SPECULATION Huge Theory About Episode IX & The Last Jedi

Exactly what does he disagree with? He's the one in the middle. Nobody else.

“Jedi and Sith wield the Ashla and Bogan, the light and the dark. I'm the one in the middle. The Bendu.”
―The Bendu, describing his role in the Force

 

Balance has nothing to do with the force user groups being balanced.
The balance is about the good and evil in the galaxy being balanced.
The Jedi maintain that balance - they do not and cannot destroy all evil but they can defeat the Sith and co who:
spread evil across the galaxy which erodes the balance of the Force.

It wasn't attachment that drove Anakin - it was love. The love for his son and the love his son had for him. That enabled him to LET GO of the tings he was attached to - power, hatred, the Emperor etc.

Luke did not use the Dark Side for good. I can't understand how you take that away from ROTJ.
Luke sacrificed his life and rejected anger and hatred. His love and compassion was what did it!
He then became a Jedi.

The Bendu is neither Jedi nor Sith but he is a wise observer of events that is connected to the force. He's almost a mouth piece for the will of the force. And he desires balance. And he helps Kanan find balance in himself. And this means he is pro-light side as it is the Jedi who seek to maintain balance by destroying the Sith. Bendu wants that.

 

The light and dark sides of the force are not ethical positions, they are aspects of the totality of the force. Both the Jedi and the Sith misused the aspects they aligned to. Good and Bad are positions that come from the attainment of consciousness by crude matter. The force knows no such distinctions. The Jedi used the light side of the force, but they propped up a decadent and corrupt republic doing so. The Sith used the dark side to destroy that republic, but their reliance only on that side and the emotions that are used to draw on that power lead them to build something even worse, the Empire. Being grey means committing to neither side of the force, but using any aspect of the force be it of the dark or the light. Where good and bad comes into it, is when the living being uses that power depending on their intentions. So you could draw on anger and use force lightening to attack someone to gain power or you could use it to defend someone in need.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 7, 2017, Original Post Date: Feb 7, 2017 ---

He force choked a gammorean guard, his intention to save his friend Han.

 

To use the dark side you need to channel fear, anger and hatred.
To use the light side, you need to channel love, compassion and selflessness.

I'm not saying the Force itself is good or bad but it does desire balance - because it is essentially the collective consciousness of the galaxy.
When the Sith are about they spread evil everywhere and this unbalances the Force.
The Jedi defeat the Sith and balance is restored.

The Sith spread evil by using their hatred and greed.
The Jedi defeat the Sith by being compassionate and selfless.
This idea of being both and that being the answer just doesn't work.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 7, 2017, Original Post Date: Feb 7, 2017 ---

Here are some questions to mull over:

1. Did Lucas want us to feel that Luke could turn to the Dark Side?
2. At what point in ROTJ did Luke become a Jedi?
3. When Luke stares at his father's robotic hand, what is he thinking?
4. Why does Luke declare himself a Jedi when he throws down his saber? (whoops, answered #3 for you).
5. How did Luke redeem his father?
6. Are we supposed to think Luke is the finished article at the start or end of ROTJ?

 

But you can channel fear, anger and hatred for good.

Say I am a grey Jedi (or whatever I may be called), balanced in the force. I see a great evil, I fear it, I see oppression, I am angry, I see the oppressor, I hate them.
I can draw on these emotions and use dark aspects of the force to fight the oppressor, but I can't let those emotions consume me so they must be balanced by love of peace, compassion for the oppressed and selflessness of action.

 

You can't. And Star Wars explicitly tells us the opposite.

You can't balance emotions like that. You can't be angry about someone stealing your wife but then think ah well, I do love not getting nagged whilst playing computer games so all is fine.

If a Jedi sees injustice, it isn't anger they use to motivate themselves - it is their love for the person facing the injustice. It is the wish for them to be happy. It is a love for freedom, democracy, peace and justice.
The other point is that you can't just turn anger on and off like a tap. If you use anger you will get angrier and face anger in return.

I'm sorry friend, but I can't express in strong enough terms how wrong this statement is.

 

Why is a Gray Jedi even necessary? I don't get it. Jedi are powerful without harnassing the Dark Side. It's a choice to not give into fear and hate. Because it will forever guide their fate... the SIth aren't in control, they are powered by their basest instincts. It's tempting... it's easy, it doesn't take discipline. And it only leads to misery. Balance isn't being 'gray'. Balance is about ying and yang. Light and Dark.

A New Jedi order that doesn't function as a tool of the government, but one that fights the dark, brings light to the galaxy, that's compelling to me.

A future trilogy of a New Jedi Order, a new academy being born, and the dark fighting to snuff it out, that's what I want to see. How do they become relevant again. Not a bunch of "gray" jedi who are "badasses" like every other Marvel hero. I'll go watch the Avenger's for that.

 

I have a question for you, but it's only relevant if my understanding of a one concept is correct.

So first, as I understand it, there are certain abilities that only come from the Dark Side, such as using Force Lightning or preventing death. These powers come from perverting the Force, and are considered to be unnatural. But there are no abilities that those on the Light Side can use, but those on the Dark Side cannot. The only exception to this that I'm aware of is the ability to join with the Force at death, but that has more to do with being uncorrupted than it does with an actual power.

