by William Moon

The Jedi have to go. Both for real-world reasons (their mystique is long gone, mired in a morass of vaguely defined mythology) and for in-universe ones (one of them inevitably turns evil and starts blowing up planets). I’m not advocating for a Sith takeover either. They only seem to exist in the form of evil former Jedi, so if the Jedi go, the Sith go with them. And they should go. They need to go. Whatever future Star Wars has, it should eventually get to a place where the Jedi/Sith duality is a thing of the past.

This is a franchise that’s always had a strong populist appeal, so it’s strange that it narrowed its focus so much over time to Force-attuned characters, with the entirety of the nine-film main saga essentially being the adventures of Skywalkers, Palpatines, and a Kenobi. All of that mucking about with the Force saw two Skywalkers go dark and then “redeem” themselves, at least in the eyes of the audience and one other Force-wielding character. What we didn’t see was any kind of reckoning for those characters’ actions while serving as Sith lords. Vader and Ren enabled the complete destruction of Alderaan in A New Hope and the entire Hosnian system in The Force Awakens respectively, but they helped Luke and Rey defeat one guy (the same guy actually) in the end so it’s fine apparently.

In universe, it’s vague how much the regular people even know about the Force. Han Solo is doubtful it even exists in A New Hope, and then later in The Force Awakens he has to confirm to Rey and Finn that the rumors about the Jedi and the Sith are true. It’s a big galaxy, obviously, so even though death lasers can travel from one star system to another within seconds (and not years), the trials and tribulations of Jedi knights and Sith lords aren’t common knowledge among the rank-and-file plebs. But you’d think at least some of the ruling class would know. Many of them have had direct dealings with Jedi, Sith, or both. And not to be a cynic, but you’d think some of them would’ve considered executing an Order 66 of their own if it meant they didn’t have these random superpowered characters running around anymore.

Now that’s not the path I want the franchise to go down. It’s merely an observation that would make a kind of grim, logical sense in this universe. What I really want them to do is hearken back to one of the better concepts from the prequel trilogy – bringing balance to the Force. You get some vague hints of that idea in the sequel trilogy, but that series was so scattershot that nothing that was introduced in any of the films was followed up on satisfactorily. Among the many universe-altering concepts introduced in the divisive The Last Jedi were Luke’s fatalistic idea that the Jedi should end and a nod to opening up the story to have more Force-sensitive characters than the ones at the core of the saga (best symbolized by the little kid in Canto Bight at the end). Other aspects of that movie were less well thought out, and then the subsequent film basically jettisoned everything just so it could go back to cosplaying the original trilogy some more.

But what does balance mean in this context? The prophecy Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Yoda/etc. talk about in the prequels says the Chosen One will bring balance by defeating the Sith, which sounds less like balance and more like the Jedi winning. After the events of Revenge of the Sith, it’s largely implied that while they were wrong about Anakin, really it was his children that would bring balance (but not before a whole buttload of people died). And while we didn’t know it at the time, this would be creator George Lucas’ exit from the main saga. (For the record, he’s stated in interviews that Anakin did bring balance by taking out Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi and sacrificing himself in the process. But he’s been vague about whether Anakin was the only Chosen One or not, as he’s also implied that Luke and Leia have roles as Chosen Ones. He’s also mentioned that balance means the light side keeping the dark side in check, which again just sounds like the Jedi winning.)

Disney and JJ Abrams were content to ape the original trilogy and distance themselves from the prequels when The Force Awakens rolled around in 2015, and the concept of balance isn’t directly explored. But clearly the offscreen events between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens would suggest Anakin, Luke, and Leia didn’t bring balance to the Force at all. You could argue the groaner of a reveal that Rey is a secret Palpatine means she brings balance by defeating her evil, overacting grandfather at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, but is this balance? Is there any real sense that the audience (or more importantly the wider Star Wars universe) should expect her attempt to re-establish the Jedi will go any better than Luke’s did? And, again, we’ve now been through another civil war that’s cost countless more lives just so we can once more reset the Force back to “idealistic Jedi refuses to learn from history”.

Rey’s status as a possible Chosen One is debated as well, and the return (somehow) of Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker feels like even more confirmation that the Force wasn’t balanced, though in the same movie Anakin’s spirit straight up says he brought balance and Rey needs to restore it. J.J. Abrams has said offscreen that the Force will always need to be balanced from time to time, which, if true, makes the whole Chosen One prophecy super weak. This is an ancient prophecy passed down through the centuries, and then one guy fulfills it, but we need another, un-prophesied person to do essentially the same thing again 30 years later? How is what Anakin/Luke did any different than any other time the Jedi temporarily defeated the Sith? That’s all these victories ever are – temporary.

In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan rather hilariously says, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” as he recognizes Anakin’s dark turn, but of course the Jedi deal in absolutes all the time. While the dialogue in the prequels is rightly criticized, I don’t think Lucas was oblivious to the irony of this line. (It can be hard to tell with him, though.) Still, a better story would more fully explore the problems with the Jedi – how they create their own enemies with their vaguely restrictive belief system, how distant and dismissive they come off regarding non-Force-sensitive people, and the cognitive dissonance they so often display when judging the Sith without examining themselves. The movies run right up to the edge of doing this, but then wind up just restarting the Jedi Order once again, warts and all. For Anakin or Luke or Rey to really bring balance to the Force, the whole duality of the light side and dark side would have to go away completely.

Anakin’s turn back to the light in Return of the Jedi proved that going dark isn’t permanent, and then because Star Wars loves to repeat itself, that plot point comes up again with Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker. But go further with it. Show us characters that don’t ascribe to the light and dark sides at all. Show us the smuggler/bounty hunter/Western movie archetypes the franchise loves, but one of them uses the Force. Show us a big city con artist or a local lawman or a planetary despot or anything besides “space monk” and “mass-murdering megalomaniac”. And show us a world where being angry isn’t always seen as a bad thing, the path to the dark side or whatever.

One of the reasons the best Disney-era movie is Rogue One is the way it pulls back from the franchise’s usual suspects and offers a different focus. We have a Force acolyte, but he’s not a Jedi or a Sith and doesn’t have actual Force-granted abilities. And we have a whole bunch of other people just trying to do the right thing in a galaxy overrun by fascist monsters. And there’s real, legitimate anger boiling under the surface of some of these characters, the kind of anger one should feel when living under the jackboot of a brutal dictator. The Rebel Alliance wasn’t formed because a bunch of religious ascetics meditated it into existence. It was formed by the righteous fury of oppressed people across the galaxy, who then entered into a series of uneasy alliances because they had no other path to victory. And for the first time perhaps in the franchise’s history, you see things through the eyes of mostly ordinary people who are forced to do extraordinary things. The success of the prequel series Andor reflects this narrative decision.

I’m not saying just give us a bunch more Rogue One spinoffs, but take this same approach to push the saga forward. I know they’ve announced a Rey movie, so it’s likely they’ll try to just play the hits again. But there’s still room to push the concepts of the Force and balance forward using her. It was sitting right there in Episode IX, and they only half-pulled the trigger. The people of the Star Wars universe should be well and truly sick of the Jedi by now, and I agree with them. And narratively, once you break away from light and dark, there’s room for so much color.