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.

  • modernangel@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    8 hours ago

    The prophecy of “one who will bring balance to The Force” wasn’t inserted into the franchise canon until 1999’s “The Phantom Menace”. Nothing in the original trilogy, nor any comic books or other lesser canon, points to this “bringing balance” notion before then.

    According to actor Ahmed Best (Jar-Jar Binks, et al.), George Lucas explained “bringing balance to the Force” as purging all Sith / Dark Side influence. The Light Side is balanced-ness; the Dark Side is unbalance.

    Knowing that, the prophecy is obviously a callback to the climax of Episode 6… But then in 2012, Lucas sold out creative control, so we started seeing post-Empire Dark Side masters anyway (Moff Gideon, Kylo Ren, Snoke etc.) So I think we have to downgrade expectations of the prophecy: it was important within its own stretch of the Star Wars tapestry, but its Balance was merely for a time, not all time.