Star Wars: Rogue One - Chirrut & Baze (2026) #1 (Star Wars: Rogue One

by Stephanie Phillips, Kieran McKeown (Artist), David Márquez (Cover Art)

CELEBRATING TEN YEARS OF ROGUE ONE! A STRIKE AGAINST THE EMPIRE...BUT AT WHAT COST? BAZE MALBUS and CHIRRUT ÎMWE attempt a covert mission to sabotage a KYBER mine that has been overtaken by IMPERIAL forces. But when something unexpected stands between them and their objective, the mission becomes far more complicated than they expected. To succeed, faith will be tested and an impossible choice mus

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

Kindle Edition

Published August 5, 2026

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two months ago, Marc Bernadin joined a long list of writers who failed to do anything interesting with Saw Gerrera. Fortunately, among the writers of the Rogue One one-shots, he's the oddity. Stephanie Phillips joins Benjamin Percy and Ethan Sacks as someone who understands not just the characters she was given to write, but also Rogue One itself. And Chirrut Inuit and Baze Malbus are the toughest characters to get right, because they're the only heroes the movie got completely right.

Even though 'there are no Jedi [...] anymore', the presence of 'dreamers like this fool [Chirrut]', and lines like 'The Force did protect me./I protected you' are the things that have always made Star Wars; Luke and Han had a similar exchange in A New Hope, Anakin and Ahsoka on luck in 'The Siege of Mandalore'. The faultlines of belief, the frontier between instinct and pragmatism, the conflict between destiny and free will; these are the places where Star Wars is. That's why Rogue One worked, why Andor's best arcs (Aldhani and Ghorman) worked, and it's why Chirrut & Baze works too. Add in jokes when the blind Chirrut sees more than the seeing Baze, an argument about the semantics of 'attack' vs 'accident' and how 'lucky it was that the accident happened when everyone innocent had gone home from work', and it recaptures the feel of Baze and Chirrut from the film.

But the standout turned out to come from a surprising source, the only other character who has significant panel time in the shot: the Worker. No, he doesn't have a name, and that's good. Phillips uses the Worker as an archetype, a mouthpiece to argue the case of the little guy:

That's the problem... people like you. You think about wars lightyears away or politicians writing rules that, at their worst, hurt people like me, and, at their best, don't even know we exist.

I started writing this review before Europe was gripped by a series of protests in France, Italy, and Spain serious enough to force the hands of their governments (brutal crackdowns in France and Spain, capitulation in Spain where the government called a snap election), and the day after a Serbian student protest movement ousted its ten-year strongman. It's a reminder that Star Wars themes are timeless. Push too hard, and people will push back. But Philips doesn't stop there. Just because the Worker's grievances are genuine doesn't mean he's the only who's right. Sure, I support the students, and I think they're right to rise up against the complacency, incompetence or cronyism of recent governments, but they also need to realise that the problems they face aren't the only ones, nor are the solutions as obvious as they might believe. That's why Chirrut's counter-argument is just as powerful:

I don't speak of far off wars to ignore your struggles. I speak of them because suffering flows downhill. The choices made in palaces and starships always find their way to people like you.

And Philips also wrote what I genuinely believe should a contender for one of the best Star Wars monologues ever written. Luthen Rael's 'everything' speech is powerful, but ultimately pessimistic. I have a softer spot in my heart for Mon Mothma's about the Jedi in The Mask of Fear, and I prefer that one for the same reason I love this one: optimism.

I've worked maybe fifteen different jobs in my life, always serving one master or another... always just barely scraping by on what little credits I earned... and some I stole. I've had other people telling me what to do or not do - What job to do, how to do it, how much money I need, you two telling me I have to go with you. But not once in my life have I ever cared enough about something that I'd die for it.

Pragmatism can only get us so far, it doesn't make us reach for the stars why we need to believe in something more.

Tomorrow, Chris Codon tackles the character I'm most interested in in this anthology: Darth Vader.

[Rivulet027 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like how fast paced and action packed this was, while also exploring the philosophy of the characters/this world. I like how the ending helps show why it took the Empire so long to get the Death Star working.