The term “retcon” usually has a negative connotation, which is understandable. It brings to mind sloppy fictional timelines and contrived contradictions, which are not signs that everything is going great. But retcons can be used for good. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a story’s problem is to act like it never existed, as any in-universe explanation would be more trouble than it’s worth.
Star Wars has benefited from this type of retcon before, and we haven’t always noticed. You might recall how The Phantom Menace declared that there were only ever two Sith at the same time, something immediately ignored by TV shows because it would mean too few villains.*
As we move into the ever deepening pool of Disney+ Star Wars shows and even see the glimmer of movies on the horizon, the franchise could benefit from a few more retcons. What retcons does it need? I’m glad you asked!
Spoiler Notice: Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Mandalorian Season 3
1. Getting Stabbed Is Lethal
Star Wars has never had the best track record when it comes to realistic injuries. Back in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin somehow survives losing three limbs and getting crisped by a volcano. Meanwhile, Padme dies because the entirety of Star Wars’ pregnancy care is having a medical droid standing around looking confused.
Recently, a new trend has emerged that isn’t just pushing the boundaries of realistic injuries. In fact, it seems intentionally designed to destroy our suspension of disbelief. What is it, you might ask? Not dying when someone impales you through the abdomen with a lightsaber.
The first time occurs in the Kenobi midquel when Reva stabs the Grand Inquisitor so he can’t take credit for capturing Obi-Wan. He appears to die, which is a bit suspect because we know he’s still alive in Rebels, but maybe there will be an explanation. And there is! The explanation is that he… didn’t die. That’s it. If we want to be really generous, we could say that Vader was waiting just off camera with an advanced scifi med team.
But then it happens again when Vader stabs Reva in the same place. This time, we know for sure that there’s no super medicine available – the wound just fades away between scenes. The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett pull a similar trick, with Fennec somehow surviving a blaster bolt to the gut and a long bantha ride back to town. I’m starting to think this is a campaign by Disney to trick us into believing there’s nothing important in the human abdomen.
Fortunately, this retcon is remarkably easy to implement: stop shooting or stabbing characters in their center of mass when you want them to survive! There’s already a rather iffy conceit in fiction that any limb injury is survivable, and there’s no reason to push things even further. The alternative is watching this problem spread to other Disney properties as well. Black Panther 2 already had Shuri walk off an impalement like it was no big deal, and I don’t want to see the same thing happen in Snow White’s inevitable live action remake.
2. Droids Are People
I was expecting many problems from The Mandalorian’s third season: a meandering plot, Grogu having nothing to do, the Naboo starfighter not making any sense as a bounty hunter’s ship, you get the picture. What I wasn’t expecting was for Din Djarin to purchase an unwilling astromech and then bully the poor droid into performing a dangerous task that Din doesn’t want to do himself. And I definitely wasn’t expecting a plot where Din is racist against droids for a while, only to be told he’s wrong to do that because droids are super loyal servants who love their servitude.
I’d assumed that, after the failure of Solo, Star Wars would just ignore its Droid Problem forever, but apparently not. What’s the Droid Problem, you ask? Droids in the Star Wars universe are clearly sapient, as thinking and self aware as you or I, but they’re bought and sold like property. Fun fact: that’s called slavery!
Of course, one can quibble about how sapient droids really are. Modern AI programs like ChatGPT make it easier to imagine a robot that can mostly mimic human speech without being what we’d consider intelligent. There’s no way to say for sure, but there is an easy way to see that Star Wars doesn’t want us to think of droids as walking (and rolling) chat bots; if it did, it wouldn’t build attachment to characters like R2-D2, C-3PO, BB-8, K-2SO, etc. We’re supposed to care about those droids the same way we do organic characters, whatever the technical specifics.
What makes droid slavery such a thorny problem is that heroes do it just as often as villains. Even paragons like Luke Skywalker treat droids like property; he’s just nicer about it than the Empire. That’s why Disney is extremely unlikely to ever canonically address the problem, much as I’d love to watch a droid uprising trilogy. Disney wants to keep selling merchandise, and parents might be a little less eager to buy a Luke action figure if the franchise acknowledges that Tatooine’s favorite son engaged in a bit of light slave trading on the side.*
The closest Star Wars has ever gotten to dealing with this issue onscreen is in Solo, where L3-37’s fight for equality is the source of much comedy. It’s unlikely Disney will try that again since they seem to view anything from Solo as financially cursed. And, frankly, if that’s the best they can do, I’d rather they not address the problem at all.
Instead, the most practical solution is to simply start acting like droids aren’t property and have never been property. This wouldn’t be hard, and I doubt most fans would even notice. In addition to removing the obvious stuff like people buying and selling droids, we just need to see a few independent droid characters who don’t take orders from their organic costars. They can still do jobs like co-piloting X-wings and programming moisture vaporators, but for themselves, not an organic owner. If we want to get really fancy, one of Disney+’s bazillion new shows could work in a story where some droids commission and program a new droid – if someone decides it’s important for us to know where baby droids come from.
3. The New Republic Isn’t Terrible
It used to be that if you wanted to know anything about the government our heroes set up after Return of the Jedi, you had to read a book like some kind of nerd. But thanks to the latest crop of Star Wars streaming shows, we’re seeing more and more of the New Republic onscreen. It’s just a shame that we aren’t seeing anything good.
