I saw a post about the “you didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did” line and how with it, Anakin is putting the final nail in his own coffin and I absolutely love that interpretation (which is why this is its own post and not a reply) but this post also talked about that line freeing obi-wan from guilt or responsibility for Anakin falling

And maybe it’s comforting to think of that line that way, that Obi-wan gets some kind of absolution or forgiveness for what happened on Mustafar. It also does a great job of giving Anakin some agency in choosing to fall to the dark side and to kill that version of himself.

But I don’t think that this line gives obi-wan comfort or freedom from guilt for a moment.

Whether true or not, honest or not, I think it’s very likely he still feels complicit in the ‘murder’ of his best friend and brother in arms. I don’t know if the guilt of not knowing that all of that anger and distrust was there built up and poisoning him can ever really go away.

Obi-wan is absolved of the physical murder, hacking off Anakin’s limbs and leaving him on Mustafar but he was also there when Anakin’s real death happened, like he was standing there while he bled out not knowing Anakin was even cut.

I don’t think there’s any freedom for Obi-wan in that.

I wanted to see the new Jedi Order AND the New Republic in the sequels. But no, instead we got A New Hope 2.0, Luke 2.0, and Darth Vader 2.0. This is so disappointing.

Yeah, the sequels were disappointing. There were so many better ways to continue the story of SW (although personally I think they shouldn’t have continued it), but they chose to go about it in the worst way possible. They had no idea why SW was loved and they focused on the absolute worst things and then switched to new things when the first thing didn’t work rather than to try to fix the thing that didn’t work.

Like they were for sure that people loved SW for Vader so they gave us a guy who wore a costume that looked similar to Vader’s, but the character himself had no personality, he had some lame motivation to join the dark side, and he wanted nothing more than to stay evil. People didn’t like Kylo and then they were like okay, well Palpatine was in all 6 films, they have to like him. And then they brought back Palaptine.

But they missed the fact that the people loved Star Wars for the story. That the characters in SW were just characters without the story to tie them all in.

Everyone loved Luke saving Vader and Vader wanting to be redeemed. The sequels tried that story with Rey and Kylo, but 1. There was no reason for Rey to want to save Kylo. He wasn’t her father, he had no relation to her other than the fact that he killed Han in front of her and he tortured her and her friends. 2. Kylo didn’t want redemption. Every time he was offered the chance to do something good he turned it down and it was like 2 or 3 times that this happened. Vader didn’t. Yes, he didn’t accept Luke’s help at first, but he did in the end. And after Palpatine died, Vader wasn’t like “Okay, I’m taking his place now. Join me or you’re nothing to me“ to Luke. Vader did want to rule the galaxy with Luke right after he found out he has a son, but he gave up on that and realized that he needs to come back to Luke rather than to have Luke joining him. He realized he needs to make the right decision because his son is important to him and he can’t lose his son. Rey wasn’t important for Kylo. She was literally no one to him. They had no relationship at all, except what Kylo said: “My grandfather worked for your grandfather so we’re a dyad” (I legit had to pause the movie because I couldn’t stop laughing... they even ripped off Space Balls omg). Maybe the sequels would have been better if the two were related (either siblings or cousins). But they were just strangers and Rey just decided one day that she wants to save Kylo for some reason and then she decided that she’ll go back to trying to kill him and they kinda switch back and forth between that and it’s just a complete mess and doesn’t even come close to the story of Luke redeeming Vader that they were trying to rip-off from the OT.

People loved Vader being mysterious and intimidating and they loved the idea of this powerful Sith lord wearing a mask (like the Sith of the Old Republic did). And the sequels tried to copy that aesthetic, but then they reveal Kylo’s face right away and he’s not intimidating at all and the whole mystery around his identity behind the mask goes away too. And his entire thing is to be whiny and throw a tantrum when things don’t go his way and destroy everything around him. I guess they were trying to copy Vader choking people with that, but the scary thing about Vader was that he would choke people but he’d put no energy into it and he’d stay calm and it was kinda unnerving how calm he was when he was choking the life out of someone. This is why Vader was intimidating and menacing. He didn’t lash out like a spoiled child and destroy his toys. He was in control even when he wasn’t and he was calm and made it seem like taking someone’s life was no issue to him.