That means that joining the Dark Side is not simply a matter of how someone chooses to use their powers, it's also about a willingness to use those forbidden powers.

Assuming that's true, which aspect of using the Dark Side do you see as being the one that makes it impossible to walk the middle between Light and Dark? Is it because human beings with that much power are inherently not strong enough to resist the temptation to be selfish once they've had a taste? Or is it that using Dark Side powers is ultimately corrupting to the soul (for lack of a better word) thus an individual, once exposed, cannot help but follow the dark path since it is no longer a matter of choice?

 

Lucas's intentions are kind of moot now that the story has been taken up by others who want to expand his vision beyond his overly simplistic dualistic philosophy. Luke declared himself a Jedi, which is not the traditional way to become one. Luke did not redeem his father, his father redeemed himself. Luke is not the finished article either at the end or the beginning of RoTJ.

 

Except, isn't that story more-or-less what we got between ROTJ and TFA with Luke's New Jedi Order?

I'm not disagreeing, I want to see that too, but I'd rather see it in animated form pre-TFA/post-ROTJ as opposed to having a trilogy based on what we got (albeit only in exposition and hints thus far) a few years prior to TFA.

 

"First comes the day Then comes the night.

After the darkness Shines through the light.

The difference, they say, Is only made right

By the resolving of gray Through refined Jedi sight."

―Journal of the Whills, 7:477

 

Read my post a page or two back. The gray cannot be a constant state (unless you're the Bendu who just sits there and sleeps, but I digress). The gray is resolved through the wisdom and teachings of the Jedi. Luke resolves the gray when he resists killing Vader, throws his lightsaber down, and declares he's a Jedi.
From another perspective, Kylo tries to resolve the gray (temptation of the light) by killing his father. I think he's surprised when it doesn't work. Had he embraced the light and not killed Han, he would have taken steps to "resolving the gray".

The gray is temporary based on your path to light or dark. Notice you don't EMBRACE the gray, you resolve it.

 

Huh, interesting take. I personally took the first two lines as being the PT, the next two as the OT, and the final four being about the ST. "Resolving of the gray through refined Jedi sight" I took as Luke's training of Rey (what with him being the Last Jedi, and she seems to be much more ambiguous as to which side of the Force she lies on).

Also, @master_shaitan, I disagree that the Jedi are this thing that our heroes are defined by in the SWU. They are not the Supermen of Star Wars, and why? Because they failed: the PT shows the internal collapse of the Jedi BEFORE the Sith get their revenge (midichlorians to validate Force sensitives, etc.). Perhaps the original Jedi described by Dash - those dedicated to the Force, not a certain side - are the characters our heroes should be striving to be?

 

That is correct, because embracing an aspect of the force is not resolution. You don't embrace the grey, you embrace the force in it's totality, which you do by walking the path of the middle.

 

You said you cannot be in the middle. You must be either Jedi Or Sith, Light or Dark, Ashla or Bogan

Well Bendu disagrees.

 

Don't know if this has been said before but in the KOTOR games the sith is a religious faction where some practitioners happen to be 'dark Jedi' with the term Jedi being more synonymous with lightsaber combat and the knight-like qualities of the Jedi Knights. A grey Jedi could exist in this definition (although it seems that is not the cannon definition of the word Jedi) as a grey Jedi would be like a Ronin or Errant Knight.

So if Kylo Ren abandoned Snoke and the first order and used both the dark and the light in him (something referenced in the TFA visual guide) he would fit this idea of a Jedi Ronin. weather this is right or not doesn't matter. I think that is what people use the term 'Grey Jedi' to explain. if not this term there would be another.

This feels like a semantic argument.

 

The Bendu is the only one in the middle in the Star Wars canon. He says "I'm the one in the middle". He never alludes to others like him.

 

If you tap into the dark side using anger or hatred or greed then you are on a slippery slope. It doesn't mean you will inevitably turn irredeemably evil but that you will likely become an agent of evil and that your very actions right now are evil.

I just look at Anakin. He was a good kid, became a Jedi but then started to use the dark side (killed tuskens etc). At this point he wasn't really a Jedi and his actions got worse and worse. By holding onto this greed, anger and fear he corrupted himself and spread evil.

He had a choice to stop what he was doing but rejected that choice. But that isn't an argument for someone being in the middle. For if you're in the middle then you're just passing through via whichever direction you're heading or it is just the starting point. It's not a ground that you can remain in.

I mean in terms of his intentions for rotj. Luke choked the guard because it made him Vader like. Lucas wanted us to think that Luke was acting like Vader. That he could turn bad.

Yoda declared Luke a Jedi once he confronted Vader. Luke realised he was a Jedi when he rejected the dark side.

My point is Luke was the motivating factor in bringing Anakin back to the light by showing love and compassion.

Finished article in terms of being a Jedi. He want a Jedi when he was choking the guard. He was a Jedi when he rejected the dark side.

 

No you embrace the dark or the light. You can't have it both ways. You have to RESOLVE it. Move past one or the other.

 

Am I the only one that finds it bizarre that someone can watch Star Wars and think that the message is that you should use the Dark Side.
I just can't get my head around that at all.