Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #30!Imperial stormtroopers have a long-standing tradition of dying in Star Wars, but one unfortunate trooper just met the most gruesome end of all thanks to bounty hunter Beilert Valance. If there's any constant in Star Wars, it's that stormtroopers will miss every shot they take before suffering an unceremonious demise. Usually, this amounts to little more than the trooper getting caught in a hail of Rebel blaster fire or having their TIE Fighter swatted out of the sky by an X-Wing.
Beilert Valance's long-expected betrayal of the Empire comes to pass in Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #30 by Ethan Sacks and Paolo Villanelli. Valance's previous loyalty to the Empire came as a matter of extortion: they would kill those he cared about if he didn't serve Vader's will. Tragically, his former lover, a Rebel officer named Yuralla Vega, is killed when the base she's on is bombarded by the Empire. Valance's new lover, Imperial Lt. Haydenn attempts to keep this news secret from the cyborg bounty hunter. Upon discovering this duplicity and Vega's fate, Valance takes out his anger on a squad of stormtroopers preparing to execute his fellow bounty hunters. In a moment reminiscent of The Boys or Mortal Kombat, Valance strikes the first trooper in the chest with enough force that his fist bursts out of the Imperial's back.
It's a gruesome display of violence, and only the prelude to Valance's slaughter of the rest of the stormtroopers. The cyborg proceeds to fling a large cargo freight onto much of the squad, before ripping through the rest of the squad with blaster fire and another lethal punch that shatters the target's helmet and, presumably, the face underneath.
Valance Is Done Pulling Punches Against the Empire
Serving as an Imperial stormtrooper comes with a high degree of inherent risk. The Imperial military doctrine is based on overwhelming numbers, not the quality of each individual soldier. By the very nature of this doctrine, Imperial stormtroopers are highly expendable: anyone worth more to the regime will prove their value and survive. While stormtroopers dying is a daily occurrence, Valance's attacks in this recent issue display a degree of visceral brutality that is unlikely to ever be shown on the big screen or a Disney+ series.
Valance has a long-standing reputation for having a softer side, often to his own detriment. He's generally been reluctant to kill in cold blood; he has continued to care for and try to protect Vega despite her moving on from him; he's even spared his rival bounty hunters where others may have ended their lives. After Han Solo's imprisonment in carbonite, Valance attempted to rescue his old friend from the hands of the Empire, Crimson Dawn, and Boba Fett, only for Fett to betray him in order to re-acquire his bounty. In his slaughter of the stormtroopers, Valance indicates he's been using incredible restraint in the past: he's very capable of being the very monster he proclaims the Empire made him. It's likely only reason the likes of Bossk, Boba Fett or Dengar are still alive is because Beilert literally pulls punches he's capable of. It's a side that's been hinted at in the past, with Darth Vader displaying a legitimate respect for the cyborg and an understanding that actually killing Valance will be an exceedingly difficult task.
Darth Vader's respect for his fellow cyborg, and Vader's previous hesitancy in terminating him, are warranted. Following the butchering of the Imperial garrison, Valance looks to push the limits of his cyborg body even further. Rather than flee the scene, the bounty hunter effectively issues a challenge to the Sith Lord, one Vader is keen to accept. How well Star Wars' nigh-indestructible cyborg bounty hunter can fare against the power of the dark side is difficult to predict, but based on how viciously Beilert Valance takes out these stormtroopers, it seems unlikely Vader's victory in the upcoming battle will come easily.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #30 is on sale now from Marvel Comics