SPECULATION The Role of the Jedi and the Force in Episode VII

I'm guessing the Jedi in episode 7 are going to be even more marginalized or mythologized. Everything we have heard up to this point is that Luke has been missing anywhere from 10-30 years. I think it's a safe bet the jedi's number is limited to Luke himself or one or two. Maybe the Jedi are intentionally keeping their numbers scant, staying in the shadows like the Sith, waiting until an evil truly terrible enough emerges that they are the only ones who can protect the Galaxy.

I have a feeling one of the best kept secrets so far in Episode 7 is Luke has an apprentice he has been training in secret for years. He/she is the Jedi version of Darth Maul, only in the sense that when the apprentice is dispatched to help deal with whatever villain is in Episode 7 they are the ultimate bad ass.

On that tangent, perhaps Daisey Ridley was that person in training, then Luke was captured/disappeared, she abandoned her training, and finding his lightsaber in the opening is the catalyst for her search for her former teacher. I believe that or my last theory, Luke has had an apprentice no one in the galaxy (or these websites) know about.

I believe the overall arc of the trilogy will be the rebuilding of the Jedi parallel to that of the Republic. Everything we have heard indicates there was no clear ending for either, and that most likely they are both in flux. Instead of opening up 35 years after ROTJ and having brief expositions about how the Republic and Jedi Order were rebuilt, we get to see it.

I also have a theory that a major point of the trilogy will be getting Luke to let his guard down and allow the Jedi to be part of the Republic. After what happened to the Jedi in Episode 3, Luke is probably hesitant to involve the Jedi in politics again, or risk them being used as soldiers in a war against the remaining Empire.

 

I do not believe that Luke would allow for the Jedi to turn back to their old ways. The old ways are dead at this point and part of the reason they fell from their peak to begin with. The new Jedi won't only have new rules that they abide by but they are going to have a new look and feel to them as well. It's going to feel new to us which is good.
As for the number of Jedi in the galaxy, I do not believe there will be that many. I have a feeling that Luke has been on the run for the past 35 years of the timeline and it's been difficult for him to train the next generation. There will probably be other Jedi out there, just not in large quantities.

 

In the prequels the force was based on a scientific basis.(midi-chlorians in the blood) but with the Jedi destroyed and the Empire in charge of all the secrets of the force through the original trilogy, the force became a religion for Luke to pass down. If he has not been seen in 30 years he would be the only one to train an apprentice (his son). Han and Leia's children would be the others that are heirs to Anakin's force heritage.
Any Jedi who avoided the purge could have procreated and trained their child in the same way.

 

I personally think that Luke will have trained no one in the way of the Jedi. My reasoning is that he has seen the destruction and horror brought about by the religious war waged between the Jedi and Sith factions. Perhaps the galaxy does not need all powerful force users running all over the place.That is wishful thinking on my part. Nothing takes the mystery out of the Jedi Order more than weekly council business meetings in the Jedi Temple. More Mystery More Better!

 

I'm wondering if something happens/happened and Luke turns to the dark side. This is, after all, a JJ Abrams film.

 

I am a huge Darth Revan fan as seen by my kick ass avatar and I think Luke and Revan will have a similar path. If you have not played The Old Republic mmo and are iffy about spoilers then do not read my comment. Anyway Revan has been imprisoned by Darth Vitiate the new Sith Emperor for close to three hundred years. Not unlike Luke who is also said to be captured by the new Sith. After so many years of imprisonment Revan becomes darker and darker as a result. When he is finally free he plans to use a weapon called the Foundary to completely eradicate the Sith. He says he is not looking for glory and that he is doing this for the greater good to save lives and he accepts that the terrible thing he is about to do is necessary. Luke in my opinion will have a similar moment. He will use this super weapon that has been rumored and use it to annihilate the enemy perhaps at the expense of innocent people and thus becomes a morally ambiguous and awesome character!

 

Based on the rumors (which do sound pretty cool to me) the role of the Sith is going to change a bit.

It always bothered me that there could only be two Sith Lords, the master and the apprentice. If it's true that we're going to be introduced to "Jedi Hunters" or "Sith Inquisitors", then I'm all for it. They will be low-level force users aligned with the Sith. But more importantly, the Star Wars universe won't be limited to two bad guys. We'll get to see light saber duels involving dozens of good vs dozens of bad force wielders.

As far as the Jedi go, Luke obviously won't have time to train more than one or two apprentices, based on what we've seen from the two previous trilogies. It literally takes years to properly train a Jedi. In theory Luke could be operating alone. But for the sake of "getting back to the original trilogy" , I think we will see a younger hero that Luke trains up just as Obi Wan and Yoda once did for him.

