Comics Rogue One: Cassian & K-2SO Special #1

Turns out there's another Cassian Andor who was actually born on Fest and this comic is about how he met K-2SO.

 

This thread came out of the cemetery. Several of the posters on this very page probably haven't posted for years.

 

This comic being potentially retconned is the most interesting thing about it, and honestly I don't find that particularly interesting either, yet it will likely be immortalized forever in the lexicon of the side of the fandom that obsessively tallies every retcon since the buyout and damn well will make sure you too remember.

What an odd fandom culture we have developed in the past decade or so where the existence of a retcon is more interesting for the fandom than the actual stories being retconned or doing the retconning.

I cared about the Kanan retcons because I cared about the Kanan comics, yet in my experience most of the people talking about the retcons seem to have not read it at all, and that's a rather consistent pattern.

 

Ahahah yah I will admit I'm not too sussed about it but even when she show was announced I was like "Yep, that comic is going away." I could only search for it because it's the only thing released that has "Cassain" in the title!

Like I said, from another poster years ago, it can just be seen as a byproduct of the reprogramming

 

Honestly most people making a big deal of it were probably just reacting to a YouTube video they watched.

 

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RIP the comic in the canon

 

I don't even remember the context of this comic issue. I just remember not thinking it was very interesting.

 

Just dropping my own two cents. Basically just repeating what I said in the One Canon thread.

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My theory? Cassian recovered K-2S0 from Ghorman, reprogrammed him, then lost him and had to recover him a second time. That's my retcon.

 

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I've been wondering when the "live action retconned a comic book, tiers are back!!!" outrage would drop. Or maybe that's just reserved for when Filoni does it?

Anyway, the "based on a true story" paradigm makes pretty short work of this as it does with most apparent discrepancies. As was Cassian's past on Fest, one story or another is simply apocryphal. Perhaps Cassian decided it wasn't a great idea to spread around the fact that he was on Ghorman during the massacre and created the Wecacoe story to explain K2's origin. Or perhaps the Wecacoe story is the true one, with Andor showing us a "revisionist" version of the tale. (At least one reference book I've found, Ultimate Star Wars New Edition, directly references the Wecacoe tale, while the Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide references it indirectly by stating that Cassian did the reprogramming himself. Of course, they both also mention Fest...)

Alternately, it's trivially easy to make both stories true - the droid we see reprogrammed at the end of "Welcome to the Rebellion" isn't "our" K2, but a different KX droid. Cassian later puts to use what he learned from the droid programmer on Yavin when reprogramming K2 later on Wecacoe. Future material might not allow for that interpretation, but it works fine for now.

 

I for one am glad the days of the clone wars steamrolling everything are back in full force

 

Technically, the episode never called the droid he recovered K2, did it?

Maybe a personality component from the one in the comic was used to finish reprogramming the one in the show, and the comic one got borked offscreen?

I'm not losing any sleep over this one. Clearly Lucasfilm never stopped using the canon tiers behind the scenes.

 

While that is true they also have gone out of their way to connect to other forms of publishing (Dark Disciple for instance) so it really is a case by case basis.

But yes the tiers never went away and the whole everything is equal really is just a marketing line.

 

The subtitles did

 

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As contradictions go, it's not enormous; the fact that we'll time jump before the final three episodes makes it easier to smooth over.

I would imagine the retcon back in the day would have been: "After K-2SO's successful reactivation following his retrieval at Ghorman, Andor and General Draven sent the droid ahead to infiltrate what was expected to be a middling Imperial force on Wecacoe. K-2 was to stage an arrest of Andor as cover while two rebel agents hacked into the guts of a decommissioned Imperial warship in hopes of retrieving Imperial security protocols. The droid found that the Empire had a stronger presence on Wecacoe than expected, however. Thanks to a security update initiated by his base layer of Imperial programming, the droid reverted to arrest mode, causing trouble for Andor when he arrived. In order to avoid being detained, the team were forced to partially memory wipe K-2 and flee before completing their mission. During their escape, Andor was able to cordon off K-2's base Imperial programming. The mission proved to be a fruitful reintroduction for the pair as the update included the Imperial security protocol they had wanted to retrieve in the first place."