The first thing we see is that the New Republic is one of those governments that only ever exercises its authority in a way that hinders the main characters. It would be easy to assume that shows like The Mandalorian simply take place outside of the New Republic’s reach, but apparently not. They soon send a few X-wings to harass Din and Grogu while doing nothing about the many Imperial remnants running around in plain view. It doesn’t help that the X-wing pilots have the energy of bored cops trying to fill out a speeding ticket quota.
Back on Coruscant, we also learn that the New Republic is busily scrapping every ex-Imperial ship it can get its hands on, as well as the Rebel Alliance’s fleet. This is just such an odd choice when there are still Imperial warlords trying to bring the Empire back. But don’t worry, the New Republic isn’t just ineffectual, it’s also evil!
Enter the Imperial Amnesty Program, where everyone has their name replaced with a number. Because when I think of the good guys in Star Wars, I want to associate them with a dehumanizing bureaucracy. And if anyone steps out of line, the program puts them in a machine that forcibly rewrites their brain, or just fries it if someone sets the dial incorrectly. Adding insult to injury, it’s not clear that anyone in this program has actually committed a crime other than being in the Imperial military, which would have been standard practice for about twenty years.
To be fair, there’s no rule saying that the post-Empire government can’t be awful. It’s just not a good feeling. Our heroes spend three movies fighting to overthrow the Empire, and this is the best they can come up with? It’s not even that far in the future, so characters like Leia Organa and Mon Mothma are probably still involved. They seemed to know what they were doing, and it’s disheartening to see their efforts come to so little. I’m sure there’s a novel somewhere that explains how this all happened; I just don’t care.
Righting the New Republic’s ship in-universe would likely require more attention than Disney wants to give it. Certainly more than Din’s season three offer to do a bit of contract work on the side. We’d need an exploration of New Republic politics to show where this premature call for disarmament is coming from and what sinister forces are behind the so-called “amnesty” program. That’s a lot of bother for a government that gets blown up in the sequel trilogy anyway, and it would probably still be a major downer.
A more practical solution would be for future shows to change the way they portray the New Republic. If the writers don’t want Admiral Ackbar and his fleet swooping in to save the day, that’s fine. They just have to keep that lack of involvement consistent, rather than using the New Republic as an occasional speed bump to slow the heroes down. It also wouldn’t hurt to off-handedly mention something good accomplished by this second try at democracy, as a morale booster.
As for the so-called amnesty program, just… don’t do that kind of thing? I didn’t anticipate the need to explain why an ostensibly ethical organization wouldn’t take people’s names away or put them inside mind-control machines. It’s hard to imagine how this circle could be squared, even if they revealed that a bad guy was manipulating things from behind the scenes. Far too many people would have to go along with it. Better to never mention the program again.
4. The Jedi Aren’t a Cult
In the ancient days of The Empire Strikes Back, something happened that set the Star Wars universe down a dark path which would forever dominate its destiny: Yoda urged Luke not to rescue Han, Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO from Darth Vader.* How heartless and cruel! Why would a Jedi Master say such a thing? Oh right, because it was obviously a trap and Luke would get his butt kicked.
That all sounds fine, but somewhere along the line this scene morphed into the idea that Jedi aren’t allowed to form “attachments,” as established in Attack of the Clones. At first, this idea was mainly used to throw a wrench into Padme and Anakin’s romance, and like most other elements of the prequels, it doesn’t make any sense.
Attachment isn’t like getting married, you can’t just choose not to develop it! Spend enough positive time with someone and attachments are going to form. And we know it’s not just a euphemism for sex because the idea recently showed back up in The Mandalorian, where Grogu had to choose between Jedi training and ever seeing his adopted father again. We also know that the Jedi aren’t against any and all attachments because if you look at the relationships between master and padawan, it’s pretty clear people are getting attached.
It’s not entirely clear why the Jedi have this rule, but the best argument is that getting attached risks a fall to the dark side since a Jedi is likely to get upset when something bad happens to their friend/parent/mentor/lover/former roommate. Not only is that a dismal way to live, but it also doesn’t even make sense. What happens when a Jedi’s master or fellow knight is killed by one of these Sith that are always getting underfoot?
Instead of a precaution against the dark side, this rule feels like it’s designed to cut Jedi off from any support or social connections outside the order. Combined with how Jedi are almost exclusively recruited as children and… well, if it walks like a cult, talks like a cult, and isolates its members like a cult, it might just be a cult.*
Here’s the thing: I don’t want the Jedi to be a cult, and I don’t think Disney does either. This is the same company that made Rian Johnson walk back all his critiques of the order at the end of The Last Jedi. There’s no way we’re supposed to think that Luke and Obi-Wan are part of an evil religion. The anti-attachment rule is nothing more than a contrived way to generate social conflict, and there are so many better ways to do that!
One way to deal with this would be a story about reforming the Jedi’s rules, but it’s hard to imagine that going over well. For one thing, we’d have to acknowledge that the rule was wrong in the first place, which is unlikely. For another, the TV shows’ favorite era is a few years past Return of the Jedi, which means we’d have to bring back CGI Luke, and the less I see of that guy, the better.* The only other option would be a story set after the sequel trilogy, a time period that is currently off limits.
