Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: Crimson Reign #3
When Luke Skywalker found Yoda on Dagobah in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back and asks the Jedi Master to train him, Yoda agrees, only to hide the most dangerous part of the training. Luke wasn’t the first force-sensitive person to be taught by Yoda after he went into hiding on Dagobah as someone else went searching for the Jedi some time before Luke underwent his tutelage. When that person arrived on the mysterious planet, she went through one of the same experiences as Luke and in doing so revealed the task’s hidden dangers.
In Star Wars: Crimson Reign #3 by Charles Soule and Steven Cummings, readers are given a glimpse into the life of someone other than a Jedi who’s life was ruined after Order 66. Madelin Sun was a Sava on Coruscant, one who studies both the light and dark side of the force for academic purposes, until the simultaneous execution of nearly every Jedi in the galaxy made her career obsolete. Sun becomes someone who sells scraps, living in a shack after spending a lifetime in a palace. When Sun gets roughed-up by some Storm Troopers because of her Jedi-adjacent past, she is saved by Qi’ra, the leader of the Crimson Dawn, who recruits Sun for a nearly impossible task.
Qi’ra is on a mission to take down the Empire once and for all, and she tells Sun that she needs the help of a Jedi Master to make that happen and asks her to find Master Yoda. The trail led Sun to the same cave that Luke entered during his training with Yoda that would take place years later, one that was brimming with dark energy. Sun entered the cave thinking it would lead her to Yoda, and instead she found something within herself. The dark side of the force was strong in the cave and its impact physically altered Sun’s appearance, turning her skin from a human-like tan to a light blue and blinding her in one eye. While the cave gave the introspection she needed to not reveal Yoda’s location to anyone, it also permanently deformed her, a side effect Yoda did not tell Luke about in The Empire Strikes Back.
When Sun returns to Qi’ra, the effects of the Dagobah cave are obvious, both physically and mentally. While the negative impacts of the cave were clearly shown, Sun was still able to derive something good from the experience, including being taught by Yoda himself. When Sun leaves Dagobah, she says that Yoda spoke to her while she was in the cave and explained why it was so important that his location remained a secret, and that if she confronted the darkness within herself as the cave allowed her to do, then she would come to that conclusion as well. Yoda helped Sun find the light inside of herself where all she found was darkness, and in the end that made her happy. However, the dangers in the cave were clearly shown and, like Luke, she was unaware of them when she entered.
In the film Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker finds Yoda and trains with the Jedi Master in order to prepare for his inevitable final showdown with Darth Vader and the Emperor. In order to conquer the dark side of the force, Luke enters the Dagobah cave and has a spiritual vision, one that helps him on his quest. However, after the events of this Star Wars comic issue, fans realize that the effects of the cave could have been detrimental to Luke Skywalker, and Yoda didn’t alert him to that danger at all.