When You Wish Upon a Lot of Stars...

Anakin experiences the Jedi’s lack of compassion on his own skin when his mother Shmi dies in his arms, tortured to death. Not to excuse what he did: but that Anakin literally wiped out the entire village of Tusken raiders in revenge afterwards, when Shmi’s husband had told him that twenty men had already gone and tried to rescue her and only four had come back alive, among them himself who had lost his leg in the fight, goes to prove how extremely strong and capable Anakin was. There was no danger for him; the Clone Wars had not started yet; there was absolutely no reason for Obi-Wan to hold the young man back from doing an act of rescue and compassion for his own mother, except for the excuse “no attachments”. Obi-Wan is so adamant that Anakin must be forged into the perfect Jedi knight that he overlooks his own duty to compassion. He never knows what happened to the woman and he doesn’t ask. Neither does Yoda, who had felt Anakin’s suffering in the Force. Simply put, they don’t care.

In The Clone Wars, Ahsoka is at one time framed for a crime she didn’t commit, and all Jedi believe the evidence, except for Anakin who doesn’t dare to speak up against all of them. The young woman had fought by their side since she was fourteen, proving her bravery and loyalty to them over and over by risked life and limb at their command. That they didn’t even suspect for a minute that something was smelling foul a mile a minute says a lot. They are willing to sacrifice her and it’s not even quite clear what they believe they would achieve with that, except losing a valid member of their Order.

In The Clone Wars we also see Obi-Wan “sacrificing” Satine, ruler of Mandalore and the only woman he ever had a romantic interest in. The result is that her sister Bo-Katan takes over, who ultimately, though not on purpose, will cause the destruction of her whole culture and the fall of Mandalore.

Now let us move to Padmé’s fate. Not a few viewers criticize that Padmé has a relatively passive role in the Republic in Revenge of the Sith, yet this enhances that she was not important for the galaxy’s politics by then. Had Anakin „sacrificed” her, not one soul on either side of the war would have been saved. The clones had the chip in their minds which would make the execute Order 66; had Anakin not killed the Jedi at the temple, the clones would have done all the dirty work. In any case, her death would only have been a loss to him, personally, and would have saved no one.

On Mustafar, Obi-Wan willingly sacrificed Anakin, whom he had raised like a younger brother and who had repeatedly saved his life, for the sake of the galaxy. From his point of view, he was justified: Anakin had become a ruthless killer and his death would have deprived Palpatine of his long-groomed apprentice. Interestingly, though, he did not kill him but left him to burn maimed in the throes of his own sin, despair and hatred. Earlier in the movie, Anakin had put an end to Count Dooku’s miserable existence when he was kneeling handless and pleading before him; Obi-Wan doesn’t find the nerve to such an act of mercy on an already defeated man. He may be willing to make a „sacrifice for the greater good”, but he has no compassion on Anakin, else he would at least have the mercy to kill him. Palpatine picks up the ex Jedi’s miserable remainders and uses them to construct Darth Vader’s new body, trapping him in excruciating pain and self-loathing, and using him to wreak terror in the galaxy, for the next over twenty years. All of which could have been avoided through a simple act of mercy. But Obi-Wan shows no mercy, and he even has the nerve to call Anakin out that he was his brother.

Now some will argue that Anakin could have left the Order; after all, Ahsoka had left, too. But Ahsoka didn’t have the sword of Damocles “You are the Chosen One” over her head since she joined the order. Anakin felt he had a duty to them, and to the galaxy at large. The Jedi took 9-year-old Anakin away from home and raised him to become an emotionless robot. They always saw him as “flawed” and didn’t accept him as one of their own because even if he became the most skilled of them, he remained passionate and caring. Ironically, it was when he became Vader, the personification of all of their fears, that he had finally turned the emotionless robot they wanted all along.

The Jedi were convinced that after the victory of „their side“, everything would be fine. They didn’t care about the suffering they caused serving the Republic and didn’t try to put a stop to. The Chosen One was not just a bad apple; he was the best of the Jedi precisely because he was capable of compassion. The Dark Side didn’t come out of nowhere to erase the Jedi: it was in all of them. Palpatine played on their hubris and narrow-mindedness like a keyboard. He was one of them; he knew them enough to realize what strategies he had to employ to make them fall prey to his schemes.

Classics

The classic trilogy is a story about group feeling, the Leia-Luke-Han trio literally following the motto from The Three Musketeers “All for one, one for all”.