Anakin’s backstory is loved by people. The way someone who was a Jedi and good became a Sith and took down the entire Jedi order and basically destroyed everything his world was about in the process was extremely complex and well-written and Anakin is somewhat of a sympathetic character because a lot of people can see that he made the wrong choices for all the right reasons (he just wanted to save his wife and their unborn child... children as we later find out). Kylo’s turn to the dark side is just he was contacted by Snoke, who whispered bad things to him about Luke, and for some reason Luke decided that the only way to deal with this is to for some reason kill Kylo in his sleep??? (yeah I also don’t understand why the guy who spent 3 movies trying to redeem Vader and refused to fight Vader and was about to let himself get killed by the Emperor because he was convinced his Sith lord father was actually good and would save him, is now like “You know, my nephew has to die. He can’t be redeemed.”). And then Kylo’s immediate reaction to this was to kill everyone else in Luke’s temple because I guess they also needed to rip-off Order 66 (out of all things that happened). Kylo isn’t sympathetic in this way because 1. He had a loving family and a good support system with Han and Leia and even Luke to some extent. He wasn’t like Anakin who never had anyone to talk to and who had to keep his life a secret from the Jedi and who grew up a slave and who was desperate to save the only family he had left. Kylo’s life was good and they said it was good in the sequels too. 2. He got threatened by Luke and his very next choice is to go kill a bunch of innocent people. He never showed any ounce of remorse for his actions. At least with Anakin, we see that he’s torn apart when he’s pledging himself to Palpatine and he’s basically hurt and haunted by his actions starting from then on. Kylo just killed a bunch of people and he’s going around like “yep, just another Tuesday...“

And aside from just doing a bad rip-off of a story that was already presented in the same universe, they also messed up with other characters that were beloved.

Luke, who never gave up on his father and who even abandoned his training (I think) to go save his family, is now the guy who wanted to kill his nephew at the first sign of the dark side and then his solution was to leave his family behind and never see them again.

Han is a deadbeat dad who left his wife when things got hard and went away on a road trip with Chewie to avoid any responsibility.

Leia is always sad and she desperately wants to forgive Kylo (they basically gave her Padme’s personality for some reason, when she’s more like Anakin). Like I can see Han forgiving Kylo (because he does have a big heart despite his rugged exterior), but giving what we know about Leia’s character, she wouldn’t forgive Kylo. It took Leia a long time to come to terms with forgiving Anakin and she wouldn’t even talk to his Force Ghost when he came to apologize, even though she knew he’d never see him again. There’s no way that she sees Kylo basically turning into Vader 2.0 and she’s like “there’s still good in him.“ Like he destroyed an entire system of planets, that had to bring back some painful memories for Leia. She actually had to watch Alderaan be destroyed. And he killed Han. I know their relationship was ruined in TFA, but TFA also made it clear that Leia and Han were still in love. There’s no way she would have forgiven Kylo or thought he was still good after he killed his dad and her husband. And he tried to kill her too if I remember correctly. He fired on her ship, which made her float out into space. Leia isn’t like Luke or Padme. It would be difficult for her to forgive Kylo for basically turning into her worst nightmare and taking her family away from her and killing so many other people too.

And then they bring back Palpatine too because I’m guessing their thought process was “well he was in all 6 movies that people loved, we do need a good villain.“ And it made no sense. Palpatine died like twice in ROTJ. He got destroyed by the reactor that Vader threw him in and then the entire Death Star exploded into tiny particles. There was no way for the Death Star to be crash landed on Exegol since it basically blew up in all directions in the middle of nowhere in space. Bringing him back basically invalidated all of Anakin’s story because him dying to bring balance to the Force was for nothing. He didn’t balance anything, Palpatine was never defeated. They really didn’t need Palpatine to be the villain of TROS. You could replace him with any other random villain and nothing changes. They only brought him back to make a reference to the old movies and have people watch their movie for nostalgia. But I honestly don’t know who was nostalgic for Sheev.

