Star Wars: Halycon Legacy #2 was inspired by Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” but it is not Star Wars’ only reference to the tale.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy #2, on sale now.
Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy #2 “A Most Dangerous Gamble” was inspired by “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, a short story in which a hunter became the hunted. This comic is not the first time that Star Wars has referenced Connell’s tale; the final arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars also referenced the story. Both Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy #2 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars used their references to “A Most Dangerous Game” to expose different sides of the casual cruelty found in the Star Wars galaxy.
In Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” Sanger Rainsford, a big game hunter, fell overboard on a voyage to the Amazon to hunt jaguars. He managed to swim to an island that was home to General Zaroff. While the two men initially bonded over their shared love of hunting, Sanger realized that his supposed savior hunted humans because all other animals were not enough of a challenge for him. Sanger was Zaroff’s next prey, but Sanger survived and eventually defeated Zaroff. In the story, “game” held a double meaning. While it framed the hunt as a game or sport, it also implied that humans were the most dangerous prey because of their capacity for reason.
In Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy #2 by Ethan Sacks, Will Sliney, Rachelle Rosenberg, VC’s Joe Sabino, E. M. Gist, Lee Loughridge, David Lopez, Carlos Lao, Mark Paniccia and Danny Khazem, Aurra Sing and Zam Wessell teamed up to protect Colram Vestig and his son Wilmar from the Hutts. The Hutts have one of their own bounty hunters kidnap Wilmar to lure Aurra to Numidian Prime and take part in their own “dangerous game.” The Hutts set up an arena and bet on whether anyone who entered it would survive against the Predavorexx, a monstrous and deadly creature. Aurra killed the Predavorexx, and she and Zam rescued Wilmar, earning a nice paycheck in the process.
In “Padawan Lost,” the penultimate episode of the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Trandoshan hunters led by Garnac kidnapped Ahsoka Tano and hunted her along with other Padawans and Younglings. However, in the season finale “Wookiee Hunt,” Ahsoka was able to rally the young Jedi and, alongside Chewbacca, defeat Garnac and journey home. The arc was an important part of Ahsoka’s coming of age as she realized that her training made her able to survive whatever the galaxy threw at her, and the experience also helped Anakin Skywalker recognize her growth.
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For the Trandoshan hunters, the main point of the hunt was to attain glory, and the Padawans and Younglings gave them the opportunity to say that they had defeated Jedi. However, their choice in children for prey was telling. They wanted the glory of fighting Jedi, but they were unwilling to fight actual fully trained warriors; therefore, they were not truly seeking “the most dangerous game.” Garnac’s forces also dehumanized their victims by viewing them only as “prey” rather than as sentient beings.
Unlike both “The Most Dangerous Game” and the Star Wars: The Clone Wars arc, the Hutts are not actually hunters. Instead, they were completely detached from the fight, making bets from afar as their monster of choice fights the battle. As in the original short story, they mainly picked seasoned hunters and fighters for their arena rather than young children, but the Hutts themselves were kept far away from the danger throughout the fight.
The difference between these two dangerous games was the level of distance between the game’s creators and the subjects of the hunt. Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ dangerous game was ultimately closer to the original short story. However, both stories reveal a casual cruelty found in the Star Wars galaxy’s underbelly when sentient creatures become merely pawns or prey in the underworld’s games.
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