Review: Star Wars – Crimson Reign: Leia’s demonic opponent

The big Star Wars event continues. Warning, spoilers.

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As the Rebellion fights against the Empire, Luke realizes it’s time to take the next step in becoming a Jedi. But the Jedi Order no longer exists, so where could Luke turn to get the knowledge he so desperately needs?

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The second Crimson Reign anthology focuses primarily on Leia. Technically, the graphics aren’t quite on the level of the other series, so faces in particular appear slightly more angled and less detailed. Overall, you get used to the style and the action sequences leave nothing to be desired.

Before we move on to the main story, let’s take a quick look at the four short stories near the end. It’s nothing special, it’s more of a spin on the 100th edition that Charles Soule actually wrote. So there’s a short brawl between Anakin and Obi-Wan, between Vader and Palpatine, and we jump to new movie time where Kylo Ren is looking for Luke, or even Episode IX when Poe delivers a eulogy.

Maybe nothing special, but definitely some extra income for the fans. As an addition, the short stories are certainly OK, but of course you don’t have to expect depth of character from them.

The main story takes place after “The Crimson Queen”, during the Empire’s battle against the Crimson Dawn. However, if you were expecting the story to continue here, you might be a little disappointed. Because aside from Qi’ra appearing and seeking alliance with Leia, not much is happening in the new crossover story. This can almost be considered misleading.

But first the story follows Luke, who is looking for knowledge of the Jedi. He visits some places known to fans like Ilum (later Starkiller) or Lothal, but cannot get to the temple there. That’s a nice little extra income too, until he discovers memories of Elzar Man on a planet. It should be known to High Republic readers in particular that this scene also passes as a good fan moment. At least Luke learned a thing or two here after all.

The size is okay up to this point, but it didn’t bring any major innovations. But they come off in the main story, because this is about Shara Bree, who is still stuck in Tarkin’s will. What, you don’t know anymore? Well, that might be because this thread was almost a year ago and you might have thought Bo’s mom had forgotten.

Here she and Kes celebrate the comeback, but above all, the leader, Zahra, excels again. The ruthless leader is on par with Vader and Tarkin and proves to be very effective. This allows her to single-handedly defeat a rebel fleet using her Star Destroyer. And what follows is a very well done action sequence that ends in the fight against Leia.

It’s all so well done that it sure would do well in a live-action series. It is almost a shame that Zahra is now over. Although you have to be careful, because in science fiction the dead often come back. Strictly speaking, you don’t see them die…but maybe I mess things up a little too much here.