Anyway, it’s embarrassing that they had a good story that they tried to rip-off and they still managed to fuck it up. Like how hard it is to rip-off Star Wars and still have a good story? Didn’t Disney actually accomplish it before in a Phineas and Ferb special? I don’t know why they couldn’t do it this time around too.

But for real, they should have showed the New Jedi Order and the New Republic and show us how Luke and Leia were changing the world for the better and how they were fighting to keep the world a better place rather than to give us a watered down version of the First Galatic Empire vs Rebels but with worse characters and a worse story this time around.

Counting On Tomorrow

Pairing: Han/Leia

Rating: G

Summary: Post ROTJ; Han and Leia discuss the next move

By the time the fire simmered, the events of the previous day, week, month, year, decade seemed to collide all at once. The alcohol and the music simultaneously curved the mood from jubilant and thrilling to warm and lulling. Slowly and surely, partiers peeled themselves away from the action (some alone- some not) in favor of well-deserved rest. Each knew that when morning came, their fight was not over, only repurposed. The remnants of the Empire would persist and still outflank them. They were still the scrappy rebellion, but they'd managed to scrape away at the most imminent threat. They did the impossible, but then again, the odds never really mattered when the results lie in front of them. 

The sky was clear and promising, not a single planet-killer in sight. 

The hope that Leia had gripped onto with white knuckles seemed finally warranted after many years of touch and go. There had been celebrations across the entire galaxy reaching as far as the outer rim and beyond- each system overjoyed with the end of Palpatine's sinister reign. She'd felt each applause, each dance, each firework plundering into the night sky. She felt it in her bones as she had felt Alderaan's demise years ago. This almost felt like justice. 

Almost.

Try as she could (she wouldn't), but nothing could really fill the planet-sized void in her chest. At the very least, however, she rationalized their failure did not come without an even greater victory. The lives lost were met with an uncountable saved. It didn't bring them back, but it didn't make the sacrifice meaningless. 

A soft smile graced her lips knowing that everyone previously enslaved by this cruel Empire would go to bed a little easier tonight. She was even further emboldened by the idea that the perpetuators of such cruelty would not. She wasn't foolish enough to believe they were even close to ending this Civil War in their favor, but they were closer than they were yesterday and for the first time, she could see the future clearly without guessing. 

"So, what's next?" A gruff, but familiar voice asks from over her shoulder.

Han Solo didn't possess the force on any level, but God, did it freak her out how he could climb into her mind like that. 

She gives no indication of her surprise. As per usual, she is quick with a response- always ready to feed into their little game that they play. She wonders if it was one she would ever grow tired of. Despite the intense levels of exasperation he could bring her to, she never seemed to grow tired of him, so maybe that was a positive start. That, and he looked very good in lowlight.

"That's a pretty terrible seduction tactic, you know."

He smirks and steps away from the doorframe he was leaning on. If Leia felt tall in the Ewok village, which was truly saying something, Han must have felt like a giant. And poor Chewie had to sleep on the Falcon because he couldn't fit any of the beds in the village. Unsurprisingly, the wookie did not seemed upset by this given how transfixed the Ewoks were with grooming him. Leia thought maybe Chewie was afraid of being held hostage on Endor forever. If anyone ran that risk the most, it was Threepio. He likely wouldn't mind either. This was the best treatment he'd received in likely ever. Artoo was definitely over it.

All thoughts about rebellion, height requirements, and divine misunderstandings fizzled from her brain as Han drew closer. His face was uncharacteristically soft, but then again, he always seemed to look at her like that now so maybe this was his character when she was in front of him. Even if her days of battling her feelings for him were long over, newfound vulnerability still pricked old chords that she had to learn to ignore, because she loves him and she needs to deal with that. It is much easier to do so with his very distracting face leaning into hers until they meet and she realizes it may truly have been just a stupid pickup line.

