was conscripted against his will, so he does feel like an outsider in the Imperial machine. However, lonelier than ever with his spirit beaten down, Rilo decides instead to get out of his current situation by focusing on his work, becoming so competent that the Empire might reward him by promoting him out of the bunker altogether.
He tries to link all the systems together, going above and beyond his stated task to become uber-competent. Sadly, his naïvety lands him in more trouble. Seeing that there’s a primary program that he can’t access, he orders E-7Y to unlock it for him and stumbles upon a hologram of the second Death Star.
That hologram is the key point when we realize there’s no way this story ends well for Rilo. We’ve seen in other Star Wars comics that the Empire will go out of their way to stop word getting out about their new Death Star plans by any means necessary and surely Rilo won’t survive this.
Realizing he’s seen something he shouldn’t have, he locks it all back down again and keeps his head down until his time at Endor comes to an end. He’s about to board his shuttle when he’s called back in by an ISB agent for an “exit interview”. The ominous wording of all this raises the tension immediately as you can feel the walls closing in around Rilo.
During this interview, the ISB agent lists off all the things he’s done outside normal protocol during his time at Endor. His letters to his father are referred to as “coded messages”, his attempts to spark an office romance becomes an attempt to “foster conflict among Imperial military forces” and he is accused of “luring hostile locals closer to the facility” on his lunch break outdoors while “exiting the facility without permission”.
Every innocent act is twisted into a dark agenda as he is accused of rebel activity. These are all examples that remind us of the things we saw in Andor — the Empire being needlessly cruel and holding its citizens in contempt — but the real problem comes when the ISB agent accuses him of “slicing into classified Imperial military systems”, bringing up testimony from E-7Y as evidence.
Rilo comes to the depressing realization that he will not be going home after all and is sent to prison in the familiar white and orange prison uniform that we saw in Andor. He finds that the prisoners are all far more friendly than any of his Imperial colleagues and that they all got imprisoned for similar offences.
It paints a bleak picture of life within the Empire for anyone unwilling to absolutely conform to Imperial rules, restrictions and culture. Once again, an innocent and naïve person has fallen victim to a needlessly cruel Empire. It’s a sad story, but an important one at the same time as we are reminded just how terrible these dictatorships can be.
Rating: 7/10
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
