Saga #54 Rocks the Series' Foundation by Killing [SPOILER]

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Saga #54 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, in stores now.

When we learned Saga was going to take a break of at least a year following Saga #54, readers were surprised and disappointed. However, after seeing what happened in Saga #54, it all makes a lot more sense.

In fact, the series' latest issue shakes up the foundation of the series so much, it would not be surprising at all to see a drastically different comic book when it returns from its year-long "intermission."

Up until this point in the series, Saga has been about a married couple, Alana and Marko, a couple who hail from two different extraterrestrial races which have been at war with each other for a long time. Alana was Marko's prison guard, but she fell in love with him and the two decided to go off on their own. They have a child, Hazel, who is actually narrating the series from the future. Hazel is now a young girl at this point in her narrative about her life growing up.

The family is being pursued by representatives from each of the worlds, who hate how the intermingling of their races appears to the rest of the galaxy. The family is also being hunted by a freelance bounty hunter known as The Will. Of all of the characters in the series, The Will has perhaps gone through the biggest transformation over the years as he suffered numerous traumas over the course of the series. Where he once seemed to be able to move into anti-hero status, he is now just too damaged to be anything but a killer. In the current arc, The Will and an operative named Ianthe were able to track the couple down to Jetsam, where they had been staying while one of their former pursuers, Prince Robot IV, sold the true story about Alana and Marko to Upsher and Doff, a pair of reporters who had been tracking Alana and Marko down themselves for years.

Once on Jetsam, things have been a blood bath. Ianthe killed Doff and in the previous issue, The Will finally got his revenge on Prince Robot for the Prince killing The Will's girlfriend, the Stalk, early in the series. When this issue began, The Will was face to face with Marko.

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Marko has tried to turn his back on violence ever since Hazel was born, but time and time again he has been forced to protect his family in any way possible. This time around, it involved battling The Will with magic and his shield. Throughout the fight, Marko is having flashbacks of his own father physically abusing him when he was a child.

Finally, Marko has The Will dead to rights and is about to kill him when he just cannot bring himself to do it. If no one else is willing to do it, then Marko will break the cycle of violence himself. Then The Will promptly stabs him through the heart...

And since Hazel is narrating the story from the future, we know that that means that the odds are pretty good that this is not some sort of storytelling trick. Chances are pretty high that Marko is actually dead. After a flashback to Marko and Hazel having a cute moment on the beach together, the issue ends with Marko bleeding to death, his eyes looking to the stars.

Obviously, when you kill off one half of your two leads, that is going to lead to a major shift in the series. However, right from the start, this has been Hazel's story, so the fact that they are taking a year-long hiatus now certainly suggests that we could be seeing a time jump and then seeing the book pick up with Hazel now fully as the lead of the book. That might be why they have been killing off so many major characters recently, with one longstanding character killed off in each of the final three issues of this story arc (Doff in #52, Prince Robot IV in #53 and now Marko). If they do a time jump, they would likely have a whole new cast of characters.

Or the story might pick up right where Saga #54 left off. It will be a very long wait until we find out what happens next.