For that, she was ready to be onboard with, until he pulls away and gazes into her soul and says, "You know what I meant."

She sighs, "I find it very unlikely that Palpatine didn't have a contingency plan set to go in motion in the event that he died. If he really is a crazy force tycoon like Luke insists, this is even more likely. We'll need to gather our best intelligence to try and-"

Han, being the bastard that he truly could be, has the nerve to laugh. 

She doesn't hide her annoyance, because their relationship has never involved pulling punches. She crosses her arms and gives him a familiar defiant look that he should know better than almost anyone. It says, "If you don't shut your trap I'm going to kick you off of this balcony".

"You're always in motion, aren't you?"

"I hope you can keep up." She challenges back, not quite appreciating the lack of explanation for his outburst.

"I didn't mean for the rebellion, I meant... Well..." Did he look nervous? 

“Loth-cat got your tongue, Flyboy?” It’s so easy to tease him and she isn’t sure if it’s healthy how much this makes her heart race. 

He scowls. “I figured your newfound force powers would make you a little more intuitive to what I’m trying to say.”

Because Leia excels at nothing if not compartmentalization, she is able to fire back a response without addressing the ever-growing burden of her recent lineage update. 

“All the superpowers in the world wouldn’t help me with deciphering your neanderthal logic.” 

He doesn’t have a parrying response for that and Leia internally cheers at outwitting him, even if she usually wins. He’ll catch her off-guard occasionally, but she likes that about him. He will never cease to surprise her.

And likewise, it seems, because he deflates in defeat against the railing. It also happens to make it much easier to read his face from an eye-level perspective.

“I meant about us.”

"Oh, I never thought about that."

It's too honest and she knows it, because she can see his flinch even in the ambient glow of the lantern lighting. She's quick to catch herself, though, because she doesn't want him to think she never thought of a future for them, since that wasn't entirely untrue.

"I didn't mean it like that." She corrects.

"It's okay if you did." Though he doesn't do a very clean job covering the hurt. 

She briefly wonders how he ever won a game of cards in his life. He sucked at lying. 

"Really, I didn't. I just meant that I haven't had the luxury to really dream of what a post-Empire world would look like for me on a personal level. I didn't want to have done that and... Well, lose." 

This seems to reassure him, but he still cocks his head to the side in equal parts confusion and concern. She knows he gets it. Han doesn't speak much on his life before her, but you don't become a cynical smuggler without having a few dreams of your own dashed and prematurely taken. She guesses everybody in the rebellion has this to some extent. Some dreams are broken all at once like a planet shot into oblivion. Others are chipped away through stacked losses. She isn't sure which is worse. 

He takes her face in his hands and steadies her while looking into her eyes. "We didn't lose."

"No," She says softly. "We didn't. It's not over yet-"

"We're going to win." He cuts her off and for once she isn't mad.

She gives in to what he's trying to do and grins. "So, what is next, General?"

"Well, it’s been a while since Chewie and I have had a home that isn't the Falcon."

"Funnily enough, me too." 

He smiles and there isn’t a hint of sarcasm or smugness to it. It’s about as pure as a man like Han Solo could be and proof that hope and peace were still in reach for someone like him. She hopes she can be that for him the way she knows he can for her. A home.

It wouldn't replace Alderaan, because it wouldn't have to. It would be something else entirely.

He kisses her and she more than lets herself be wrapped up in him- be wrapped up in this moment, because like the billions across the galaxy, this is her victory too. Her parents fought hard for it and passed that battle onto her with trust and care and she followed through. And with that, she can not only hope for a greater tomorrow, but count on it and build upon it. Force willing, she'll get to hold onto it for as long as she lives. 

Hello! I love your art! I'm obitin's fan: not so long ago I read first Traun's trilogy's book, and now I headcanon that Mara Jade is Obitin's child (I couldn't help myself...) . If you read it, can you tell, what your opinion about it? Thank you for your wonderfull art again!