IMO there will not be a formal "Jedi Order" that has a council and advises whatever government exists. Jedi will operate in more of a mercenary mode simply because their small numbers prevent anything more formal. And going forward, Jedi will be allowed, or possibly even encouraged, to marry and have children. That is the fastest and safest way to rebuild the ranks of the Jedi.

 

Yes, agreed with Yoda not to mention that Lucas said this was about passing the torch -- passing on what you've learned. I actually think Luke has trained at least 1 Jedi who will be played by Andy Serkis's CGI character. And now his former padawan is training another padawan.

What I will be interested to see as far as Jedi go is -- Does Luke follow any of the old ways? Does he ever learn about the past like discovering holocrons or whatnot? Does he follow the "padawan" model raising children into Jedi? Does he change things up?

All very intriguing possibilities.

 

Just... please, for the love of god, DON'T EXPLAIN THE FORCE!
Let it return to the magic it was always meant to be.

Also, the "galactic police" JEDI order from the new trilogy sucked!
I'd love to see the force wielders as inspired by Obi Wan in "ANH":
The JEDI are a few wizards spread thin all over the galaxy, battling
injustice and bringing order to lawless worlds through wisdom and
call to peace.

 

I hope not but I think Luke will be missing because he wanted to. I do believe that having lost his Episode IV innocence and dreams, what he had done might have taken a toll on him...He is responsible for the death of maybe thousands of people, sure they were enemies but that might have stuck with him after the dust settled and he might just have turn away from it all, thinking everything would be ok after ROTJ...I don't know maybe he left for Dagobah or something....After all only R2 knew where it was...

Now in Ep.7 maybe the Empire has grown in strenght and numbers again, and we get a "help me obi-wan Kenobi, your my only hope, years ago you helped my father, bla bla bla" type of scenario...

That is why they are looking for Luke...

So basically, I don't think there will be more jedi if what we are hearing is true and that Luke disapeared for 30 years (I hope not)

 

This I really like - then you get the conflict between characters set up nicely - "you abandoned me!" "I was kidnapped!" Etc. Nice bit of emotional dynamic, as long as it's not drawn out as a running gag, but with a little more explanation than "you fell into that nest [of Gundarks], Master, I pulled you out!"

The thing is, without Holocrons at their disposal, I can't see how too many Jedi Potentials will have any idea of what the Jedi "Old Ways" are - bear in mind that so few of us in real life actually have any idea of how organisations like MI5 or DoD actually work on a day-to-day basis, so there's not going to be much knowledge of Jedi policies available to outsiders unless they've spent a great deal of time discussing it with a Jedi, and that's pretty unlikely.

Yeah, I wondered that myself actually - sadly whilst watching the recent Lego Star Wars mini-movies when there's a scuffle over all the Holocrons Sidious has amassed for himself. It's nice that Holocrons were canonised in TCW, and mentioned in the Lego mini-movies - although the Lego ones are clearly just for fun and not to be considered canon, it does show that they are still at the forefront of the writers' minds, which to me suggests that they will definitely be used in VII. Besides, they would be the easiest way to have flashbacks covering the last 30 years between movies without them actually being flashbacks. I actually started writing a fan-fic about Ahsoka and Ventress teaming up together between

Spoiler

her leaving the Jedi Order

in TCW S6 and the start of Ep VII - yes, a lot of ground to cover, I know it's quite an ambitious project, but hey, that's what I do - and it involved her discovering a cache of holocrons hidden away on Coruscant in the lower levels in one of Sidious' "black projects"-type research labs.

 

Agreed!

I think it's safe to assume that TPM's treatment of the force will never be used again. It was the second most hated aspect of Episode 1 behind Jar-Jar Binks.

 

I think JJ is going to reinvent the Jedi, to bring the magic element from the OT, and porbably the only to do it, is having the Jedi extinct in the first film, and let the characters explore the forgotten force.

 

This is how i see it, if there is more than three Jedi they should be running around like the GhostBusters "minus financial exchange" doing their own thing helping people, seeking evil. But when some heavy "stuff" goes down, they call them in to take care of it.

 

A lot of good posts here. I certainly like the idea also of a limited number of jedi having deliberately been locked away secretly for many years learning the ways of the force. In particular re-learning them to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Perhaps it is not only Luke who is 'in hiding', he may have a limited number of force sensitive beings that he has been secretly training. I say beings as it's been seen that Jedi are not necessarily of the human kind. Just some thoughts.

 

Luke is the last Jedi. BUT there are many threw out the galaxy that have the force in them. A Jedi is crowned after there training is complete. There not born Jedi. They must be tought to be a Jedi. Being a Jedi is like being in a club. Same with the Sith. Both sides have the force in them. It's how they choose to use it that defines them as SITH or JEDI.

 

Also on the whole possible kidnapping of luke. Who's to say he's really been kidnapped. They could be Jedi in hiding that take him. To be trained by him in secret.