 

Yup, I think that's the way to go with it. I had something similar in mind when I reread it, and it works well enough.

 

For me, this is the first BIG retcon in the series since the disney takeover, or should I say explicit retcon and even then, as Talon has theorised, there are easy ways around it if you care for it. Yes, I am aware of that there are lot of very small continuity issues as should be expected.

Regardless, all the other Filoni-isms that have occurred in the canon can be justified and headcanoned very easily.
1. Kanan comic vs Bad Batch - my headcanon is that the Bad Batch version is the "true" version of events and the comic, which itself is a flashback from Kanan's POV is his retelling by which time he has become quite embittered towards clones, so any memory of helpful clones has long gone.

2. Tales of the Jedi vs Ahsoka - a little more complicated, but with the Inquisitor update we now know that Ahsoka kills both the 11th Brother and the 6th Brother. One on Raada, one on another farming planet. That is more-or-less concrete canon now, the issues are when Bail contacts her etc, but again Tales is more a retelling style, key points sort of show. The same is true for Tales of the Empire with Thrawn and Palleon issue with Rebels.

3. Cobb Vanth Mando vs Aftermath - for me this is fine. Cobb's retelling of events of how he acquired the armour is his telling , Aftermath remains the true version of events. Assume there is fragility in the Tusken/Freetown peace and you're golden.

Sorry, slightly off tangent, but the point is that at least Andor was so different, it is very clear that the comic is a different story altogether. Although i strongly resent retcons like this, on the basis of StoryGroups original mantra of a continuous canon, I think from a storytelling POV it is better to have creators a degree of freedom here.

Whether the new origin story is a worthy retelling is a different question, but the two events cannot be reconciled in the way the above 3 can be done. Unless, as Talon suggests we headcanon an entirely new mission which personally, I really like.

I am half expecting Disney to say something about this. They know it's a big deal in the canon world, Gilroy clearly knows as well as he paid a lot of respect to Rebels in the last arc. I am therefore expecting a small SW.com article to perhaps confirm the position of the comic, whatever it may be.

 

Someone on Reddit noted that

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the brief conversation between Andor and Draven upon Andor's return to Yavin might offer a clue as to how the comic will be reconciled in future media, if and when it is necessary to do so.

"We are not gonna log this in. Any of this. That's the plan."

Draven, being Draven, is going to cover up Andor and Wilmon's off-the-books involvement in the Ghorman affair, meaning Wecacoe will probably end up being the cover story for where K-2SO came from. Very on-brand for this crew.

 

Still haven't watched the episode but I knew this was going to blow up weeks ago / season 2 / when the show was first announced ahaha

Byproduct of the reprogramming! Anyway I can't even find my copy of the issue now

 

It was released back in 2017 so I am sure many of us would have to do some digging to find it again.

 

It's available on the Marvel Unlimited app for those who have it. Just search "Cassain" because it's like the only thing released that has "Cassain" in the title, same way I found this thread ahaha

 

It was also collected in the Rogue One OHC.

 

Oh shoot, found my issue, keep those longboxes organized, folks!





Fun read, Cassian’s sidekick aliens communicate with fart smells, and K-2SO tries to kill Cassian immediately, so that tracks!

 

You know I never had posters wishing for more continuity canon rage on my 2025 bingo card.

That said, it's also an easy one to solve:

1 - Expectations have shifted, the official line might be everything counts but there's different densities and comics are on the light end of the scale.

2 - The tricks are known, can't do anything to stop it, pointless to get mad about it. Unless you have nothing better to do than roll out your five hour YouTube video about how terrible it is.

3 - If you think anything is beyond the ability of fans to fix then I refer you to the legend of Darth Sinrebirth and the Book of Apocalypse.

 

There's a middle ground between number 1 and number 3 that represents the correct answer. Realign your expectations to what Lucasfilm is actually doing re: "historian's perspective" and choose your own adventure when the waters get murky.