Hey anon, thanks very much for your sweet message.

I have read the Thrawn books, and Mara is one of my favorite EU-only characters. If you like Timothy Zahn’s writing and Mara in particular, I hope you’ll also check out the Hand of Thrawn books (Spectre of the Past and Vision of the Future) and Survivor’s Quest (a companion book to Outbound Flight, also a great read).

Some thoughts on your theory under the cut….

So, could Mara Jade be a secret love child hidden away by the Duchess…?

(I should probably make a small disclaimer straight away that this isn’t especially my jam for the same reason that I don’t subscribe to the Korkie Kenobi-Kryze Newsletter. Just not wild about the idea of Obi-Wan having biological children that he doesn’t know about, or whose lives he’s unable to be part of. I find it a very painful concept, and Star Wars in general and Obi-Wan’s life in particular are already sad enough for me)

From the real world perspective -

Well, we know TZ couldn’t have intended this as Mara’s backstory primarily because Satine didn’t exist as a character until many many years after the first appearance of Mara in the EU. Should this stop you from headcanoning whatever you want to? Of course not. We don’t actually know much about Mara’s parents or her childhood, sooooo…

Let’s switch to the “in-universe” perspective. Is it EU canon-compliant?

First off I think you’d have to tweak EU canon a little to make the timelines work. Mara seems to be cited as being a year or so younger than the Skywalker twins, but I don’t think any of TZ’s novels actually specify her age. In this case, she’d have to be at least around a year older than Luke and Leia, born sometime before Satine’s death in 20 BBY - not a big departure from the generally accepted EU/Legends timeline, but a little change.

So I guess to make this work, we’d assume that Satine conceived sometime around season 4 of TCW (*cough*AfterTheDeceptionArc*cough*) and made the decision to place the baby with a couple seeking to adopt (and the adoptive parents would be the parents that Mara dimly remembers from her childhood, then). Would Satine have kept this all totally secret, or would she and Obi-Wan have made the decision together, to avoid destabilizing Mandalore? Would they have thought that maybe, after the war, things could be different, and one or both of them might have been able to be part of the child’s life to some extent (Though that was clearly not to be the case)?

Satine and Obi-Wan are both blue-eyed and fair-haired, but Mara’s green eyes and red hair are believably in the Kryze genetics, as Satine’s sister proves.

And, totally coincidentally, Mara’s name is similar to a Mando’a expression, “Mar’e”, meaning “finally” or “at last”. Which would be somewhat appropriate for a child born after a long separation of her parents, such as in the case of Satine and Obi-Wan, no?

This raises the question of whether Palpatine actually knew Mara’s parentage (via Death Watch intel perhaps?) when he singled her out for training as the Emperor’s Hand. Using a child of Kenobi as his personal assassin would certainly appeal to Palpatine’s flair for cruelty, and would also serve as additional ongoing torment to Vader: Anakin’s old Master’s bastard child (living, when Vader believed his own child to be dead) constantly reminding him that things could’ve been very very different if he’d confided in Obi-Wan about his relationship with Padme, as she wanted him to. All of which would be congruent with Vader’s canonical animosity/disdain towards Mara during her time in the Imperial court.

In the EU, Luke does communicate with Obi-Wan’s spirit a few times after RotJ. I guess you could assume that Obi-Wan never mentions Mara’s parentage either because he doesn’t know, never knew, and has no way of gaining that insight after death, or because he thinks the information is irrelevant?

Finally, (SPOILERS, BIG EU SPOILERS)

Mara naming her son Ben after her husband’s old mentor becomes SUPREMELY IRONIC if said mentor is actually her own father than she never knew.

(end spoilers)

SO YEAH this is some sad business. The idea of Obi-Wan’s child being raised in Palpatine’s custody, of Satine’s child being trained not just as a warrior but an assassin kinda just makes me want to weep. Mara of course moves beyond this, but there’s a lot of heartbreak in there. Ultimately this is not a headcanon I’m going to personally adopt, but it was interesting/depressing to think about!