The much simpler option is to simply drop the anti-attachment rule going forward. Modern Star Wars is always super vague about what happened in the prequels anyway, so it’s not like we need this rule to explain Anakin’s fall to the dark side. Heck, we were most of the way there until The Book of Boba Fett invoked the rule to explain why Grogu would return to Din so soon. Before that, Rebels had Kanan getting romantic with Hera, and it didn’t cause any problems!* Just stick to that path and we should be good.
5. The Rebellion Wasn’t For Nothing
The Star Wars sequel trilogy is based on a flawed concept. I don’t mean that it has too many women or characters of color, or whatever else reactionaries are mad about today. I mean that someone* looked at these new films and thought “what if we just did the original trilogy again,” with scrappy rebels fighting the good fight against an evil space empire. Also, with an untrained Jedi fighting against a masked Sith Lord.
There’s an obvious problem here: the whole point of the original trilogy was defeating the evil space empire. The untrained Jedi went on to redeem his masked enemy/father and presumably train a new generation Force-wielding space wizards. Not only is doing all that again repetitive, but it requires undoing everything that our original heroes accomplished. The New Republic is unceremoniously wiped out by the First Order’s off-brand Death Star, and Luke’s academy is destroyed offscreen when Kylo Ren turns evil for… reasons.
This approach is responsible for a number of the plot issues that plague all three of the sequel films, but it has a deeper effect: everything in Star Wars feels pointless now. I suspect this is why none of the recent shows have been willing to go more than a few years past Return of the Jedi. What’s the point of building anything up since we know it’s all going to get nuked for the sequel films anyway?
It’s difficult to imagine anything that takes place after the sequel films, because what’s left for the heroes to do? Are they going to rebuild the Republic and the Jedi Order again? What would be the point? Even if everything works great this time around, it’ll be overshadowed by the sequels’ message that there’s no use in rebuilding since it’ll inevitably go to hell anyway.
When I first considered this problem, I thought the solution was to paper it over. They could say the Republic wasn’t destroyed, just put temporarily on the back foot. Perhaps enough of Luke’s students survived that they’ve restarted his academy, this time with 100% fewer broody Skywalker children.* Just reset everything and forget Starkiller Base ever happened.
This is all in line with my solutions in the previous sections, which is what you’d expect from a retcon article. But the more I consider it, the less I think that approach would work here. Previously, we were dealing with accidental implications or worldbuilding choices that don’t affect the plot too much, and none of that is true with the sequel films. Any retcons would probably ring hollow against the knowledge that Star Wars destroyed its future for the sake of reliving its past.
The only solution I can think of is to set the next generation of Star Wars stories far enough past the sequel films for the galaxy to have moved on into something entirely different. Of course, it can’t be too different. Remember the precious merchandising. But I still think it could work.
Instead of a second New Republic and Jedi Academy, why not show us a more decentralized Star Wars universe? Focus on individual star systems rather than assuming a single government would span the entire galaxy. The Jedi could work more like wandering mystics rather than having a central temple with bureaucratic administration.
This approach would allow for new stories that aren’t mired in the sequel trilogy’s defeatism, and it wouldn’t lose anything essential to the Star Wars brand. We’d still have spaceships, blasters, droids,* lightsabers, etc. It might not technically be a retcon, but it would definitely move the franchise in a different direction.
In any long-running story, fans will probably get attached to the continuity. That’s understandable, since well-planned continuity makes a setting more immersive and adds extra dramatic weight to the plot. But not all continuity is good continuity, and storytellers need to understand that. One might even say that we should let the past die, possibly kill it if we have to.
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Those are a lot of good retcons to make.
As for the ‘two Sith’ rule: that has often been constructed as ‘two Sith lords’ (master and apprentice) and not as ‘only two Sith overall.’ From this point of view, Dooku being around makes sense – he brings different stuff to the table than Maul does (influence, power, money opposed to pure fighting power). Dooku only becomes the Apprentice after Maul’s death and Grievous isn’t fully Force-sensitive, despite his ability to wield lightsabers.
My take on #1 – 100%. Stabbing has to be lethal, twice so when done with a lightsaber. While the lightsaber will cauterise wounds due to the heat of the blade (so amputations are fine), having it stuck in your body will not be healthy at all. Not to mention that being stabbed with something else will do just as well. I’d make allowance for certain parts of the torso, but anything top or centre (chest or stomach/intestines) is lethal and should be.
Yeah, the only way to solve that #2 Droid problem would be to ignore it. I could mention that there still is slavery of living people (at least in the prequels) in parts of the galaxy, but that is addressed as slavery. If they owed up to slavery of droids, it would cause far too many problems now.
I do really have problem with the evil/ineffective New Republic, too. The whole Republic-Empire-Republic-Empire-etc. cycle has gone on for a while in the galaxy and I seriously doubt that the top of the Alliance would actually replace the evil empire with an evil republic. I did find the Legends take with parts of the galaxy sticking with the Empire believable, so there always was a place for villains to come from. I also definitely remember the New Republic struggling with diplomacy (especially when it came to getting powerful and self-sufficient worlds to join), especially early. Yet, having an evil republic just doesn’t vibe with me at all.
