'Saga' Is Back! Here's Everything That's Happened in the Story so Far (2024)

Across a 54-issue run, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples grew to become one of Image Comics’ most popular titles. The series began a four-year hiatus in 2018 but finally returned to comic-store shelves with issue #55 this past January, which kicked off the second half of the series. While the best way to experience this story is simply to read it, a recap of what’s happened may be helpful after so much time has passed. With that in mind, here's a breakdown of the story so far ...

Hiding out with her husband, Marko, on the backwater planet of Cleave, Alana gives birth to their daughter, Hazel. Alana is from Landfall, and Marko from its magical moon, Wreath; their races are engaged in an eternal, bloody war that spreads across the stars. The two deserters are tracked down by both sides and miraculously survive a deadly shootout. As the family flees to the Rocketship Forest in search of safe passage off-planet, news of their cross-species child quickly spreads through both Landfallian and Wreath intelligence channels. On the Landfall side, Agent Gale tasks their Robot Kingdom allies with hunting the family. Prince Robot IV is ordered to complete the mission, despite having just learned his wife is pregnant. Wreath, also interested in eliminating the family, puts out a bounty.

The Will is one such freelancer who answers Wreath's call, but he quickly abandons the job when he learns his ex-girlfriend The Stalk is also hunting the family. Opting to blow Wreath's unlimited expense account for the job at the brothel planet Sextillion, he is approached by a pimp who promises a "real lover." The Will is presented with the six-year-old Slave Girl, and, horrified, he crushes the pimp’s head and tries to escape with her. They are stopped by Mama Sun, who threatens The Will’s companion, L ying Cat, and tells him he would have to buy Slave Girl's freedom for an outrageous amount; he leaves Sextillion without Slave Girl.

Marko and Alana are cornered by The Stalk, who poisons Marko before fleeing the approach of what she calls “Horrors.” They turn out to be ghosts of child casualties, and one of them, Izabel, helps Alana find snow for a healing spell that saves Marko. In exchange, Alana allows Izabel to bond with Hazel’s soul in order to leave Cleave with them. The family is then found by a Landfallian platoon, and when Alana is struck by gunfire, Marko battles the soldiers in a violent rage, nearly breaking his pacifist vow. The family reaches the Rocketship Forest and escapes Cleave on a wooden rocket ship. While investigating Marko and Alana’s desertion, Prince Robot is called to the site of Marko’s almost-massacre. He crosses The Stalk there and, fearing death as an expectant father, trigger-happy Prince Robot shoots The Stalk when she reaches for her freelancer credentials. She dies while on the phone with The Will, who is calling her for help with Slave Girl. Prince Robot picks up the phone to tell him that The Stalk is dead and that he’ll be commandeering her vehicle. The Will promises to murder Prince Robot.

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Marko and Alana decide to take Hazel to meet the author who inspired their union, D. Oswald Heist. Their trip is interrupted when Marko’s parents, Barr and Klara, teleport onto the ship and banish Izabel to the nearest planetoid before they learn about their granddaughter. Marko uses their crash helmets to teleport after Izabel with Klara. Before finding her, they battle a giant troll who tells them the planetoid is actually a massive egg ready to hatch. On the rocket tree, Alana and Barr get off on the wrong foot until Barr reveals he has less than a month to live.

Meanwhile, Marko’s ex-fiancee Gwendolyn is sent by Wreath to convince The Will to finish his mission. He agrees, in exchange for Gwen blackmailing Mama Sun into handing over Slave Girl. When they arrive to collect her, they’re forced to battle Sextillion’s Loss Prevention, killing one of their agents named Hektor. They bring Slave Girl onto The Will’s ship and discover that she can “hear” Gwen’s pendant calling for its nearby friends. Gwen’s pendant is part of a set that includes the translation rings Marko and Alana wear, and realizing Slave Girl can track them, they immediately pursue.