In the third instalment, where he is the central character and which is actually titled Return of the Jedi, Luke’s first act is to rescue his friend Han from Jabba’s palace. He could have died here, e.g. eaten by the rancor, and the Jedi order would have ended with him. This younger version of Luke ran the risk. He wouldn’t have left a friend in the dumps arguing that Han had to die, or at least remain frozen for all eternity, because the galaxy needed him, the Jedi, more than one single man who just so happened to be his friend whom he owed his life twice.

Let us assume that in the classic trilogy, things would have gone the Jedi way. Had Luke already been the „perfect Jedi” from the start instead of the affectionate, compassionate hothead we know, he would not have insisted on rescuing Leia in the first movie, going to Cloud City to save her and Han in the second movie, and trying to rescue and forgive his father in the third. Had he not met Vader on Bespine he would not have learned the truth about him and he would have done what his masters wanted, becoming a patricide. And then what would have happened? Palpatine would have triumphed. Having pushed the young, innocent man to such a terrible act he would have condemned him to a lifetime of self-loathing, effectively making him his new apprentice and Vader’s successor the way he had planned all along.

Why were Obi-Wan and Yoda so adamant that Luke should kill Vader, never mentioning Palpatine, who was the ruler of the tyrannic Empire? My unpopular opinion: Jedi don’t know how to face their sins and failures. That Anakin, the greatest Jedi of his time, perhaps of all times during the history of the Order, turned to the Dark Side and became the monstrous Darth Vader was the blatant proof of their failure. Had they showed him compassion just once, his own temptation and Palpatine’s lures would not have sufficed to push him over the edge. Anakin’s story is that of a human tragedy, the third movie even closely following the narrative pattern of classic Greek drama. Through the entire prequel trilogy we see over and over that his ultimate fate could have been avoided. The remaining Jedi wanted him to take the secret of their failure into his grave. Both Obi-Wan / Yoda and Palpatine did not want father and son to bond, each for their own reasons.

It is unknown why Luke chose to forego his attachments now; after all, they formed him, made him the hero he became. He is who he is due to his aunt’s and uncle’s love and protection and the friendships he made along the way, not due to any Jedi teaching. What ended the civl war in the galaxy war was the attachment between him and his father, ironically the thing both Jedi and Sith did not want to happen and fought for twenty years to prevent. That Jedi have to go without attachments is not even mentioned in the classics. And I don’t know why it’s suddenly such a big deal that the reason for Luke’s choice to isolate himself from his friends is not even explained further. He needs not to hide the way Yoda and Obi-Wan had to; the galaxy is still living trying times; but instead of doing anything, he makes frogs float (of all things).

Sequels

Sacrifice for the sake of another is a big theme across the sequel trilogy, as is whether such a sacrifice makes sense or not. In The Force Awakens Han sacrifices himself for his son, which in the end brings Ben Solo back from the Dark Side. In The Last Jedi Paige is killed at Poe’s command, which does not lead to victory since the Resistance finds out later that they were being tracked all this time. Admiral Holdo is the one who actually sacrifices herself to save her friends in a last-minute attempt, successfully. And it is her very own decision, Leia, who is in command, does not “sacrifice her” ordering to stay behind, although they are obviously friends of old. Leia sums it up with the words, “She was more interested in protecting the Light than in being a hero.”

Failure, the thing the Jedi couldn’t face, is another major theme of the sequels. After his failure, Luke finally wised up and told Rey what she needs to know about the Jedi. „Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if your strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure… At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.” He also took his own responsibility when he said to her, „It was I. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi master, a legend.” Luke was spot on when he told Rey that the Jedi ways are wrong: they had become too extremist. He and Rey are sitting on the border of the mosaic depicting Balance for a good reason.

Ben Solo is the fulfilment of the Skywalker’s family curse; he is what Luke would have become, had things gone Palpatine’s way - a self-loathing patricide burning in hell, the way Vader was burning in his self-hatred for years. I have heard fans arguing that Luke would have done better to kill the sleeping young man. Really? Luke himself caused the disaster; the alleged right to „kill one person to save many” proved blatantly wrong. Had he not been tempted to consider murdering his nephew, nothing would have happened. Both books and comics make a point of proving that Ben had never harmed anyone before that fatal night. Luke hadn’t failed his father because at the time he still was Luke from Tatooine, leader of the Rebellion, a brother, a son, a friend. He failed his nephew because by then he was „the perfect Jedi“.

When Rey confronts him, „Is it true? Did you try to murder him? Did you create Kylo Ren?” Luke finally confesses that he went into exile oppressed by his shame. But once he has faced his failure both due to Rey’s understanding and Yoda’s encouragement, he emerges from this trial stronger than ever, ending the battle on Crait without spilling a drop of blood. His terrible experience on Bespine, when he had learned that Vader was his father, had also been a trial he underwent with his sister’s assistance, resulting in making him much stronger and wiser.

