When 'Star Wars' Showed General Grievous' Face And His Connection To The Force In Canon

One of the greatest Star Wars villains is General Grievous, the Separatist cyborg who collects lightsabers from the Jedi he killed for sport. He has quite a collection of lightsabers and has become a meme multiple times thanks to Star Wars. He is killed by Obi-Wan Kenobi via blaster in Revenge of the Sith. He has also been a part of the comics as well, appearing in one of his greatest in-canon stories: Star Wars: The Age of the Republic – General Grievous. This comic is a one-shot written by Jodie Houser and Luke Ross.

In the story, General Grievous enters an ancient Jedi temple. He is greeted by the voice of a powerful Force entity. When his cybernetics get stripped away, revealing the person that he once was, he has far more in common with the Jedi than he would ever admit.

The voice observes that General Grievous was “steeped in” destruction, particularly destruction of the Jedi, hence Grievous’ obsession with hunting the Jedi and collecting their lightsabers. The voice reveals to General Grievous that it has powerful ties to the Force and could be the embodiment of the Force itself. The voice reverts General Grievous to how he appeared before he became mostly machine: a Kaleesh warrior named Qymaen jai Sheelal. The voice also reveals to the reader that Grievous may have once been Force sensitive. "You have brought destruction upon yourself. You seek to destroy a power you don’t comprehend. You have carved away your own connection to it. Replaced it with parts whose strength you understand. But your understanding is not strength. It is small. You are small."

This is a huge reveal for Star Wars fans and changes how General Grievous is viewed.

Grievous reacts to the voice’s accusation in terror at his own insignificance laid bare. He grapples with this fact, and for the first time he is confronted with the true power of the Force. The Force that he had tried to "carve away [his] own connection to."

Travis Lanham’s lettering does an amazing job of showing the unknowable enormity of the voice echoing through the void that Grievous is in as the letters pulsate and bend with the different colors, almost making it seem as though you can hear what is taking place. When Grievous’ additional metal arms start to float away from him, he desperately grasps at them, only to grab onto flesh. The very same flesh that he tried to replace with metal but could never fully erase from existence.

It is not revealed in this comic whether Grievous originally had Force powers or if it is just the idea in the Star Wars universe that all being are connected to the living Force in some way. When Grievous wages war, he wages it against the Jedi and the Force. He tried to remove himself from the Force because he opposed their connection to life. He wanted to become something unliving so that he was not mistaken for a being connected to the Force. He became a being who replaced every part of his body except the organs with a droid-like exoskeleton.

This technology, interestingly enough, is the same that is used to make Darth Vader’s new body, and later on, in the Darth Vader comics by Kieron Gillen, it is also used to create the two cyborg twins Aiolin and Morit Astarte so that it replicated the powers of the Force without actually having Force sensitivity. Although, it could potentially be argued that instead of trying to distance himself from the Force, Grievous was trying to replicate the abilities of the Jedi, which is why he created the metal body. If this is the case, then it would suggest that his hatred of the Jedi is fueled by his own loss of his connection to the Force.

The last panel of the comic shows a brain, eyes, and other organs floating off into space, representing all that was left of Grievous’ original body. Then, he is hurled back through the waterfall and into the Jedi temple. Furious at what happened, he orders his ship to bombard the temple from the sky, ensuring that he would never have to confront the uncomfortable truths in his life again.

Written By Elizabeth Dresdow

Source(s): CBR.com

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