The Promising ‘Trial Of Lando Calrissian’ Arc Kicks Off! — Reviewing ‘Star Wars’ #44

Star Wars the comic is always at its best when it’s engaging directly with the circumstances of the era in which it takes place. Whether set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Empire and Return of the Jedi, or sometime thereafter, the stories which can only really take place in their particular time period — the hunt for Han Solo, say, or Luke’s development as a Jedi, or Vader’s quest to learn his son’s identity — crackle a little bit more than the others.

Star Wars #44 kicks off the latest such story, The Trial of Lando Calrissian. Building off recent events in the series, in which Lando was forced to betray the Rebellion in order to help Lobot, it appears set to zero in on Lando’s transition from roguish scoundrel to the general who led the fleet at the Battle of Endor and flew into the guts of the second Death Star.

Lando’s Empire to Jedi transition has been one of the semi-recurring arcs this series has followed since its 2020 relaunch as a post-Empire book, but rarely has that arc been pushed to the forefront quite so directly. Following the revelations (brought to light in the recently-completed “Dark Droids” crossover) of Lando’s betrayals, the oft-reluctant Rebel is accused of treason, locked up, and facing significant consequences for his actions.

Worst of all, he already confessed, so he’s not really in the mood for putting up much of a defense. It’s left to Lobot, in a touching scene built on the relationship between the two that has been built up almost exclusively in the pages of this series, to convince Lando to at least make a fight of it. From there, Lando calls in a debt to get himself what amounts to the Star Wars version of a high profile defense attorney. 

Salli Georgio first appeared in one of the stories in last year’s Star Wars: Revelations anthology, serving as Dengar’s attorney. There and here, she’s set up as the sort of archetypal “quirky unconventional attorney whose methods leave both her client and the audience wondering how she’ll pull off the win” common to these kinds of stories. She has a gold eyepatch, expensive tastes (Chewbacca is seen carrying her luggage, shades of Barf in Spaceballs, perhaps?), no personal love for the Rebellion (her droid companion notes she believes the Rebellion will be defeated any second), and a smart plan to win that is still hazy on the details of how she’ll pull it off. 

In that, Salli speaks to the unique tension at the heart of this story, and what makes Star Wars stories set in these very defined between-movies eras so compelling. Ultimately, readers know what’s going to happen. Lando won’t be executed or drummed out of the Rebellion. He’s there in Return of the Jedi. Some indeterminate but relatively small period of time in the future, a Rebel general leading the charge against the second Death Star.

Just like how Salli knows what she needs to do to get Lando cleared but not how to do it, the tension isn’t in whether or not Lando is found guilty, it’s in the details of HOW he goes from being brought up on charges to a man with equal rank to those currently sitting in judgment of him. 

Running over the course of Star Wars #44 via a series of interludes, we’re given a glimpse of a potential answer. Mon Mothma, participating in Lando’s trial via holographic zoom call like so many Clone Wars-era Jedi council sessions, is attacked while on a diplomatic mission to the planet Uveron. Being the first part of the story, it’s not clear what all is happening here, but it seems like a pretty obvious setup. Mon Mothma is in trouble, and in some way, only Lando will be able to help her, thereby saving himself by once again proving himself an indispensable ally to the Rebellion.

Hopefully, the outcome of his trial hinges on more than that, both because that seems too easy (as is rightly pointed out in the course of the issue, Lando has already played key roles in important Alliance missions, and is well liked by the general population of the Rebel military, who enjoy drinking with him and listening to his stories) and seems destined to sideline Salli after her memorable introduction to the series here. Lando may be destined for clemency thanks to the larger predetermined arc of the Star Wars narrative, but the path to it needs to be somewhat complicated to be interesting. 

But those are concerns for later chapters of “The Trial of Lando Calrissian”. For now, Star Wars #44 does what it needs to do: kick off a new arc in a way that is engaging and intriguing despite the ultimate outcome being known, centering the tension, like this series’ best stories, not on “what will happen?” but “how will it happen?”, while keeping the characters and their relationships to one another as the driving force of the narrative.