Thereby, Luke shows us twice in the saga that true hero is who conquers his own fears and accepts his own failures, not who „kills the bad guys”. We have never seen a Jedi facing and accepting his inadequacies, emerging stronger and wiser than before. Luke still is the greatest hero of the saga, the last and strongest of the Jedi, like a candle flickering up brightly before it burns out, because he finds the moral courage to face himself. And he finds it not when he’s alone, but when others are there to support him.

The Mandalorian / The Book of Boba Fett

In Episode 5 of The Book of Boba Fett Mando is obviously out of balance, a perfect foil to Luke in the following episode. Set in a slaughterhouse of all places, the episode shows him for the first time killing without necessity, cruelly too.

Mando no longer is the man he was. Every change that happened to him is closely linked with Grogu. They bonded and are now like father and child; his covert was wiped out due to the chase for the child; his personality has changed due to their connection; he is seen as an apostate because he removed his helmet needing to do so to find Grogu; and he won the Darksaber, which makes him ruler of Mandalore, on a rescue mission for him.

Mando is much worse off than before. Bonding with Grogu has made him more emotional, and now that he has to do without him, he is callous.

But before that, we witnessed him finding friends, protecting, negotiating (even with the Tusken), bringing people together. He was, though not consciously, growing into the role of ruler. Without Grogu he would not be tempted to give in to his worst side, like when he commits manslaughter, but he also would not be the man he is now, a father and a future ruler. He’s outbalanced because the creature he did it all for is no longer there; despite all he has learned in the meantime, he has no purpose. It is only on finding Grogu again in Episode 7 that he finds his purpose and inner balance again. So, if they stay together now, I daresay they will both have the chance to mature together into two personalities who will not be thrown off balance by loss, or fear thereof.

Like Anakin, Luke and Ben, Mando is a man who thrives on his attachments. He had the moral strength to let Grogu go away with Luke, and the child chose to be with him instead. Mando was mature enough to let go, even if it made him unhappy. He is already proving that he’s learning to go his own way, instead of following the Mandalorian „Way” he was taught since he was a child; and Grogu has turned his back on becoming a Jedi, too, not only because he loves Mando but because he needs to learn his own lessons. Which is why I suspect that the Jedi order will start anew through him, not through Luke.

Luke had killed a rancor, Grogu tamed it. His attachment to his adopted father did not make him “vulnerable to his fears”, on the contrary - he was perfectly calm and relying on the Force although he had literally witnessed the beast trying to devour Mando. He is already stronger than Luke, and he is older than Luke technically. So, also from that point of view, I believe he made the right choice.

Conclusions

Jedi and Jedi fans like to pride themselves on „leaving it to the will of the Force” to claim that killing or letting die people who have literally done nothing wrong is perfectly justifiable and even noble if it’s for some vague Greater Good.

1. This makes sense only on the assumption that Jedi are essentially soldiers. Being connected to the Force, Jedi ought to be spiritual beings offering emotional solace and bringing balance. That it is their job to fight is logical from the standpoint of the action film viewer who expects that peace is only possible once all the bad guys are dead; but looking both at the contents and contexts of the saga, this is never the message it conveys. The Jedi fight and fight on for years, lose the war and die almost all; the last of them, Luke, finally puts a stop to the war by throwing his weapon away.

2. No one has the right to decide to sacrifice someone else „for the greater good”. Even in case such a situation would arise, the single person themselves ought to make the sacrifice; it is not for the Jedi or another alleged „hero” to make such a terrible choice. The person who might „have to die for the sake of others” most probably wants to live on, they also have people they care for. How would you feel if someone would tell you that they’re sacrificing you, never minding your needs, your will to live, pretending that it’s for the greater good? If anyone ought to decide such a sacrifice, it should be the victim, not some self-imposed judge who happens to be a Jedi. This is hypocrisy at its best. The Jedi believed that the end would justify the means, but it doesn’t. It is never justifiable when someone is making a choice of life and death not for himself but for others. ("The Acolyte" also makes a good point on this.)

3. What would happen with a persons’ conscience after such a choice? Decide that one person must die to save a hundred today, tomorrow you will decide that a hundred must die to save a thousand. And every time you care less, it just goes on and on.

4. It is improbable that someone might have to make such a choice at all. Star Wars is not like a James Bond or Marvel movie where the archvillain may torture the hero with such a kind of impasse. Please tell me a convincing scenario, in Star Wars or in real life. How high is the probability? And even if it happened, then once in a blue moon. It makes no sense to center your whole way of life on the chance that you might have to make such an improbable, cruel and self-righteous choice.