Why The Last Jedi Fails

I've debated whether it would be worth spending time writing this, as I know there are many critical takes out there about The Last Jedi.  But I figure it's time to gather up all my critiques and criticisms of Star Wars Episode 8 and put them into one (hopefully) coherent post.  Warning: I will be praising some parts of this film.

After I saw The Last Jedi opening night, my immediate reaction was that I loved it.  It is a beautifully shot film with some great scenes.  My initial trepidations were ones I've come to accept: Rey's parents are nobodies and Snoke was killed off without a backstory.  However, in the hours after watching, my critical brain turned back on and started to dissect every other bit of the film.  After seeing it a second time, the problems became more apparent.

Let's start with the film's greatest problem and a huge missed opportunity: Canto Bight.  Everything surrounding this whole plot point and locale is misguided from the minute it's mentioned.  It starts by wasting Maz Kanata, a potentially interesting character who is given little more than a cameo to send Finn and Rose off to the casino world.  Even worse, Maz's short amount of screen time includes a dig at the prequels, when she dismisses any notion that they'd be interested in her union dispute.  Here, we get some insight into how this film will approach politics in the Star Wars galaxy.  But director Rian Johnson misdiagnoses what was wrong with the prequels.  Space politics can be interesting!  See:  Star Wars Bloodline.  Johnson's decision to shy away from it compounds the problems when they actually get to Canto Bight.

It all goes wrong from the moment they land.  Literally.  Finn and Rose "park" their ship in a spot they're not supposed to.  Then they enter the casino, in what is apparently an homage to the cantina but on a grander scale.  This diverse set of gamblers are apparently war profiteers, as is briefly mentioned.  But their only interaction with any of them is when they are approached and arrested for parking illegally.  Seriously.

In prison, they encounter DJ, who will eventually join them on their mission to disable the First Order's tracker.  But first, they have to go back to the casino area and release enslaved creatures so they can trample and maim these profiteers we are told are bad.  This is a very long sequence that ends with Finn saying how glad he was to hurt them.  Huh?  Hurt these people you don't know and haven't spoken to?

The entire Canto Bight subplot lacks any depth.  It's completely superficial, and maybe that would've worked if they didn't spend so much of the movie there.  But it ends up being a whole lot of time wasted on what amounts to finding a way to get DJ with Finn and Rose.  This could've been so much better.

HOW TO IMPROVE CANTO BIGHT

Honestly, this should've been caught when someone was reading Johnson's drafts, because we're basically stuck with a chunk a TLJ that degrades it while simultaneously expanding its running time.  But it could've been fixed, starting with Maz.

 Instead of having Maz phone in her appearance, they should have met her on Canto Bight.  Right there, we lose one prequel crack and give Lupita a slightly larger role.  While there, they interact with these profiteers, engaging in a moral debate about the First Order vs. the Resistance, while finding out how the conflict is viewed through the galaxy.  Were there a lot of systems missing the Empire?  How do they feel about the New Republic's destruction?  Eventually, that moral debate is what leads to fisticuffs and their subsequent imprisonment, as opposed to a parking ticket.

Johnson doesn't touch on any of this in TLJ.  His take on the morality of the conflict is restricted to two lines involving DJ.  First: 

DJ: Good guys, bad guys, made-up words. Let's see who formerly owned this gorgeous hunk-uh. Ah, this guy was an arms dealer. Made his bank selling weapons to the bad guys. (Hologram shows a tie fighter.) Oh... And the good. (Hologram shows an x-wing.) Finn, let me learn you something big. It's all a machine, partner. Live free, don't join.

And second, when DJ betrays them:   

DJ: They blow you up today, you can blow them up tomorrow. It's just business. 

Finn: You're wrong. 

DJ: Maybe.