Marko and Klara return to the rocket tree with Izabel as a massive Timesuck hatches. The Will’s ship catches up with the rocket tree and Gwen fires missiles at the rocket tree, which miss and strike the Timesuck, causing it to lash out and damage The Will’s ship. The Will rescues Lying Cat from the vacuum of space and flees the area, leaving the rocket tree trapped in the Timesuck’s gravitational pull. Marko uses a crash helm as fuel for the tree, but with the ship moving at speeds that crack the hull of the ship, Barr holds it together with magic until his heart gives out, sacrificing his life for his family.

Stricken by sudden loss, the family arrives at Quietus and meets Heist, who reveals he wrote “A Night Time Smoke” as a protest to the war, and he regards Hazel as proof of his philosophy. While the family enjoys much deserved quiet time, Klara and Heist flirt while they plot to give Marko and Alana a career path on the television network, the Open Circuit. The peace doesn’t last, as Prince Robot anticipated the couple would seek out their hero, and he lands on Quietus to interrogate Heist while the family hides upstairs.

After the Timesuck incident, The Will, Gwen, Lying Cat, and Slave Girl (now named Sophie) are stuck on a remote planet while they wait for a repairman to come fix the ship. While waiting, The Will receives a tip about Prince Robot heading to Quietus in The Stalk’s ship, but before he can follow the lead he realizes the food they’ve been eating is infested with a hallucinatory parasite. Brainwashed, Sophie stabs The Will in the neck, but is stopped by Gwen before she can kill him. Desperate to save The Will with a healing spell, Gwen heads to Quietus hoping to find Marko.

When Prince Robot shoots Heist in the knee, Klara intervenes but is shot herself. Heist fires back and badly wounds Prince Robot, cracking his screen. Gwen barges into the lighthouse, mistakes the situation, and kills Heist with The Will’s lance. Confronting Marko, Gwen is outraged when he tells her his healing spell only works on their kind and can’t save The Will. She tries to kill Marko but is stunned by Alana, and the family leaves Quietus as Prince Robot resets and wanders into the mist outside.

Elsewhere, a pair of journalists named Upsher and Doff investigate Marko and Alana’s story. They interview a number of witnesses who lead them to Agent Gale. He puts a bounty on their heads to shut them up. They’re visited in the night by The Brand and poisoned with Embargon, which will kill them if they tell anyone about their story, forcing them to drop it. The Brand later visits her brother, The Will, who is comatose in a hospital.

Some time later, Marko and Alana find stability on Gardenia, where Alana works as an actress on the Open Circuit. As a stay-at-home dad, Marko spends a lot of time with toddler Hazel and befriends another parent at the playground, Ginny. Alana struggles with her work-life balance and gets hooked on the drug Fadeaway, provided by Heist’s ex-wife and Open Circuit set designer, Yuma. Tension mounts between the couple as Alana sinks deeper into addiction and Marko, who is spending more time with Ginny since signing Hazel up for her dance class, wards off extra-marital flirtation. When their inevitable fight about drugs and suspected infidelity boils over, Marko throws a bag of groceries at Alana, and she banishes him from the rocket tree.

While Prince Robot loses himself on Sextillion, a commoner of the Robot Kingdom, Dengo, murders Prince Robot’s wife and kidnaps their newborn son. Dengo’s son died of dysentery due to poor living conditions in the Robot Kingdom, and he hopes to use the royal son to broadcast his message of revolution on the Open Circuit. He hijacks a Landfallian ship and heads to Gardenia. When Prince Robot learns what happened, he kills Mama Sun and meets with his father, King Robot, who does little more than chastise him at the Princess’ funeral. Agent Gale, however, gives Prince Robot a lead on where to find Dengo.

Dengo arrives at the Open Circuit on Gardenia and kills anyone who tells him what he wants isn’t possible, as broadcasts are controlled off-planet. However, Yuma bargains for her life with Dengo by offering him information about Hazel, and how she could help Dengo’s cause. Marko shows up at Ginny’s door, unsure of where else to go. He nearly kisses her, but he finds Hazel’s favorite doll she forgot during dance class and runs out the door because Hazel can’t sleep without it. Before Marko can make it back home, Dengo invades and hijacks the rocket tree, blasting off Gardenia without Marko. Marko is forced to form an unlikely alliance with Yuma and Prince Robot, and the three go to Quietus to recruit Ghus, a shepherd who has a telepathic link with Friendo, the family’s pet walrus onboard the rocket tree.

