Review: Yoda's Secret War

Yoda's Secret War by Jason Aaron
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Good this is not.

The idea of giving us a story about Yoda back in the day sounds OK, but there’s two problems with the execution of it here. First, the story seems more like one of those stinker episodes from the third season of the original Star Trek then Star Wars. Yoda goes to a planet destroyed by war with two primitive tribes still battling, and he uncovers a secret involving weird alien lifeforms. That really seems like something Jim Kirk should be doing, not Yoda.

The second problem is the inherent limit of doing prequel stories that this series keeps bumping its head against. Getting a solo Yoda adventure could be OK if it was a better story. But by using the framing device of Luke just after the events of A New Hope reading this in Obi-Wan’s journal means thinks have to get wonky because Luke doesn’t meet Yoda until Empire Strikes Back. So the text only describes Yoda as a ‘Jedi Master’ to explain how Luke could read a story about him but still not know his name.

And it’s just silly because why would Kenobi, who refers to Yoda as just ‘Master Yoda’ in the prequel movies, be so cryptic in this journal? It’s the things like this or having Luke fight Boba Fett but be blinded so he doesn’t recognize him later that highlight the limitations of trying to do a prequel that frequently relies on fan service rather than trying to actually do interesting things we haven’t seen before.

Which is why the second story here which is about Princess Leia being injured on a mission, and she has to be hidden by a woman who has suffered because of the war between the Empire and the Rebellion. Some good points get made about how Leia is responsible for a whole bunch of people dying, and she could be seen as a zealot who only cares about the cause, not the consequences.

The main Yoda story would be 1 star, but a solid character piece about Leia and great art work get it up to 2.

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