5. If a person is sacrificed, no one knows what that entails. 1 to 1000 is just a number. The single person who got killed may have been pivotal to do something important for the sake of many (see Ahsoka, Padmé, Satine).

Sacrificing others has never done any good within the course of the entire saga, on the contrary. It is not the message or morals Star Wars wants to convey.

In the late 18th century many people in France admired Maximilien de Robespierre because he had sent some of his best friends to the guillotine when he suspected them of not being Republican enough. The result? He ended on the guillotine himself, Napoleon took over and France became a monarchy again. It finally became a republic only a century and three more revolutions later.

Being a Jedi Ought to Mean Compassion – Not Sacrifice

The Jedi showed no compassion when they should have, never in both the entire prequel trilogy or the classics. Luke did when he should have (with his father) and saved the galaxy; at one time he didn’t (with his nephew) and everything went downhill.

The fate of the Jedi of old is a cautionary tale. When you unlearn caring for the individual, in time you unlearn caring for anyone.

Star Wars is not the story of the selfless Jedi heroes, it’s an ode to the power of love. Anakin fell due to possessive attachment; it was a compassionate attachment that redeemed him. Kylo was possessive towards Rey, too (he literally kidnapped and kept her bound at first); by the third movie he had become compassionate towards her, to the point of giving her his life force, which was what redeemed him also. Both had been taken away from home and told to suppress their emotions at age ten, before their personalities were fully formed, contrarily to Leia and Luke who both were adults, and also contrarily to the Jedi of old, who joined the order in infancy. No wonder that in both cases, the result was a stunted emotional development which pushed both of them over the edge in a moment when they felt so isolated and terrified that turning to their Dark Side manipulator seemed to be the only way out. The Jedi’s first duty ought to give people spiritual strength; as a priest order, they ought to teach people to put their trust in the Force. Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo both fell to their darkest instincts when they lost faith in the people they had most trusted.

Darth Vader redeemed himself sacrificing himself for the sake of his son. His sacrifice was not the act of a Jedi, nor of a Sith; it was the choice of a father. Luke, too, died to save his sister and the Resistance. His nephew died to save the girl he loved. No Jedi - Yoda, Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, you name them - ever considered dying themselves in order to save either 1 or 1000 persons, whether they cared for them or not. They would have sacrificed anyone but themselves, and ironically, not even out of self-preservation or fear. Raised from earliest childhood not to love anyone and not to have any possessions or lives outside the temple, the Jedi clung to their „values” and would literally sacrifice everything to make them survive because they had nothing else. – Yes, I am aware that Obi-Wan was killed by Darth Vader on the Death Star, but that was not a sacrifice on his side: Darth Vader was not threatening Han, Luke and Leia at that point, he only was after his revenge towards him. And Obi-Wan staged his death so that Luke saw it. Luke started to hate the guy who had killed his mentor, which led to his confrontation with Vader on Bespine that cost him his right hand and to a terrible shock with the revelation that the man he hated was actually his own father. So no, don’t tell me that Obi-Wan sacrificed himself to save someone, he was being manipulative.

This is not to say that Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu etc. were bad people; there is a difference between bad intentions and bad attitude, and that the saga is so full of grey zones is one of the facts that makes it so compelling. I am sure the Jedi did not actively want anyone to suffer or die, nor were they after power like Palpatine, or wealth like Jabba and other crime lords. But the rule of non-attachment had made them uncaring either this way or the other. Anakin, who had been raised by his mother to be compassionate, is seen as an inferior creature who needs to be reined in both by Jedi and their fans, despite the fact that he is the strongest of all of them. None of them seems to consider that his compassionate nature actually was his strength, not a weakness.

Ultimately, the story of the Jedi is one of failure. That they chose to live without attachments may or may not have been right, but in the end, facts show that it didn’t save them or anyone else, on the contrary. Except for Yoda (the irony) who dies of old age in his own bed, all Jedi we know die a violent death; and they cause or cannot stop the death and suffering of millions of people throughout the galaxy. Their non-attachment may or not have been the ultimate cause of their downfall and its consequences, but it certainly didn’t help.

That a „true hero” and a „real man” ought to be tough and detached is only a cliché. It’s very far from the family story, based upon compassion and belonging, which the Star Wars saga actually tells. It was bad enough as long as I only was in contact with fans who value coolness above everything in a hero and find all sorts of stuff to criticize within the saga as soon as there is one glimpse of emotion showing; but this idea that “no attachments” is a great thing because it gives you the right to decide whom you are allowed to kill is not only annoying, it’s downright dangerous.