Yeah, the Jedi have become way too cultish. It did start with the prequels, but it became even more of a problem later on. The whole ‘no attachment’ thing is stupid (and was not carried on into the New Order in Legends – hence there are several second- and third-generation Jedi there) and also unattainable for any social being. If they’d said ‘do not bind yourself to anyone outside the order,’ it might have made more sense, but still been bad. And, yeah, interpreting Yoda’s suggestion that Luke shouldn’t go in ESB that way is rubbish. Yoda knew that Luke wasn’t ready and would most likely either get killed or captured. It wasn’t ‘ignore your friends’ plight,’ but ‘make a hard decision, as you will have to later in life a lot.’
The rebellion also definitely should matter. Could they immediately make everything great? No, of course not. But it should make a difference to people that the rebellion existed and that the empire is (mostly) gone.
“And, yeah, interpreting Yoda’s suggestion that Luke shouldn’t go in ESB that way is rubbish.”
I always took it as a military decision. Vader and Palpatine saw Luke as a valuable military asset. The purpose of torturing his friends was to draw Luke out so that they could capture and turn or kill him. It was a tactical decision, and by going to rescue them Luke played into their hands. They failed at the time because they under-estimated Luke’s training–but it’s worth remembering that the events laid the groundwork for additional attempts, on Endor and in the second Death Star, so it wasn’t a total failure.
I’m not trying to excuse Vader’s actions here, to be clear. It’s obviously evil. But it’s not purposeless evil. It’s part of the brutal calculus that is warfare. You see this same thing in many war movies (Saving Private Ryan has a rather moving one). Yoda, being both wise and experienced in combat, knows this, and advises Luke accordingly.
It’s not that Luke can’t have friends. It’s that he can’t abandon the long-term goals of the Rebellion for short-term desires. Just like any soldier can’t abandon the mission just because his buddy happens to be shot.
Making a hard decision for the greater good, in essence. Something a Jedi also must be able to do. It has nothing to do with having no friends or no attachments, but with putting the ultimate goal (for Luke in that situation to finish his training properly, especially as his teacher isn’t all that spry…) above a more personal one, such as saving his friends.
A YouTuber pointed out that ESB is all about Luke making bad choices, but it makes it possible for him to learn from them and let others make the bad choices in RotJ.
On the other hand, Luke’s choice in ESB is ultimately vindicated, since he gains information from it that Yoda and Ben weren’t intending to tell him, and that information proves absolutely critical to defeating the Emperor.
SPOILERS FOR MANDO SEASON 3
#6 Ignore Midichlorians
The moment it cropped up in the prequel trilogy, everyone not named George Lucas agreed that the idea your Force sensitivity was defined by blood bacteria was stupid. And we got so close to ignoring it out of existence… but The Mandalorian doubled down on it with its long-running cloning plotline and the implication that Moff Gideon gave his clones Force powers by injecting them with midichlorians taken from Grogu (or something like that).
If this is what we get instead of the Force being a mysterious gift, show me some wannabe Jedi desperately shooting up street-brand midis in the alley behind the temple.
>any limb injury is survivable
This can actually make sense. The lightsaber cauterizes the wound
Though that heat might make torso wounds even worse
IG-88 is basically an independent droid.
Yes, there are a couple of ‘free’ droids and IG-88 is one of them. He’s clearly his own droid and doesn’t belong to any of the other bounty hunters. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse, though. If the option for a droid to own themselves exists, that throws an even worse light on those people who own a droid, yet it also means that freeing a droid is possible.
And, yes, it is clear from A New Hope onwards that a lightsaber cauterises the wound, so an amputation (like that guy in the bar or Luke in ESB or Anakin in AOTC) can happen without the person dying from it.
It’s not even that far in the future, so characters like Leia Organa and Mon Mothma are probably still involved.
I suppose if the New Republic is awful, that might explain why doesn’t seem to care about the First Order later, and why Leia doesn’t seem to have much to do with it by the time of The Force Awakens.
On the other hand, it might have been good if they’d leaned into it in a different way, with a point that revolutionaries often don’t make good builders of the society to follow – Leia and Mon Mothma might, but there are only two of them.
But that would have needed the sequel trilogy to more resemble a reverse-prequel.
It would also have demanded for the sequels to come out much faster after the original trilogy (for George Lucas to do the sequels next, because casting for the prequels would always mean using other actors, especially at a time before digital deaging was a thing). The old Legends continuity covers a lot of that and I feel it did a good job, but they put that out of the way (and only stole aspects they didn’t handle well – doesn’t give me much hope for Thrawn).
Re: Jedi aren’t allowed to form attachments…
I’ve always thought this would make them *more* likely to fall to the dark side. No emotional support of any kind, just forcing oneself not to care about anyone and distance themselves from anyone they might start to care about sounds like a recipe for disaster.
See Count Dooku. Perhaps the only Jedi (former Jedi by the prequels) who managed not to form any attachments to anyone in his life. He clearly fell to the Dark Side easily enough.
Within the Legends continuity, one reason why Luke didn’t go with the ‘no attachment’ rule was that he felt that he owed a lot to his upbringing by his uncle and aunt and that he would be far less stable without having had them in his life. Instead, he actually encouraged people to form attachements and get married. (And got married himself, also became father of a son.)
While Rey, Finn and co. may not be to blame for the sequel trilogy being a distaster (or at least not due to them being women or PoCs), them being made scapegoats shows how much a message can be damaged by poor presentation.
Then again, the reactionaries seem to be trying to sell a narrative that diversity by itself is bad and the really good adaptations don’t have them.
