Legacy of Anakin Skywalker and Evil Luke / Exile

Yup but I still think Yoda was refering to Leia. Obi-Wan probably didn't know she could use the Force.

 

Obi Wan was there with her from the beginning... he saw her born, and was told (in Episode III)

 

LUKE
Yoda spoke of another.

BEN
The other he spoke of is your twin sister.

LUKE
But I have no sister.

BEN
Hmm. To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous.

LUKE
Leia! Leia's my sister.

 

Different scene... you are referring to the one where Obi Wan explains to Luke what Yoda told Luke...

When Yoda is speaking to Obi Wan, however, we get a different sort of thing... Yoda wouldn't need to explain to Obi Wan that Leia existed... Obi Wan knew already. For Yoda's comment to make any sense, he would have to be referring to something Obi Wan wasn't aware of...

(I admit that some of this is due to the changes Lucas added in between ESB and RoTJ. It is fact that when ESB came out, "the other" that Yoda mentions was not meant to be Leia, but that changed.... and with it some weak points in the scripting were created)

 

C'mon dude you're grasping for straws. It is not Anakin; it's Leia. The only reason Obi-Wan says that is because he is caught up in the moment. Obi-Wan is also aware of the prophecy too, but he clearly states the other is Luke's twin sister.

 

I know that. I was meaning Obi-Wan may have not known she was attuned to the Force like Luke was.

 

Exactly. This is something that I think often gets lost in the discussions about balancing the force.

The idea that there must be an equal number of light side and dark side users always seems to me to be very similar to the notion of "balancing" a panel discussion of the spherical nature of the earth with an equal number of Flat Earth Society members.

It's always seemed more a matter of "balance" in terms of a body returning to balance after a serious illness. Cancer is an example of a body that is out of balance, and the solution is not to have an equal number of healthy cells versus cancerous cells - the solution is to bring the body back into balance by eliminating the cancerous cells altogether.

THAT'S what I think the Force is like as far as its need for balance is concerned.

 

This is not "grasping at straws", this is a weak point in the scripting dialogue created by a change in plotline discussed by many people (including those in the films) for a long time...

 

I think that is grasping at straws...

The Balance of the Force was a radical application of the Force demonstrated by Revan, due to his unique mastery of both the Light and Dark sides of the Force against the Sith Emperor. It was twin rivers of energy that manifested itself as a flash of light, the Force released in its purest form. This technique was able to knock back the experienced Sith Emperor

In terms of the Chosen One, the idea of balance of the Force, a central tenet of the Jedi Order, referred to the ideal state in which the Force existed in nature, namely as the light side

The belief has been that Anakin fulfilled his prophecy when he returned to the light side and killed Palpatine. It may also be seen from the point of view that Anakin/Vader embodied both the light and dark sides of the force, and he found the path between them

Nothing in the canon states that the children of Skywalker would be evil, quite the opposite, Yoda and Kenobi both felt that they had the greatest chance for good. Had there been any indication that one would be good and the other evil, they would have killed one of them as soon as the other showed their nature

 

I agree it's vague, and was purposely meant to be. But nowhere can I find evidence that the film makers discuss the other being Anakin.

This is from http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/completehistoryofthesequeltrilogy.html

"On the Empire 2004 DVD for example, Lucas claims that this line wasn't referring to anyone specific but was simply added to increase the danger, that Luke could die because there was someone else ready to replace him. The explanation doesn't quite hold up. But an examination of this infamous line reveals that Lucas indeed must have had some plans for sequels. The line in the initial drafts achieves what Lucas claims of it, and it first appears in the revised second draft. Yoda says, "Now we must find another." In the third draft the line is similar: "No...we must search for another." But in the fourth draft it undergoes a subtle yet highly significant change: "No, there is another." Implying that somebody is already out there, ready to step in and replace Luke, someone that only Yoda knows of.

It certainly seems as though Lucas was setting up the protagonist for the third trilogy he was planning on making at that point. Who was this character? Lucas himself may not have known exactly, and had many avenues to take. Could it be another Jedi who escaped the purge like Obi Wan and Yoda and was in seclusion like them? If this is the case, he would be at least seventy years old by the time of the Sequel Trilogy, making this highly unlikely. The most obvious answer then is that this person was a Force-sensitive youngster, hidden at birth similar to the way Luke was, perhaps only being a child at the time of the middle trilogy. In the third trilogy he or she could become the protagonist".

They settled on the other being Leia. I could see how people interpret that line that way, but it still goes against what Obi-Wan tells Luke.

 

Agreed 100%

The problem with all this speculation is that various quotes have meant various things at various times, and have changed as the OT developed. What they meant when written, and what they came to mean by the end, were often quite different, and we can draw all types of conclusions by looking at each of the elements in isolation, in terms of what they meant in the end, and what they have come to mean after the PT

The beauty of all this is that Abrams can do the same thing... and go in lots of different directions

 

That's exactly what I'm talking about. The dark side of the Force, like a cancerous tumor, IS the imbalance.

What I don't agree with is the notion that there have to be an equal number of dark side and light side users for the Force to be in balance. Ultimately, Star Wars has always been a story of good versus evil, not about good and evil achieving parity.

 

I used to have this debate with neo-pagan friends who claimed that we needed to pay more attention to the goddess aspect of nature since we have lived in a male dominated dogma society for so long... my response (which always seemed to annoy them) was that it was a bad plan, and would cause imbalance in the opposite direction... the only way to bring balance was to be balanced, and remove all imbalance...