This is not to criticize someone’s personal life choices. If someone wants to be a person who dedicates his life entirely to others (or admires people who do, or seem to do so), and if for that reason comes to the conclusion that living without attachments is the right thing, fine. But I find it disturbing to assume that a person’s life choice of choosing not to care about their fellowmen gives someone the right to decide who is worthy of living, and who isn’t. Star Wars tells the story of one man who fell due to possessive attachment; also, how he fell after he had resisted the Dark Side many times. By contrast, the saga tells of many instances where someone does not fall to the Dark Side due to attachments but on the contrary, is saved by them. Star Wars never wanted to convey the message that emotional detachment is a virtue and gives a person the right to choose whom to kill and whom to let live, whether they’re Jedi or not.

The two remaining Jedi after the rise of the Empire waited until Luke would be grown enough to do the dirty work for them. Obi-Wan let himself be killed by Darth Vader before Luke’s eyes knowing that this would trigger the young man’s loathing against the guy who killed his mentor. His „sacrifice” was the set-up to push his naïve pupil to commit patricide. Although Obi-Wan and Yoda showed a lot of cruelty in both trilogies, interestingly they both have no redemption arc; even Luke has one in the sequels. This is not because they didn’t need it, but because they never showed the compassion that would have been necessary for them to make their sins forgivable.

Jedi are allegedly strong believers, yet they believe in anything but love. The entire Skywalker saga is about love; the family tragedy was ended by three men being willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of another (all three generations of Skywalker men did, and Han Solo did, too). The concept that attachments are toxic and are therefore to be avoided at all costs is exactly what cost the Jedi their existence on the long run; and admiring it blindly is a slap in the face of everything the entire saga has wanted to convey for entire decades. The Jedi may be wise in the theories of the Force, but their whole behavior and what follows from it shows that they are rotten at practice. They did not deserve to be wiped out. Their mentality did.

„Sure, there are also larger themes like what makes someone a hero, what is friendship, and what makes people sacrifice themselves for something larger, but really, it’s about compassion, and loving people. It’s still... you know... basically [just] don’t kill people, and be compassionate,” Lucas said in an interview with Charlie Rose at the Chicago Ideas Festival 2014. „Love people. That’s basically all ‘Star Wars’ is.”

The Force Doesn't Need the Jedi, it Needs Balance

Anakin brought Balance to the Force not by destroying the Sith but by fathering the children who would bring hope to the galaxy again, years later, and he fathered them with a young woman he had loved from the first moment he saw her.

The Jedi were not in balance for centuries. Yoda perhaps taught non-attachment because being so old he saw many people die, so it was better (for him) not to get attached. Luke tried to emulate him and as a result the good, compassionate young idealist he once was in time also lost balance.

Luke’s greatest strength always was that he was not like the other Jedi but first and foremost himself. Obi-Wan all but killed Anakin, whom he had raised and who had repeatedly saved his life, and left him to a lifetime of torture because he believed it was the Jedi thing to do. It was not the good thing to do because it set the seal on the dark fate of the galaxy right when Padmé was about to convince her husband to go away with her. Luke forgiving Anakin although until then his father had done nothing for him, and, on the contrary, had terrorized him and his friends repeatedly, was not the Jedi thing but the right thing to do, and subsequently led to many years of peace.

The Skywalker family are not Jedi at heart, as the name says, they’re pilots. Becoming a Jedi made every one of them unhappy on the long run. When we first meet them, Anakin and Luke are good-hearted and idealistic; in old age both are alone, cynical, disillusioned. Rey’s choice of becoming a Jedi also made the brave, compassionate girl from Jakku haughty and convinced that she had a right to “win” no matter what. The three trilogies are called the Skywalker saga for a reason: it's about them, not about „The All-Wise Galaxy-Saving Jedi Superheroes”.

The Last Jedi strongly hinted at the topic of Balance, showing that both Sides (personified by Ben Solo and Rey) are unstoppable if they work together.

The Jedi’s greatest flaw was believing that they, and they alone, were the agents of the Force, and that consequently it was their right to decide what the Force wants. The saga has never told its viewers that the Force is some kind of superpower belonging solely to the Jedi, but that it is a living energy that has its own will. Luke’s first lesson to Rey in The Last Jedi is, „The Force does not belong to the Jedi.”

When we first met the Jedi, it was said that according to the prophecy the Chosen One would bring Balance, meaning that with the Jedi in charge, balance was not there. Interestingly, we never even hear them wonder what “balance” would actually mean. Despite all their „noble intentions” and their "sacrifices for the greater good", the Jedi in the end left the galaxy in the hands of the worst tyrant it had ever known.

Would this have happened if they really had done what the Force wants?

I’m leaving that to whoever reads this meta.