Why It's Finally Time For The Jedi Order To End

There are a few things that even people who are not familiar with the saga immediately associate with Star Wars: spaceships, blasters, lightsabers, and the Jedi.

“For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.”

Ben Kenobi’s words to Luke in A New Hope are undoubtedly true, at least from a certain point of view, but the Jedi Order was also a deeply flawed one, at least in the last decades of its existence.

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“I know only one truth: It is time for the Jedi to end!”

This sentence, uttered by Luke more than three decades later to a confused Rey, is the polar opposite of Kenobi’s proud but melancholic memory of the Jedi of old. But while Luke’s resignation was the result of all he had learned about the Jedi as well as his own failures, Kenobi didn’t seem to be ashamed of how the order had been instrumental to its own downfall.

Whether a person is a youngling or an old master, the life of a Jedi is not an easy one. It’s based on a strict code and rigid rules established over hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

One of these rules is for a Force-sensitive child to be trained, they have to be very young - usually not older than one standard year - so that it is unspoiled by its environment or life experiences. Basically, an empty vessel waiting to absorb lessons taught by the Jedi. Jedi Seeker’s traveled the galaxy to discover newborn children who were strong in the Force to take them away from their parents, ideally never to return again. While some families may have seen this as a blessing - a chance of a better life, taking children from their parents was still a drastic measure. On the other hand, these Seekers rejected children who were discovered too late, even when they were strong in the Force, leaving them alone with powers they could neither understand nor control. It took Qui-Gon Jinn a lot of persuading to have 9-year-old Anakin accepted into the order, despite his astronomically high midichlorian count.

Another strict rule of the Jedi code was the prohibition of attachment. Again, this rule is not bad per se, as Jedi should concentrate on the will of the Force, their training, and their mission. Still, it is also hypocritical to believe that someone whose prime mission in life is to serve and to help others could constantly be immune to becoming attached to someone. Unfortunately, the Jedi didn’t even seem to understand how to deal with attachment.

When Anakin visited Yoda in Revenge of The Sith to seek his advice on dealing with the fear of losing someone, Yoda answered by insisting on letting go of all attachments, as they would lead to his downfall. This is a slap in the face for Anakin, who kept his marriage secret and is now left alone with his anxieties.

A part of the problem was also that the Jedi code had not been challenged for centuries, as there simply was no big enough event that could have done so. This has made many members of the Order arrogant, unable, or unwilling to reflect on themselves and the changing situation around them. Palpatine’s rise to power was the result of his own genius but also that of the inability of the Jedi to sense the growing danger and the rising darkness. As a result, Sidious could carry out his machinations more or less unchecked, as the whole Jedi Order could not feel the presence of a Sith Lord in their midst. Mace Windu’s revelation “I sense a plot to destroy the Jedi” at a point in time when this plot should have been completely obvious was a clear testament of the failure of the order.

When the Jedi Order ended with Order 66, at least Yoda seemed to have learned from some of the mistakes the Jedi had made at the end, but even he refused to train Luke at first, calling him too old. Even worse, despite his experiences, Obi-Wan seemed to be completely stuck in the old ways. When Luke told him that he wanted to bring Vader back to the light side and would not kill him, the old Master answered with “Then the Emperor has already won," still not believing that attachment could be a way to bring balance to the Force.

After the Battle of Endor, Luke started to train Leia, but she gave up on it when she saw a vision of her then-unborn son would die if she became a Jedi. After that, Luke was reluctant to take on another apprentice. Instead, he started to travel the galaxy to find Jedi Temples and artifacts. This way, he learned about the Jedi of the Old Republic, their code, and their failures, but also how different Ezra Bridger’s training by Kanan Jarrus was from that of the Jedi that had come before them. Luke continued these travels even after taking on his sister’s son as an apprentice. After that, he slowly started to build up a Jedi academy with roughly a dozen students, but so far, little is known about how Luke’s training was different from that of the Jedi of the Old Republic and maybe even his own. Only the end is clear.

Lucasfilm currently has no plans to continue the saga after The Rise of Skywalker, so there is no telling if Rey will build a new Jedi Order. Still, like Luke, her knowledge of the Force and the Jedi history is primarily based on books, her own instincts, and maybe some guidance by Force-ghost Luke.

But there is a certainty that the Force won’t leave the galaxy, Force-sensitive children will be born, and they will need guidance in one way or another to not succumb to the dark side. Right now, a Star Wars galaxy without Jedi feels hard to imagine. Still, both from an in-universe and an out-of-universe perspective of authors and filmmakers, it would be wrong to just repeat the exact same ways of the past and hope to get a different result.

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Written by Gerald Petschk

Source(s): CBR

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