In another part of space, Gwen, Sophie, and Lying Cat steal a potion recipe that can help The Will. The Brand, on the hunt for her brother’s assailants, catches up to them with her companion Sweet Boy. When The Brand learns they’re trying to help her brother, she goes with them to The Stalk’s home planet, Demimonde, to collect the crucial ingredient for the elixir: dragon sem*n. On the way to the dragon’s lair, they’re approached by The Stalk’s brother, Halvor, who provides The Brand with an eardrum from the same beast as The Stalk’s skull ship, which can be used to track the craft. When they reach the dragon’s lair, Sophie, feeling guilty for stabbing The Will and wanting to make things right, impulsively sneaks ahead to collect the ingredient from the sleeping dragon. When the dragon begins to wake, The Brand is bitten in half while pushing Sophie out of the way. Gwen and Sophie wake The Will with the elixir, but he is so angered by his sister’s death that he orders them all away, leaving him with Sweet Boy and the eardrum.

Dengo brings the rocket tree to an icy planet to meet with violent extremists, The Last Revolution, to negotiate terms for handing over Hazel. Alana and Klara try to gain an advantage by convincing Dengo not to trust the Revolution. When dealings with Wreath High Command are threatened by Dengo’s involvement because of Wreath’s prejudice against robots, Dengo realizes Alana was right when the Revolution moves to kill him to preserve their deal with Wreath. Dengo kills the Revolution’s leaders and sends Hazel off with Klara. Dengo finds Alana and they escape the Revolution’s ship, but Klara and Hazel are caught by other members of the Revolution, who warp-jump off-planet, separating Alana from her daughter and step-mother.

Marko, Prince Robot, Yuma, and Ghus follow Friendo’s trail on The Stalk’s skull ship. Marko continues to grapple with his relationship to violence, believing he is addicted to it. He trades one addiction for another and overdoses on bad Fadeaway with Yuma, experiencing a feverish odyssey through his memories. Prince Robot and Ghus get the two to purge the Fadeaway out of their bodies, and Marko awakens, deciding to embrace violence. They are intercepted by a Robot Kingdom ship seeking Prince Robot, which fires on them and causes a fuel leak. Yuma enters the burning engine room and sacrifices herself to seal the leak. They warp away from the Robot ship and crash-land on the ice planet, where Marko is reunited with Alana, and Prince Robot is reunited with his son, after shooting Dengo in the face.

Years later, Hazel attends school in a Landfall detention center, having been captured along with Klara. The wings believe Hazel to be merely a “moony” child, and her true nature is kept secret. Meanwhile, Marko and Alana execute a heist on Variegate, finding documents containing the location of Hazel’s detention center. They return to Quietus to blackmail Prince Robot away from his son, Squire, to help their prison break. Posing as a Count, Prince Robot gets them deep enough into Landfall space for Marko to crash helm into the detention center and save Hazel. With one more seat on the teleport back to the rocket tree, Klara opts to remain in the detention center, and fellow inmate Petrichor takes her place. After Hazel is reunited with both Marko and Alana on the rocket tree, Petrichor senses that Alana is pregnant again.

When The Brand’s death hits the news, Upsher and Doff realize they are free to pursue their story. They head to Gardenia, because while watching the Open Circuit, Upsher witnesses an actor quote a Heist line and suspects it was Alana. They interview Ginny and follow the family’s trail to the ice planet, where they find The Stalk’s ship. The Will arrives, tracking the ship with Sweet Boy using the eardrum. Believing the journalists could be useful in his revenge against Prince Robot, he holds them hostage. They help him find Squire on Quietus, but Ghus defends the boy and chops off a few of The Will’s fingers. The Will succumbs to visions of lost loved ones who convince him to seek out Gwen, rather than kill Squire, and he leaves Upsher and Doff on Quietus.