This is the extent Johnson is willing to go when it comes to morality in the Star Wars universe, and it's just not enough.  Either dig in or don't mention it.  Short changing it is a disservice, but that's exactly what happens.

If the entire Canto Bight sequence was redone, it would not only be a better Star Wars movie, but a better movie in general.  It doesn't have to be exactly as I think it should be, but it needs vast improvements.  If Disney were to ever special edition the sequels, then Canto Bight should be singled out.  And yes, I do think they should special edition them, along with the prequels.  But that's for another time.

MOVING ON

The second greatest issue of The Last Jedi is how immensely it fails at being a sequel to The Force Awakens.  I am undoubtedly biased when it comes to discussing TFA because JJ Abrams is one of my favorite directors and I absolutely loved his take on Star Wars.  Now, one of JJ's favorite things to do is to approach plots as mystery boxes, whose contents are slowly revealed over the course of a TV series or movie.  And don't say he didn't have any clue as to where TFA was going, as he had an outline prepared for the sequel, and an idea for who Rey's parents were.  Along comes Rian Johnson, who, instead of opening that mystery box, takes a hammer to it.

So much of what is hinted at, left unsolved, or teased in TFA is either ignored, brushed aside, or poorly answered in TLJ.  This is a problem.  TLJ is supposed to be a direct sequel, not a spin-off or an unplanned continuation.  When Yoda suggests there's another hope in Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi provides an answer to who that is.  Imagine if it didn't.  Well, I suppose you don't have to cause this basically happens with TLJ.

There was a lot of set up in TFA, but Johnson used TLJ to tear all of that up instead of building on it.  Rey's lineage, strongly hinted to be significant through multiple scenes in TFA, is made to be meaningless in TLJ.  Maz Kanata teased having a story about how she came to possess Anakin's lightsaber, but that's ignored in TLJ.  Snoke is treated like a disposable villain, even though he somehow managed to stitch the Empire back together and tempt Ben Solo to the dark side.  The Knights of Ren are mentioned in an offhand comment in TFA and are completely missing in TLJ.  I could go on.

Okay, I will.  Why would Luke leave a map for his friends to find him in TFA if he went to Ahch-To to die?  And why did Luke leave it with Lor San Tekka?  (Johnson's answer:  stfu, Luke is emo now.)

The Last Jedi also feels like a smaller movie.  There are two new locations introduced: Canto Bight and Crait.  It revisits Ahch-To from TFA, and the rest takes place on ships.  This is not necessarily a problem, except it fails to show both the dominance of the First Order and the scope of their battle with the Republic/Resistance.  Star Wars is a big universe.  Shouldn't it feel that way?

And then there's issues with some of the returning characters.  Finn is tied down in the wasteful Canto Bight plot that doesn't do much for him.  Leia spends most of the movie in a coma.  Ackbar is murdered for no reason and with even less fanfare.  Poe gets an expanded role, though somehow it doesn't lead to much character growth.

And I can't forget Phasma.  A character with so much potential yet given such short shrift in both TFA and TLJ.  She feels tacked on in this film, when she could've been given a meatier role given how underwhelming all of Johnson's original characters are.  Which brings me to...

THE NEWBIES

The Empire Strikes Back introduced us to Yoda, Lando, and Boba Fett.  The only memorable addition to The Last Jedi are the porgs.

Johnson gives us three new characters in TLJ:  Admiral Holdo, DJ, and Rose.  There isn't that much to say about them, because, well, they're not very memorable and they're certainly not iconic.  Holdo is a one note character meant to serve as the adversary to Poe.  Her entire role consists of antagonizing him and withholding information.  She's much more interesting in Claudia Grey's novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan.

I've already mentioned the role DJ plays during Benicio del Toro's criminally tiny amount of screen time, so that leaves Rose.  She's...okay?  Sticking her on Canto Bight certainly doesn't help her.  The most memorable thing she does is interrupt Finn's suicide run and plant a kiss on him, both of which come from almost nowhere.