I think that applies here as well... in the end, I think Luke will find that the corrupt Jedi order gave way to the potential for the rise of the sith emperor Palpatine, and that the logical path for any new Jedi order would be one that is more mainstream, notably (if we wanna go there) personal relationships.

Looking at the games (which I know are not canon) the path of Jedi in The Old Republic was pretty much Buddhist, that attachments are bad... Qui Gon changed things, he was a radical and disagreed with a great deal of the trappings of the council, which is why he rejected it... and in doing do found the key to merging with the force and becoming immortal.

He died, but in death, paved the path for a new Jedi order. Yoda, with the fall of the Republic and the extermination of the Jedi, realizes this, and sends Kenobi to meditate and learn of this while in seclusion on Tatooine watching over Luke. The legacy they passed to Luke, and ostensibly will continue to mentor him on after RoTJ, would be in the failings of the old Jedi order, and the potential of the new...

The subject of the new trilogy was to be Luke's moral debate over the true nature of good and evil... and possibly a way to balance the strength of emotion with the temper of logic... to not let emotion control you, but to not deny it either

Edited afterthought: It is possible that the only way for the Chosen One to bring Balance to the Force was by removing the corruption on both sides... which Anakin did by destroying the corrupt Jedi temple, destroying the sith Emperor, and giving birth to a new generation that could begin with a blank slate... "balance" was never possible the way things were

 

Well, let's be honest... the achilles heel of the Old Jedi Order was their insistence on isolating their members from the uncertainties of normal human relationships out of concern (fear) that such relationships would cause Jedi to fall to the dark side.

In other words, from a certain point of view, the seeds of the dark side already corrupted the Old Jedi Order, and that was what allowed the Emperor to destroy them. In the end, it was Anakin's love of his family that allowed him to throw off the yoke of the dark side, turn from his Darth Vader identity, and kill the Emperor.

So yes, I do think that we will see Luke training the new Jedi in a way which takes into account the value of human relationships, rather than reflexively recoiling from them as the old Jedi did. (In other words, he'll be more mindful of that mushy, emotional goddess-nature schtuff.)

 

Problem with this whole theory (albiet interesting) are the last 20 minutes of ROTJ.

Luke clearly shows that he can resist the dark side, and even save others from it, like his father in this case.

So exile will not only contradict the light side of the force that he represented, but also the evolution of his personality since the case in ESB.

If anything, Luke went into exile as he sensed a new "disturbance in the force" and believes the only way to counter it, is from within the shadows.

 

An interesting theory, but it isn't grounded in any SW philosophy... there is nothing in SW canon that says the Force channels into people in some Highlander-esque "there can be only one" power buildup.

The reason Obi and Yoda "vanish" is that they learned the secret from Qui Gon. The reason Anakin/Vader and Dooku did not is that they were Sith, and Sith believe that life ends at death. This is canon, and reinforced throuth CW with the Yoda arc in the final 13 "missing episodes" The gist is that with Anakin's redemption, he was aided at death by Yoda and Obi Wan so he wouldn't perish, but did merge with the force.

This is why we don't have hundreds upon thousands of dead Jedi masters teaching current generations. This is also why we don't have a Force-ghost Palpatine, although it is aluded that the secret to immortality that Darth Plagueis learned was the same one that Qui Gon learned, which would have been alien to Sith philosophy... although it was noted that it was alien to Jedi philosophy, so it is potential that this technique was one in the same. While when being spoken of, Darth Plagueis' "immortality" seemed to be a "physical" immortality, the ability to persist as a Force-ghost could also be seen as immortality, which if true would give the potential for two Sith Force-ghosts (Darth Plagueis and Sidious). There is no mention of Palpatine passing this along to any of any of his students, although if he did pass it to Darth Vader, that would help to explain why and how he persisted after death.

 

Anakin resisted the dark side... in a fashion...

While Anakin succumbed to the dark side in Episode III, he found redemption in Episode VI. You can say Luke "saved him", but you can also say that seeing his son, and seeing his strength and determination, gave him the will to resist. More or less, he was wallowing in a pit of self-pity, and he decided to crawl out of it.

Luke was able to resist because he knew people were depending on him... because he loved his friends, and he believed his father was redeemable. Anakin fell because he felt that he would lose Padme, like he lost his mother, and that those closest to him were jealous of him. Anakin lacked a good old fashioned support group. It must have come as a blow to him when he discovered that the Emperor had lied to him, that he had not killed Padme in rage, that he had a son... and then to see that despite the evil that he had done, despite the evil that he had become, his son loved him... his son NEEDED him... that was enough reason to care...

As for exile... nobody said Luke was in exile... the rumors have run from him being prisoner to having set up an academy somewhere... exile is but one of the many theories, and it is a weak one. IFF he is in "exile", there is a reason for it, and it isn't just that he likes being alone...

 

I have a feeling that if it's right that Luke is living in exile, then it's because he is afraid. He is afraid that if he trains Jedi’s that some turn evil. Therefore he is hiding. Fear of failure.
Now fear leads to suffering to hate to...... The dark side of the force.

 

One of the biggest themes throughout all 6 movies is that of choice. The Dark Side is not inherited, it is a choice. Everyone is capable of choosing the Dark Side, it isn't something that is pre-ordained. That is why the choice is so powerful, because it is the individual that makes it. There is no need for Luke to go into hiding to drag the Dark Side away, because, Leia would still be capable of making the choice.