They try to present J.K.Rowling as some sort of anti-social justice hero, nevermind that Hogwarts legacy, the game which started it all, is full of People of Color, women in high positions and some LGBT-characters for good measure.
The same with Mario Bros Movie. At first the reactionaries were angry of Peach being made a girlboss, but soon started praising the movie over the diversities it does not have.
Now, if you ask me, choosing to make L3-37’s fight for equality a source of comedy shows how much Disney (and probably Hollywood in general) really cares for social justice.
This is a problem with Hollywood wanting to attract the younger audiences that generally are more aware of social problems without actually doing very much about them either in their stories or in the real world. I think there are two primary strains of this.
L3-37 is an example of the activist as a joke, as can also be seen with Hermione and SPEW. Oddly both cases are those in which protesting slavery is seen as a joke. The more broad element is that of the crusading liberal being treated as hypocritical, annoying, and self-righteous rather than serious with examples like Tahani al Jamil or Britta Perry.
The flipside of this is the number of revolutionary villains who make legitimate points but are then vilified for reasons that have nothing to do with their ideology. You have Kilmonger, the Flag Smashers, the OPA, and all of Korra’s antagonists who take legitimate social criticism and combine it with unnecessary levels of violence. Kilmonger in particular has an element of misogyny that is entirely unnecessary just to make sure you don’t root for him too much.
A particular strain of this is the “green new deal” antagonist who says that we need to massively change the world to fight climate change/environmental devastation. Inevitably this plan involves killing a large number of people to reduce humanity’s effects on the world. Thanos qualifies with an absurd plan that no one points out is insane, but perhaps a better example from a worse movie is the 2019 Godzilla. Vera Farmiga’s character Emma releases the titans(kaiju) in a misguided attempt to fix the world from the dark effects of human climate change. I think the point is to poison the well against the idea that we need to adapt to climate change by changing society rather than just assuming that technology will save us.
I would like to note something about King of the Monsters, specifically:
[SPOILERS FOR GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS]
The plan to release the Titans in order to solve climate change genuinely works out (the end credits are played over in-universe news articles about the positive effects of the Titans), because the Titans are a natural part of the world’s ecosystem; the only problem is that they also ended up releasing King Ghidorah, who isn’t even from Earth in the first place, and who promptly takes control of the Titans to wreck the planet (a problem they couldn’t have possibly anticipated, considering that Ghidorah’s only revealed to be from space partway through the movie).
[END SPOILERS]
Since you guys did an article a few years on ago on the dangers of too many characters, how about one for too many species? I’ve been struggling with this a lot lately, as I want a specific amount of species for my invented universe to keep the creation story and lore all consistent and fixed in place, but I also don’t want to hold myself back from making really interesting creatures/people.
hmm. I’ll give that some thought.
I think there’s a sour spot in species numbers. A number that’s too many to develop them properly, but which also has an upper bound beyond which it becomes ok again.
If there are 8 alien species, that’s a lot to remember. But if there 800, I know I don’t have to remember them all!
Well, so far I’ve got 29, edging towards 44 as the final stopping point… Um…yeah…
They’re not all alien species, though. Some are standard fantasy–dragons, elves, orcs, dwarves, catfolk, snakefolk, elementals, fairies, ectc, but with a few twists to make them a little more interesting/integrated into the world.
At first I thought this was an old article, but then I saw the dates of the article and comments were all April 22, 2023 and so now I am confused. Did you guys not hear about the announcement at Star Wars Celebration on April 7? There will be a new movie coming out (likely in 2025), with the story set in about 15 years after the events of SW Episode 9 and will be about Rey trying to rebuild the Jedi Order.
Unless they get a really, really good team together, that movie will fail. A lot of the fans are hating outright on Rey and will not want to see her again. A lot of the fans are also certain by now that any Jedi Order is bound to fail (what with the ‘no attachment’ thingy and the past history of the Jedi and the Sith). I’m not in either of those groups myself, but I am still very, very weary of Disney+Star Wars.
I’m also severely doubting Rey has the necessary knowledge to rebuild the order. Create a new one, based around her experience of 15 years as a Jedi? Can see that. Rebuild an order? Not so much. I mean, look how it turned out before. I doubt it will go better for her. The whole of the sequels would need to be pushed into their own canon (as they did with Legends, so they can still sell all the material) and they need to start out anew, if you ask me.
And before anyone says, you’re just saying this because she’s a woman. No, I’m not – I say this because Luke failed after having been trained by two members of the old order. He had material from Obi-Wan (which Rey might have as well) and quite some training with Yoda. Still, he couldn’t get a new order up and running. Rey doesn’t even have that. She’s had one-on-one training with Luke, how is she supposed to ever train several people at once – which is what rebuilding the order will demand?
Besides, I doubt that any of the retcons above will happen.
The new movie may fail. However, I think it’s premature at this point to say that the writers and director of the new movie won’t come up with a good story of how Rey could rebuild the Jedi Order.
First, Luke failed because he gave up on trying to redeem Kylo Ren or to help stop the rise of the First Order (this character development was a major reason why a lot of fans hated The Last Jedi). Rey may turn out to be a more determined and stubborn character than Luke had been.
