Cadet America Beeny there with the understatement of the century. "Cadet" picks up the story of little Ami, the daughter of Bennett and America Jara, as a tenth-year cadet. The framing structure of the story here is really great, with Beeny asking for Dredd's help to reconcile Total War's involvement with her father's death. The opening few pages are nominally just recapping the events of "America" and "The Fading of the Light", but are electric to read. Beeny is essentially interrogating Dredd on his role in those stories, and seeing the calm and confident Beeny grilling the taciturn lawman is just fantastic storytelling.
The story itself provides some semblance of closure to the events of those two previous stories. As with all of Bennett's decisions, it's impossible to judge if what he did was "right", but we see that his decision to enrol Beeny with the Judges has at least kept her safe as he hoped. She's also become a smart, confident and very able Judge, earning Dredd's respect and a positive evaluation. The tangled history of Beeny and Dredd is the centrepiece of this story, but Wagner doesn't go the obvious route. Dredd is clearly expecting her to be angry at him for his role in the death of her mother - and while Beeny clearly has some complicated feelings about it, she doesn't hate Dredd. She is open about her concerns with the culture of the Justice Department, but acknowledges directly to him that he is her best chance of solving the case.
We end with a trip back to Bennett's house, and a showdown with the final (we assume) person involved in the Total War cell that America Jara was a part of. It's touching to see Robert the robot still there tending to the place, and then even more affecting to see him die protecting Beeny one last time. "Cadet" is nowhere near as intense or twisted as the previous two stories, but Wagner pulls one last twisted bit of irony here as we see that - in yet another example of Beeny's bizarre decision-making - he had his own body stuffed and displayed after he took over America's. It's also been given some robotic movement, and is used to allow Beeny to rescue herself at the end of the story. So, just as throughout his whole life, right at the end Bennett - or at least his body - is used and controlled to achieve an end. At least this time he gets to actually, properly save someone he loves.
The closure of this story is exactly the right kind. Beeny seems to put a lot of her ghosts to bed, but is still committed to remaining a Judge and changing the system from within. The story is hers now, and she has an ally of some kind in Judge Dredd himself. After all the twisted craziness of "America" and "The Fading of the Light", this is a powerful cap on the complications raised by these stories. Beeny is alive, but part of the system. Her chances of changing things are small, but there's a chance. Beeny's self-aware observation that her family is not exactly normal really highlights the troubling depths beneath the final line of this story, spoken by Dredd as he lays a uniformed hand on her uniform shoulder.
"We're your family now."
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