IS IT ME, OR IS STAR WARS GETTING…COMPLICATED
It didn’t start with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the latest television series from Disney+ that expands on Star Wars’ already expanding lore, but Kenobi does perpetuate an idea that doesn’t quite sit well with me.
Once upon a time, we told stories that went something like this: Here are some people who stand for good. Here are some people who stand for bad. Bad people are doing bad things, so bad that the good people are compelled to stop them for the good of all. Story unfold. The end. Lights come up, exit the theater, pee in a crowded bathroom. It seems stories like these are slowly going the way of the dinosaur.
I believe it started with the rise of the anti-hero. A bad person doing bad things but for good reasons. Except this has slowly evolved into something else entirely. These days it seems like we need to develop a back story for all the villains we love to hate in order to give them some sort of empathetic undercurrent in order to know why they are the way they are. Why is Darth Vader so angry? How did Joker become Joker? Why is the Wicked Witch of the West so wicked?
I bring this up because there was once a Star Wars universe that had balance. Things were black and white. Light and dark. Blue lightsaber versus red. Easy.
But things are different now. It looks like Anakin was manipulated. Granted, he went and fell in love and all, which is forbidden for Jedi. But something happened before he fell in love…he was taken from his mother. As the story goes, his mom was enslaved and so-unfortunately-they had to leave her behind, but all for the greater good right? Anakin was going to have a better life than the one his mom could give him.
It seems that Anakin’s situation wasn’t an isolated event. Apparently all Jedi are taken from their families at a young age. Part of their training. This is where things get murky. In an episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Kenobi alludes to having no memory of his family. Remember in The Force Awakens when we meet a stray storm trooper who eventually went by the moniker Finn. Yeah, remember him? And how he never knew his family and was raised inside the Empire and that added so much gravitas to who storm troopers were, how they became what they are? Remember how it gave Finn this sympathetic arc and we rooted for him to break free while we squinted our eyes at the Empire and mumbled expletives under our breaths about the horrors of an organization could do such a thing. They were literally treating people like numbers!
Um…it seems the Jedi order sort of does the exact same thing. I mean, you get to keep your name but that’s about it.
In the original trilogy when Yoda, etc. mentioned “training young Jedi” I sort of pictured a Jedi school. You know, little Jedi kiddies get up in the morning and eat breakfast with mom and dad who then hop in their speeder and drop off the youngling. School’s over around 4pm and the parents come back and pick them up and ask things like, “So how was your day? Did you get to build your own lightsaber yet?” and so on. But no. They straight up just take those kids. How traumatic.
For me this casts a shadow over all of what Star Wars was, and what it is. What was once black and white is starting to turn shades of gray. Jedi still stand for all things good. But at what cost? The cost of their family? The cost of their childhood? And in the end…is it worth it? Do Jedi grow up and just except this as the way things are, or do some fall from grace? Maybe Count Dooku was once a stand up Jedi knight, but went to the dark side once he realized just what the Jedi order had done to him.
This too, is being teased on Kenobi with the Third Sister referring to things she’s “owed.” Is she grappling between having served an order that ripped her from her family to serving an empire that punishes her ambition? I don’t know. With two episodes to go I’m sure we’ll find out. Even when we do, there’s no coming back from where the Jedi has been. This is canon now and I’m not quite sure I like what I see.