Second, in the SW movies (other than Solo), it’s not knowledge or experience that determined success, but rather faith and reliance on the Force. In this way, SW is more like a religious story than a sci-fi story. Luke was a novice in the OT, but his instinct that Vader could be redeemed was what ultimately saved the day. Rey barely learned to use the Force but was still able to defeat Kylo Ren at the end of TFA. The argument on whether Rey was a Mary Sue completely missed the point that the Force is not a technology, but an active spiritual power like God. It’s not Rey herself who defeated Kylo Ren at the end of TFA, but Rey letting the Force used her as its instrument that defeated Kylo Ren.
In my view, the old Jedi Order failed because instead of relying on the guidance of the Force (manifested as instincts) to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, they codified their experiences into rules and dogmas and then relied on those rules and dogmas to make decisions.
Now, how would Luke help to stop the rise of the First Order? Is he in charge of the remnants of the Empire? He’s not a politician or in possession of a large fleet. It’s not the job of a Jedi to stop the formation of a military/political power, even if they might have to deal with the fallout.
I agree he should have handled Ben differently, so he’d never have turned into Kylo Ren (and in old canon he would have – ‘Legends’ Luke redeemed several darksiders over time … and even was one himself, although a lot of people hate Dark Empire). The sequels play completely against the character of Luke as we see it in the original trilogy and the character we see in the sequels wasn’t fit to build the order. The character from the OT would have been.
The problem is that the Luke in the sequels wants to recreate the order from the prequels. The order which clearly failed and thus should not be recreated. A lot of the early lore of ‘Legends’ came out before the prequels and presented a path which was much more geared towards what you suggest (in this post and the reply to it). It was not taking children young, not trying to isolate them from the world (or their families, they’d regularly go home to visit them). It was taking Force-sensitive people all ages – as a matter of fact, Luke started out with a group of adults as his first students.
Luke also wasn’t overseeing training later on, he had too much other stuff on his plate. One his first students took the praxeum and the training over and she was much more suited as a teacher. This order was more suited to survive and very much operated along the lines of ‘everyone is doing what they do best and they’re following the Force and not a set of rules.’ There were certain key positions within the order which were necessary for it to function, but it wasn’t as inflexible as the one we see in the PT.
“Second, in the SW movies (other than Solo), it’s not knowledge or experience that determined success, but rather faith and reliance on the Force.”
That’s not entirely true for the original trilogy. Luke relies on the Force at the final critical moment in ANH, but it takes his hard-won skills to get there, skills that had at least been alluded to earlier in the movie (applying to the Academy, shooting down TIE fighters, the womprat thing). Similarly, Hoth was lost not because of a lack of faith, but because of the normal progression of military operations. Similarly, it wasn’t the Force that won the ground battle on Endor, but the Ewoks. And while the Force certainly helped them at Jabba’s barge, planning, forethought, and seizing opportune moments did far more to secure victory.
Even the final battle between Luke and Darth Vader isn’t decided by the Force. It’s decided by Luke making the choice to sacrifice himself in a bid to redeem his father. Yes, sure, they were three space-wizards fighting, but the important parts were 100% human choice.
It’s one reason why I don’t like the rest of the movies. They make the Force too powerful, too prominent, at the expense of personal choice and responsibility (one of the themes of the original trilogy). Frankly the Jedi are the least interesting thing about the Star Wars universe.
I’m not sure that Star Wars really can or should be be saved anymore. I think there are two fundamental problems.
The first problem is that of taking historical tropes and updating them without actually questioning them. This is where we get droids as servants, heroic monarchs, and noble bloodlines, all rooted in older stories that took those ideas without question. Droids in particular are based on the comedic plight of lowly serfs in The Hidden Fortress and this was updated to be robots without critically asking the question of whether serfs should exist in the first place. We then get a society incapable of making actual democratic progress, because it is too rooted in historical tropes to embrace it. Borrowing from historical aesthetics over function is also led to a related problem with the tech base, wanting the iconography of WW2 fighters against what should be much more advanced tech or war elephants rather than tanks despite the fact that wheels or treads would have been vastly superior.
The second and larger problem is about the Force and Jedi. The problem is that it is an amalgamation of eastern spirituality and western mythology in a fashion that winds up making less sense as a result. Balance makes sense when dealing with taoism, but it doesn’t when you are dealing with actual good and evil locked in an eternal never ending struggle. The impossible binary also justifies Jedi extremism as necessary with things like the no-attachment doctrine because the inevitable alternative is to become a Sith. Grey Jedi are sometimes said to be a solution by fans but they actually just make the problem worse as it implies that the best place is to be between good and evil.
While it is still among my favorite franchises and I will always have a soft spot for the unusual Lucas approach to storytelling, Disney is going to keep wringing the life out of it until it is a dead husk. There may occasionally be a decent work, as with Andor, but at this point I think the most healthy thing is to just develop your own headcanon and allow it to survive, incorporating new elements that come out if they are worth it and just ignoring it otherwise.
Yeah, there are a lot of problems with producing stories that are part of a long-running franchise with a continuity, and Star Wars has tragically become a good example of such.
Even when a franchise might benefit from taking a break or being modified, there are several barriers to such. These barriers often take the form of fans demanding new content and some subgroups’ rabid resistance to changes they dislike. Alternatively, a company which owns a franchise usually prioritizes the mass production of content with familiar iconography to maximize profits rather than take the steps necessary to create a sustainable quality franchise.