The rocket tree is forced to refuel on the war-torn comet Phang. They befriend a large family of rodent creatures, including young Kurti, and end up refueling on Phang for six months. Frustrated about missing Squire’s birthday, Prince Robot plans to search for fuel in Robot Embassy on Phang, and Izabel offers to cross the dangerous warzone in his stead. Izabel is found and killed in the Embassy by the freelancer The March. Feeling Izabel’s death through their soul-bond, Hazel erupts in tears and Marko sets out with Petrichor to investigate.

The Will, fired by his freelancing agent, looks for Gwen on Wreath while she brokers a deal with Agent Gale. In a secret meeting, she gives him a mysterious box to use at Phang. On the way back from the meeting, The Will catches up to Gwen and Sophie. He hopes to train Sophie to be a freelancer, but she chooses to stay with Gwen, and Lying Cat stays with Sophie. The Will leaves, dejected, and returns to the Heroine planet to indulge in hallucinations of The Stalk; during which a masked woman named Ianthe kills Sweet Boy and imprisons The Will.

While Hazel shares her first kiss with Kurti, the adults learn that Phang is heading towards a Timesuck. Their escape from the planet is threatened by The March and Marko murders them, giving into his thirst for violence. As Phang passes by the Timesuck unnoticed, Landfall soldiers use Gwen’s box in a false-flag operation to awaken the Timesuck and destroy Phang. Refusing to leave their home, the rodent family all perish, including Kurti. The rocket ship launches using fuel found by Petrichor in The March’s ship, but it’s tossed by the Timesuck, throwing Alana during the launch and causing her to miscarry.

Alana needs to abort her stillborn child before it kills her, but her fugitive status complicates things. They seek out the operation on Pervious, where Alana discovers that the pregnancy she needs to terminate is granting her magic powers, which manifest her stillborn child into a specter named Kurti. As Alana gets weaker and Hazel gets the opportunity to meet the idea of her little brother, they come into the care of the Endwife, who performs the operation that saves Alana. Back at camp, Petrichor and Prince Robot fight horse-people cowboys and fall in love.

They all make it back to Quietus where Upsher and Doff finally get the chance to interview Marko and Alana. They want to publish their story, and to protect the family from exposure, they offer to give them new identities and bodies. Marko and Alana decline, but Prince Robot takes the offer for himself, Petrichor, and Squire. He offers Upsher and Doff information about the false-flag operation in Phang, and the group heads to Jetsam. Once there, Squire runs away, not wanting to go through with the plan.

Tortured, The Will is forced to relive memories, and Ianthe reveals that he killed her fiancé, Hektor, one of Mama Sun’s goons on Sextillion. Ianthe learns what he knows about Marko and Alana, and claims the job for herself. She takes The Will to Quietus, but the family has already left. Ianthe threatens an old colleague of Doff’s, who points them to Jetsam. There, they bump into Doff, alone, who tackles Ianthe and frees The Will, dying in the process. While Petrichor and Ghus find Doff’s body, Ianthe finds Squire, and brings him to the rocket ship, hoping to barter him for a ride. When they realize Ianthe intends to hand Hazel over to her boss, Upsher and Alana overpower Ianthe.

Finally able to get revenge, The Will finds Prince Robot at a cliff. Marko finds the two and tries to convince The Will to let him go, lying about the others already leaving Jetsam. The Will rips off Prince Robot’s head, and Marko tackles him off the cliff in a fury. They crash into Ianthe’s ship, and while Marko chokes him, The Will launches the ship. Marko crushes The Will’s metal hand and beats him into submission, but instead of killing him and giving into violence once more, Marko spares him. The Will returns the favor by stabbing Marko through the back with his crushed hand, and Marko’s death is what readers were left with for four long years.

The second half of the series resumed with issues #55 and #56 in January and February, and issue #57 should hit shelves on March 23.