So the Messiah in Star Wars is supposed “to bring balance to The Force,” but I never understood what it meant.
Star Wars is extremely dualistic–there is a good side and an evil side, a light side and a dark side, the Jedi and the Sith. Every plotline is based around a manichean struggle where only one side can win by annihilating the other.
The “good side”, the Jedi, are explicitly looking a savior to provide “balance” while at the same time imposing all sorts of restrictions on which force powers are allowed and which aren’t. For an order whose messiah is based on Taoist equilibrium, they are positively Christian in their obsession with purity.
I think there is an implicit subtextual critique of the Jedi Order in the prequels that they incompetent, as you might expect from the leaders of a theocracy, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I think the closest we get to ANY real discussion of balance is Luke’s vision on Degobah, where he must see himself as potentially Darth Vader, which can be interpreted as an attempt towards wholeness OR as a warning to not stray into evil.
Can anyone square this circle?
Edit: It’s funny to me that there are more comments than upvotes. People want to share. I love it.
Did everyone share qui gon’s view that Anakin was going to do that? Or was it just him and obi wan?
Quigon was one of the few “prophecy” enthusiasts. The closest to his disposition was arguably his former master, Dooku.
Obiwan trained Anakin because it’s what Quigon wanted. And nobody could tell him otherwise because he was the first jedi to face a sith in millenia. Even YODA had never fought a sith lord at that point.
So ya even tho Obiwan’s emotional attachment to quigon was clearly what drove him to defy the council if need be, there wasn’t much they could do because Obiwan was galactically viral at the time.
A Sith kills a whole squad of Jedi in Acolyte. It’s a century before we hear Duel of the Fates for the first time, but nowhere near “millennia.”
Acolyte isn’t star wars. It’s a fan fic with a budget.
Best lightsaber fight ever in it. More story in one season than all of the sequels combined.
It’s good Star Wars.