MOVIE NEWS – In the Star Wars: Dark Droids comic book series, a fearsome evil strikes again, despite the ancient Sith’s attempts to contain it. Even Darth Vader gets in trouble… [WARNING! This article contains spoilers for the Dark Droids stories!]

Star Wars: Dark Droids details the aftermath of Rebels, crime lords, and other anti-Empire forces calling upon ancient powers and technologies they didn’t fully understand to wipe the Empire from the galaxy. And in doing so, they inadvertently unleashed something that even the Sith have reason to fear – including and especially Darth Vader. This is the Scourge.

The Scourge is an intelligent infection that turns any droid or cyborg it comes into contact with into a hostile force completely under its hive-mind-like control.

The first references to the Scourge appeared in Star Wars: Revelations #1 (by Marc Guggenheim, Salvador Larroca, Pere Pérez, Emma Kubert, Justin Mason and Paul Fry). At that time, visions of the future were shown through the Eye of Webbish Bog’s visions of the future. Though readers didn’t see it make it into the current canon until Hidden Empire #5 (penned by Charles Soule and Steven Cummings), where it was apparently merged with the disembodied Spark Eternall, a sentient “artificial force” created by a dark side cult called the Ascendant. The Spark Eternal moves through technology – be it droid, ship or cyborg – and endows its host with Force-like abilities, including and especially hive-mind-like connectivity. When the cage of the Fermata was opened, a strange disc fell out, with three interconnected circular markings, and the disembodied Spark Eternal merged with the disc, seemingly creating the Scourge.

In the Star Wars galaxy, Darth Vader is not safe from the Scourge

In an announcement from Marvel Comics revealing the release dates for some of the issues of the upcoming Star Wars: Dark Droids crossover event, readers are given more details about the latest threat to the galaxy far, far away. While previews and first looks from Dark Droids have been slowly trickling out, this issue finally reveals the ultimate goal of this sentient droid infestation: control of the Force. To do so, the Scourge must infect arguably the greatest Force user in the universe, Darth Vader. As shown through the vision of Webbish Bog’s eye in Revelations, Beiler Valance – a cyborg – has been infected and is being controlled by the Scourge, meaning that Darth Vader is susceptible to its influence, as he is “more machine than man”.

It seems that the Scourge’s overall plan is to infect every droid and cyborg it encounters until it creates an army that rivals even the Empire.

He then infects the great Darth Vader to lead this army against the Empire and the Rebellion. As he continues to infest droids and cyborgs across the galaxy. This is the dark future the Eye of Webbish Bog tried to warn Vader about in Star Wars: Revelations. It’s what the ancient Sith seemingly tried to prevent from ever happening. While still shrouded in mystery, what can be surmised from the situation is that something similar to what fans will see in Dark Droids once happened, and the Ancient Sith sealed it away in the Fermata Cage to eliminate this threat from the galaxy. But now he is free, and with the combined power of Spark Eternal, he is undoubtedly more dangerous than ever.

Source: Marvel