Marvel’s current Star Wars series continues to fill in some major gaps in the time period between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Hot on the heels of learning how Luke’s blue lightsaber was recovered, now another lingering mystery from Episode V has finally been solved regarding Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing.
Warning: beware of full spoilers for Star Wars #4 ahead!
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Have you ever wondered why Luke still has his trusty X-Wing in Return of the Jedi? That ship is last seen in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke lands on Cloud City to search for his captured friends, but he never returns to retrieve the X-Wing after his battle with Darth Vader. He escapes Cloud City aboard the Millennium Falcon, presumably leaving the X-Wing to become seized property of the Empire. Yet somehow Luke is still flying his X-Wing across the galaxy in Episode VI.
Up till now, there was no real explanation for this Star Wars discrepancy other than assuming Luke acquired a second, identical-looking X-Wing later on. But Star Wars #4 finally resolves this decades-old plot hole.
In issue #4, Luke is forced to abandon the hunt for his missing saber in favor of rescuing Lando and the recently carbonite-encased Princess Leia from Cloud City’s Imperial forces. Luke, Lando and Lobot track Leia down to a cargo bay, where she’s moments away from being shipped off to an Imperial interrogation facility. Luke is able to reawaken his dormant connection to the Force, unfreezing Leia and her fellow captives and gaining some much-needed manpower. Leia, Lando and the other prisoners escape the city aboard a stolen Imperial shuttle. As for Luke, he takes the chance to liberate his X-Wing.
So there you have it. Luke may not have successfully retrieved his saber, but he did recover another iconic piece of Star Wars equipment. And in the process, a lingering plot hole has finally been resolved.
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Check back with IGN Comics a bit later for a full breakdown of where Luke stands on the search for his lightsaber and how his mysterious new Jedi benefactor factors into that mission. Until then, find out all the new plot details revealed in the Rise of Skywalker novelization and learn more about the brand new Star Wars era being explored in The High Republic.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Star Wars Finally Addresses Decades-old Plot Hole About Luke's X-Wing