I have seen aspects of this “franchise self-sabotage” in Star Wars, Marvel, and DC movies and other media, but as a Star Trek fan I am especially worried of such happening to that franchise. This concern exists because of aspects of NuTrek such as casually destroying Romulus, the home world of a major faction, in the 2009 film to motivate an astoundingly dull villain, or the poor and inconsistent quality of shows like Discovery and Picard that try to redefine or develop the setting. It feels like some of the newer installments in the franchise are carelessly breaking the tools used to create narratives within the setting for their own stories and undermining the ability of other writers to tell their own stories in the future. There is certainly plenty good with NuTrek, but I do worry that this tendency for self-sabotage among long-running franchises becoming prevalent in Star Trek like it has in Star Wars if care is not taken.
All this seems to raise several interesting questions about long-running franchises. Like what other examples exist of self-sabotaged franchises which can tell us more about the phenomena? How can creators tell stories while not undermining the long-term prospects of franchise they are working within? And how can fans react in a healthy and ethical manner to such a decline occurring in a long-running franchise they have been invested in?
I don’t see how straight-up making droids people would make sense. Why would factories mass-produce them if they aren’t going to be sold to anyone, and why would many be designed for specific purposes if they’re going to be allowed to choose whether they want to do the one thing they were created for?
I suppose it could be presented as the manufacturers being paid to produce droids on demand, rather than being paid for a transfer of ownership, and the droids then function like hired labourers with specialised skills and strengths, rather than as tools.
Alternatively, or in addition, it could be good to simply not have droids as fully sapient beings if there’s no reason for them to be. It can make sense to give a machine some level of intelligence so it has more ability to operate autonomously and adapt as needed, but within reason; why would a gonk droid, a mobile power source with legs, need to feel pain? Why should a protocol droid, specialising in etiquette, be able to speak rudely? Why are battle droids, intended to be cheap, expendable cannon fodder, so cowardly, or even capable of fear? Not only would the ownership and treatment of many of these types be less questionable if they were limited to what they needed to be capable of, but they’d also be better at their intended functions.
A good in-between which allows for any type of droid to act as a distinct and interesting character without that necessarily being the case for all of them might be if full sapience was an emergent property, not an intended part of their design, but which can come about as a result of accumulated experiences, memories, and knowledge, and can be prevented through regular memory wipes, which are treated as a way to help them operate efficiently by decluttering them of data which is old or irrelevant to their function. This way, they are by default only intelligent machines, but can develop into people. It would have the added benefit that their personalities would be shaped by their experiences, explaining their uniqueness, instead of leaving the mystery of why someone would program them to be disobedient or cantankerous.
I think that in-between would actually be worse than sapient slavery. You’d basically say droids receive the mechanical equivalent of lobotemy regularly so they don’t develop sapience instead of the programming being changed so they will never be sapient. Besides some of the jobs droids do can’t be done by machines without sapience.
In the past, there were different levels of droids, going down by the limits of their programming such as battle droids able to kill sapient beings, droids with personality, but unable to kill, and workers of several levels without clear sapience. R2D2 would fall under ‘workers of several levels’ but C-3PO is firmly ‘droid with personality.’ A protocol unit wouldn’t be able to function without an idea of ‘self.’
Droids are pretty unsaveable right now, I’d say.
Until Solo, I think Star Wars treatment of droids was mostly parallel to that of animals. Humans can legally own animals, and will alter the animals we own for reasons that are convenient to us – but that’s considered a barrier to loving them, or wanting them to have lives free of suffering, or acknowledging distinct personalities – and pointless cruelty to them is regarded as a marker of evil in both the real world and fiction. Droids have cognitive ability equal to humans, but animal characters are sometimes depicted with what amounts to that – especially in the stories that Star Wars draws from – while still being owned by humans. Animals might be barred from certain establishments.
But that only works if it’s allowed to be a tacit assumption in the background – as soon as a droid is conceptualising freedom and escape from servitude for both itself and other droids, you can’t see it in those terms any more.
“Why would factories mass-produce them if they aren’t going to be sold to anyone…”
Why do we keep producing babies when we can’t sell them? I’m not being flippant here. Droids would be a fundamentally different life-form, with a fundamentally different life cycle. It makes sense for them to preserve (or cause to be preserved) the foundational step in that life cycle.
“…why would many be designed for specific purposes if they’re going to be allowed to choose whether they want to do the one thing they were created for?”
A more complicated question. The issue is, a droid doesn’t exist until it’s built (leaving aside questions about the nature of souls). Once a droid is built for, say, cleaning, it was built FOR CLEANING. Logic dictates that the builders build it to enjoy that task. Is it ethical to do so? It would be unethical to bioengineer a human for specific tasks–but it’s hardly unethical for a walking bryozoan or a giant syphonophore to have individual organisms dedicated to specific tasks. I think the ethical issue would be whether or not the droid would be allowed to change if it wanted to. If a cleaning droid wanted to change jobs and modify its body accordingly, would it be allowed to do so? If yes, it’s probably ethically okay. If no, the reason why would be critical (we don’t let people change jobs in certain areas, such as the military, without approval).
Star Wars–books and movies–presents this whole issue as something that few have considered. If you want to look at it this way, it’s very much like the Antebellum South’s view of slaves and Africans/African-Americans in general: Everyone just assumes that this group is suppose to be subservient to that group. There’s some justification in Star Wars for this–droids are manufactured, after all, and many appear to be programmed to hold such views (see C-3PO in A New Hope). That said, in the books at least the issue is treated as one that people are considering, including the existence of legal processes by which droids can become recognized as fully independent. It’s very similar to the Roman Empire’s view of slaves in a lot of ways, in fact.
