By Michael DeLaney

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Up to this point, Lor San Tekka has basically been a human McGuffin. When Poe & Co. finally retrieve the old man in Poe Dameron 25 however, he doesn’t yet know where Luke Skywalker is. You can’t blame that on Charles Soule, the guy’s gotta line stuff up for The Force Awakens. Interestingly, the movie that Soule pulls from the most is The Last Jedi.

Poe Dameron 25 finally gives us a sense of who Lor San Tekka is and what he believes. Though he can’t wield it, Lor is a scholar of the Force.

Soule uses him as a way to introduce Rian Johnson’s “controversial” Star Wars worldview: the Force belongs to all living things, not just the Skywalker clan.

Like it or not, this is the direction that future Star Wars stories are headed. By sandwiching The Force Awakens between The Last Jedi and Lor’s studies of the Force, Soule is cementing Johnson’s philosophy.

It’s interesting to note however that Lor doesn’t exactly present the same story with Poe that he does with Leia. While he tells Leia that war is coming and “the Skywalkers find themselves at the heart of it”  he explains to Poe that Luke Skywalker is not the end-all be-all. It’s possible he’s just trying to give Leia a little bit of hope for her missing brother.

Poe Dameron 25 also has some Last Jedi-esque space action during Lor’s retrieval. Angel Unzueta gives me something I didn’t know I wanted: rocket troopers retrieving an astronaut in the middle of space.

Poe does some quick problem-solving before they can get away with Lor. Black Squadron momentarily disables the First Order’s shields and Poe makes a ship-paralyzing shot on par with Luke’s Death Star torpedo.

Bang on, Poe.

The conversation doesn’t stop there. What do you wanna talk about from this issue?