One of the many enduring memes about Star Wars The prequels are how Jar Jar Binks—as the senator who moves the motion to give Palpatine more executive authority at the outbreak of the Clone War—is SOMEWHAT responsible for the whole “rise of interstellar fascism” thing. Even if there is contemporary media Star Wars canon that tried to touch on that beforeto amazing effect, Jar Jar’s new comic offers a more optimistic answer.

TODAY Jar Jar Binks one-shot from Marvel—co-written by the man himself, Ahmed Best, with comics scribe Marc Guggenheim, with art from Kieran McKeown, Laura Braga, and Mike Atiyeh—sees Jar Jar teaming up with Best’s OTHERS Star Wars BEHAVIORJedi Master Kelleran Beq (no Achk Med-Beq to be found, alas), in the early days of the Clone War to investigate a crisis on the planet Urubai. The planet, in the wake of the Republic’s sudden need for a war machine, is rapidly being stripped for coaxium to fuel the war effort, even at odds with the safety and labor standards that Republic law is meant to protect.

Naturally, Jar Jar seeing this happening on earth shook his view of the Republic and his own reckoning, because he knew that his part in the political game that led to the formal declaration of war, manipulated or otherwise, furthered the decay in the heart of the Republic. But the investigation takes a turn when Beq reveals that the real reason he brought Jar Jar to Urubai was not just to highlight the damage done to the planet but a discovery caused by that damage: the over-mining of coaxium also led to the discovery of a new material called Cyphristal, a crystalline mineral capable of penetrating the core of a near-unbreakable communication network.

It’s a development that could give the Republic an important intelligence win in the early stages of the conflict or, as a mistrustful Beq pushes Jar Jar, a hidden asset that can be used when a powerful force — Separatist or otherwise — needs to be countered on a galactic scale. And so, of course, Jar Jar and Beq save the day, taking a key inventor behind Cyphristal’s “fractal network” back to Coruscant—but Jar Jar can’t shake the lingering regret he has about Palpatine’s role in Urubai’s fate.

Thinking his status as a senator elevated him to greater power because the Supreme Chancellor had any kind of leverage left, Jar Jar returned to Palpatine to try and convince him that what happened to Urubai was wrong. But Palpatine essentially rejects him, promising unconditional support to Urubai while admonishing Jar Jar for taking a narrow view of the conflict: a planet is worth sacrificing if it advances the war effort, and through this, Jar Jar already knows, Palpatine’s personal power.

It’s an interesting challenge to see Palpatine fearlessly explain to Jar Jar that there is one thing continued there, filled with confidence that Jar Jar, who had developed his power to such an extent in the first place, would never be able to stop it. But it also brings a strange twist to the whole issue. Disappointed by his meeting with Palpatine, Jar Jar reunites with Beq to tell him to begin developing a fractal network in secret along with an intelligence network that can prepare for whatever comes next. Which probably means they need the help of the woman they rescued from Urubai… Mira Bridger, Ezra’s mother.

Star Wars Rebels Fans already know that Ezra’s parents have a history of resistance broadcasting, running an anti-Imperial radio network on Lothal before they were captured by the Empire. But the implication here is that Jar Jar, realizing (albeit too late) that he’s screwed, is not only responsible for helping start that but may help start a series of rebel cells in the early days of the Empire. Working with Beq seems to lay the groundwork for the Hidden Path explored in Obi-Wan show and the Jedi games; the vast nature of the fractal network as a concept can, supposedly, make a bond between Jar Jar and the secret communication systems we see used in Andorra.

It’s a fun twist on Jar Jar’s years of spending sprees to reverse his complicity in essentially laying the political groundwork for the Empire by helping him lay the material foundation for what eventually evolved into multiple rebel organizations to confront that Empire. Jar Jar remains the key to all of this, but this time, as a force for good rather than an unwitting agent of evil—a fitting reclamation of the human nature that gave him life and persevered. years of harassment to do so.

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