At the dawn of the 90s, Star Wars and new toys were on the decline. Dark Empire was just as important to the way it looked back as the Thrawn Trilogy was.
It was written by Tom Veitch, who sadly passed away last week, lettered by Todd Klein, and brilliantly illustrated by Cam Kennedy. The Imperial armed forces were in control of the newly christened Republic when the books were written. New threats in the cracks of the Empire blunted Veitch's story at a time when he was trying to chart the future of Star Wars.
We can see parallels between Dark Empire and the extended Skywalker Saga in the conclusion of The Rise of Skywalker. Emperor Palpatine is a clone and has dark plans for the son of Han and Leia, as well as old faces that are thought to be gone. The birth of the legendary Star Wars Expanded Universe was proved by the success of Dark Empire and the Thrawn Trilogy. Without Dark Empire or Heir to the Empire, the living history and future of the fictional galaxy far, far away would never have come to pass. At the time, Dark Empire was seen as something of a weird side-step, bringing back old villains like Palpatine and Boba Fett so soon after their seeming deaths, and seeing Luke struggle.
Dark Empire works and remains beloved three decades after the fact, because Veitch's use of thought-defeated conflicts has a weight that Star Wars has tried to struggle with in all those decades since after Dark Empire came to a close. It is fair to say that Veitch's story set the template for Star Wars, love of generational cycles of conflict that would be explored retroactively with the prequels and then later on in the sequel trilogy. The return of the Emperor, youthful and renewed to literally prey on the flesh of the new generation, is Palpatine's endgame in Dark Empire. Dark Empire has a heart that goes beyond the continued story of rebel heroes and resurgence of empires, thanks to the way it serves as a catalyst forLuke to re-confront the evils that tempted him in the past.
If Star Wars continues beyond the films, its fights don't end with a celebration in the Ewok village and a destroyed super weapon. The Imperial Remnant was fleshed out in Zahn's novels, but it was still a major threat in the early EU stories and Dark Empire. To save his sister and her child, he chose to go to the Emperor's side rather than defy him. Dark Empire is a story of perseverance, to challenge the love he has for his family and friends, the weakness Palpatine once mocked him for in Jedi, and embolden it by pushing himself to the brink of his temptations.
It is fascinating to revisit Dark Empire, especially after the Skywalker Saga has concluded again, and to see some of its plainest influences in Veitch's writing and Kennedy's haunting, striking art. They are executed more strongly in Dark Empire than they are in The Rise of Skywalker because there is less tangled material and potential for Dark Empire to extricate itself from before it pivots to its story. After all, there wasn't much left to do. The way for Star Wars to live on beyond the films was led by Dark Empire, which returned to its biggest themes and conflicts and re-imagines them as ever-flowing, repeating lessons. Dark Empire realized that the past could never really be forgotten in order to keep Star Wars going forever.
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