SPECULATION Baylan Skoll

Or is there no one to keep it balanced?

I honestly don't think the Baylan arc is tied to Mortis that significantly. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I always took it as though Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ahsoka were drawn to and allowed into Mortis. They were chosen, they did not truly just stumble upon it. Baylan can search a lifetime, but if he is not deemed "worthy" he could be standing on top of Mortis and not be allowed into the Realm.

I also believe the whole Balance of the Force "thing" has several iterations. The Mortis Gods were one. The Bendu said he was " the One in the middle..." The Guardians of the Whills and The Path of the Open Hand saw the Force as a neutral power that maintains it's own balance and is only disrupted by irresponsible Force users.

 

I was too cool for debate team and too honest to be a lawyer. Take it easy, my friend, I didn't mean to upset ya! This will ease your nerves.

Spoiler

I mean, it could absolutely go that way. I just don't know if it would be in a mainstream series like this. I did appreciate seeing Anakin at the end, and I feel like it was oddly a better redemption for him than anything previous.

I can't argue. It bears reposting. On-the-nose.


Or... Is it TOO On-the-nose??

(JOKING)

 

You forgot Clubber Lang jab-on-the-nose, my friend.

 

This might actually be what that is, or at the very least it's something along those lines. That last scene very much ties Baylan's arc to Mortis, and we could very well see Baylan attempt to "break the cycle" there... which somewhat reminds me of Collin Trevorrow's scrapped Episode IX plot.

 

He once told me, "Don't be a fool. Stay in school!"

I did.

 

I would have preferred to see Baylan 3 times in the finale.... first at the Mountain, where they show him spotting the eye of Mortis while standing on the hand of the father; for the second, at the halfway point and the last shot of him standing at or, climbing massive stairs to the gate.

 

Am absolutely in to continue Ray's and Baylan's quest and honor him.
This character should not be left in the limbo. Am so open to deage or recast on this.

Some names are already sounding.



Also, there are a lot of possibilities. SW is fiction, and they can play with some choices.
Like, making Baylan trying to access in a hidden temple or magic door from that mountain and being disfigured by a lightning or something, to justify minor changes with other actors.

Or finding a nightsister or another powerful dark being guarding where he is going and being flashed by some dark magic or sith lightning.

 

I enjoy watching Baylan as a character. But I feel that people are overlooking his hypocrisy. He is contemptuous and aloof of his old way of life's failure, and how it's part of a never ending cycle of wars that he has the wisdom to want stopped. The he tells Shin that "war is inevitable" and so on. So he's going to break a cycle of the galaxy tearing itself apart after pursuing ends that they thought justified the means, by justifying those means with the end that he has in mind.

 

Maximus Skoll is the only choice.


As the great surfer Jeff Spicoli once said, "uhm, those other guys are scallywags."

 

Slainte mhath!

 

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As many others have said, Ray Stevenson was great in this role - dialogue delivery, physical presence etc etc all top notch. One left field idea that struck me over my cornflakes this morning was if he goes off on a mystical quest to Mortis/wherever he could return much later and somewhat older to Galaxy 1 via various temporal/interdimensional antics. Maybe even during the period of the proposed Rey film. Step forward Brian Cox.