Star Wars: Dark Droids Reveals a Dangerous Secret About the Force
Star Wars: Dark Droids just established a dangerous new precedent for the Force that could change the franchise’s future, and Darth Vader’s fate.
The Force is one of Star Wars’ most important concepts. From the very beginning, the Force has enamored audiences and fans and set Star Wars apart from any other contemporary science fiction and space opera stories. Now, Star Wars: Dark Droids has introduced a new layer to the Force that has rarely been explored previously, and it might just be the biggest development in franchise history.
In Dark Droids, the Scourge’s influence has spread throughout an entire fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers and the sentient artificial intelligence is poised to become a truly unstoppable force in the Galaxy. Or rather, it would if it were capable of wielding The Force. As seen in the pages of Star Wars: Dark Droids #2 (by Charles Soule, Luke Ross, Alex Sinclair, and VC’s Travis Lanham), the Scourge might not be all that far off from achieving this goal, especially once it connects the dots between how the Force links not just all living things, but all things in general. Possessing C-3P0, the Scourge asked Luke Skywalker about the Force, the nuances of his connections to it, and, more importantly, whether he feels it coursing through the prosthetics that replaced the hand he lost to Darth Vader.
While the concept of the Force has always been at the heart of Star Wars, it’s also always been described in vague, philosophical terms. Considered to be a power created by all life forms, the Force is in turn present in all living things. Of course, individuals with particularly high midi-chlorian counts have a heightened connection to the Force, at least since this idea was retconned into existence in the Star Wars film prequels. However, up until recently, inanimate, inorganic materials have always existed outside the Force.
Even if droids and other inorganic bodies are easily manipulated by the Force, they’ve never been able to wield the Force in Star Wars canon or Legends. Without a life of their own, droids simply can’t connect to the Force in any meaningful way. As such, it seemed like the Force would always be outside the Scourge’s grasp. At least, that was the case until the Scourge noticed that Luke Skywalker is both a Force user and a cyborg, and Luke’s cybernetic replacement has never interfered with his considerable Force powers.
While most fans are aware of both Luke’s cybernetic hand and his Force powers, the fact that machinery and the Force coexist inside him opens the door to some interesting questions. Luke’s hand is the only inorganic part of him but he still claims he feels the Force coursing through his entire form. When C-3PO questions him about it, Luke even explains that the Force exists within everything, regardless of whether it is organic or not. Not only does this fly directly in the face of what fans understood about the Force’s relationship with Star Wars’ droids, but it also helps readers understand why a cyborg like Darth Vader is also a powerful Sith lord.
Though Anakin Skywalker was a potent and practiced Force user long before his transformation into Darth Vader, he never had any problems wielding the Force via his artificial limbs and body. Considering how infamous Darth Vader is for Force choking his detractors, it is almost unfathomable that fans have almost never asked about this apparent inconsistency. There have been notes in Star Wars lore about how his mechanical form prevents Darth Vader from wielding Force lightning directly but if the Force couldn’t be channeled through unliving material then he’d be cut off from the Force in all its forms.
This is more than just another rote piece of development in the Star Wars canon. For Dark Droids, this discovery makes Darth Vader the Scourge’s prime target. Assuming the Scourge could bond with and take command of Vader’s mind through his cybernetics, it would only be a matter of time before the villainous artificial intelligence made the connection to the Force it’s been seeking for so long. From there, it may even somehow corrupt or consume the Force as a whole, and there is no telling what kind of damage that would do to the very fabric of the Star Wars Universe.
On the other hand, Dark Droids’ position in the Star Wars timeline means that the Scourge is bound to fail at some point in the near future. However, this fact doesn’t make the implications from the Force’s relationship with droids any less ominous or exciting. By setting the precedent that cybernetic beings and even entirely synthetic ones can tap into and wield the force, Dark Droids has made it possible for future Force users of an entirely new breed to make a name for themselves. Considering how vast the Galaxy Far, Far Away is, this opens up the door to immense new possibilities, and new breeds of mechanical Force users unlike anything the fandom’s seen before.