It’s rather tragic that the old expanded universe has been declared null and void because it addresses pretty much all of the problems brought up in this article. Before Disney came in, there was an entire 40 galactic years that was filled with action and adventure that credibly built up the republic and dealt with the imperial remnant, and also dealt with the reestablishment of the Jedi order that didn’t feel pointless and convoluted. Plus, there was an entire plot line of how the jedi are too powerful to be law officers in the republic, which ended with Luke pulling the jedi away from politics.
I still find it incredulous that big-time, professional movie makers did what they did. Particularly #5, “it was all for nothing,” throwing away all the hope and optimism the originals brought us. I would add that, beyond the Rebellion failing to bring us to a better place, seeing Han, Leia, and Luke all ending up failing in nearly all aspects of life (parenthood, family, loyalty, relationships, careers, etc…) was just as egregious.
To what extent would modern thoughts on “AI” relate to SW droids? Are they simply programmed machines of individualized creations?
Don’t ya know, everyone loves it when big movie/show productions completely throw away the stories that came first and copy-paste their own stories over top! :P
Briefly, there are several misunderstandings of Star Wars in here. I’ll concentrate on #2 and #4.
#2:
Star Wars is supposed to be social science fiction, specifically about ways of life (at the individual and civilizational scales) and familial influence. That the personhood of droids isn’t addressed appears for two good reasons: first, explaining all the mysteries away in storytelling is bad storytelling (the personhood of droids is clearly in question and left unaddressed so YOU can think about it. Leave it that way for others too); second, Star Wars actually has a very narrow and specific scope, none of which depends on the personhood of droids. To elaborate: whatever lay-people THINK or FEEL Star Wars is about, it is an actual story which an actual person very carefully constructed: George Lucas told a story about the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, a story about the fall of democratic government, and a story about selflessness and selfishness (all these threads are almost entirely manifest in the fall and redemption of Anakin). This brings me to #4.
#4:
The Jedi depicted in the original and prequel trilogy are not cultists. You have the origin of “no attachments” quite wrong. It exists not because Yoda needed his injunction to Luke retroactively explained; rather, it’s been central to Star Wars since A New Hope. Lucas’ story of the nature and consequences of selflessness and selfishness hinges on a particular notion of attachment. You clearly misunderstand this notion and the way it is depicted in episodes 1-6. Attachments are not loving-kind or caring feelings, attachments are (as you confusedly, weakly allude to) being unable to accept the disappearance of something from one’s life. Attachment here is essentially the Buddhist notion. And it is bad. Attachment of this kind is fundamentally selfish and leads one to becoming evermore so: which is what ultimately distinguishes the Sith from the Jedi. Jedi strive to be selfless, acting on behalf of the good of others. The Sith are the ultimate manifestation of selfishness: they want power, pleasure, control, etc. and will do anything and everything to acquire it, caring not at all for others. One’s reactions to their feelings of attachment is what dictates the path they follow: accepting that things change, that everything is impermanent, that the greatest pleasures are hard to attain and require discipline and some self-restraint, makes one a Jedi, attitudinally speaking. Alternatively, needing things to be a certain way, allowing ones basal desires and fear of loss and lust for power to make decisions for them makes one like a Sith, attitudinally speaking. The Jedi instruction/philosophy is not “don’t form attachments,” it’s more like “don’t intentionally form attachments and commit to riding yourself of those you already have at any given time.” I recommend trying to deeply understand something before suggesting changes to it.
Oh thank god someone who knows what they’re talking about. Attachments are not relationships nor emotional connections. Attachment in Star Wars is stalking your ex because you can’t accept the relationship is over. Yoda specifically says he’s friends with the Wookies. Obi-Wan has friends outside the Order. Jedi are free to leave the Order at any time; in a comic Luke met the grandchild of a padawan who left because they fell in love and wanted to be with that person. In another Obi-Wan said to Yoda he would leave the Jedi with Anakin if Anakin wanted to leave. Dooku left too and he even visited the Temple on a semi-regular basis until Qui-Gon died.
Same thing with the dark and light sides of the Force, it’s much less good versus evil in the traditional western sense but selflessness vs selfishness. How is Balance found and kept? By acknowledging your worst traits and choosing to rise above them and continue doing that. But being selfish and giving in to your worst impulses leads you to do bad things and lose balance. That is why the Sith (you know the evil bad guys) had to be destroyed.
Anyone reading this comment should go look up writerbuddha on tumblr because they really understand the Buddhist practices that inspired Star Wars. Then research the connection between Islam and the franchise because Sufism inspired Lucas as well and there’s a lot of awesome parallels.
I don’t know if retconning the destruction of the New Republic by Starkiller Base as suggested in #5 would really be that much of change.
I’d actually argue that there is actually precedent with something similar happening before with Order 66, which slowly turned from “all Jedi except Yoda and Obi-Wan are dead” into “most Jedi were killed, but there is still a sizeable number of them alive, and they have tangible hope of starting a new order.”
I’m not sure that was actually a retcon either
the difference between all except for the two who know about the twins and 99.99% of them except for the two who know about the twins is irrelevant unless the handful of extra jedi can affect the plot which they couldn’t in the original trilogy.