It really feels like these characters are underdeveloped and the actors are wasted in the roles, and that's a shame.  But then, that's the story of the prequels as well.  It's just that it was less surprising when George Lucas was doing it.

THE WORST MOMENT IN THE LAST JEDI

Luke Skywalker is far from the Luke we remember in RotJ.  At least until the end of the film, when he leaves Ahch-To, joins Leia and the Resistance, and takes on Kylo Ren and the First Order on his own.

Except he didn't really leave Ahch-To, it's a Force projection, and the stress of creating it kills him.  What?

Han Solo's death makes sense given his son's role in TFA.  Luke Skywalker dies because Rian Johnson chose to kill him.  There is not a single reason plot-wise for Luke to die in this movie.  The Sequel Trilogy should not be about killing off a member of the original trio in each film.  And it didn't have to be.  What were they thinking?

When Carrie Fisher passed away, and it became clear Leia was not going to be in Episode 9, that should have convinced the powers that be to change the last three minutes of the film and allow Luke to live.  Yes, he can return as a Force ghost, but that's not the same.  They would've only had to cut Luke's disappearance and a line from Rey and BAM, Luke's still alive for Episode 9.

His meaningless and arbitrary death ruins this film.  (And after they spent a whole film trying to find him, no less.)

THE GOOD

Now that I've rattled off some of the major flaws I perceived in TLJ, let me list some of the good.

The Yoda Scene:  Easily the best moment of the film.

Luke tossing the lightsaber:  A hilarious and unexpected moment before there were too many "hilarious" and unexpected moments.

Hux:  The one minor TFA character Johnson does an excellent job with.  He may be my favorite character in the film.

Rey and Ren:  The development of their relationship is the strongest element of TLJ.

The Caretakers:  See Damon Lindelof's Instagram.

The Porgs: Adorable pests/wookie-fodder.

Luke flashbacks:  We needed more of these.

Artoo: BB-8 is stealing his thunder, but he can still get in a cheap shot.

Threepio: He's also in this film.

Praetorian Guards: That's some good lightsaberin'.

The Cinematography:  Seriously, this movie is gorgeous.

It feels like a Star Wars movie (minus one ridiculous ironing scene).

FAILURE

Yoda tells Luke how failure is the greatest teacher, laying out one of the themes of this film.  The other, a quote played over numerous TLJ trailers, is "Let the past die.  Kill it, if you have to."  Let's explore.

Weeks before Max Landis disappeared from Twitter following sexual harassment allegations, he described how every character in this movie fails:

REY - Turn Kylo - Fails KYLO - Turn Rey - Fails FINN - Turn off tracker - Fails POE - Save Revel Fleet - Fails SNOKE - Kill Rey - Fails LUKE - Train Rey - Fails HUX - Usurp power - Fails LEIA - Escape - Mostly Fails ROSE TICO - Turn of tracker - Fails HOLDO - Evacuate to Planet Secretly - Fails

That's a lot of failure.  Ironically, you can add one more:

RIAN JOHNSON - Make a great Star Wars film - Fails

But this theme is not why TLJ doesn't work.  It's the other one that drags it down.  The whole idea to let the past die.  If this was Episode 9, and Disney was about to start fresh with a new series of Star Wars films, perhaps it would work.  But this is the middle chapter.  The past, especially TFA, should not be killed.  It should define the entire Sequel Trilogy.

After all, this is a culmination of everything in the OT and PT.  The First Order is born from the Empire.  The Resistance is born from the Rebellion (and then turned back into the Rebellion?  Guess you can't let the entire past die, huh?)  Most of the characters come from other movies.  This is their last time to shine.

Johnson subverts expectations too many times in TLJ.  It works at first, with Luke tossing the lightsaber, but by the end, it has become trite.  Rey's parents are nobodies.  Snoke's dead.  Luke's dead.  The entire Resistance can fit on the Millennium Falcon.  (And Kylo Ren’s awesome mask is wrecked.) He's killed the past without building anything for the future.  That's left to JJ in the single remaining film in the trilogy.  Come on!

The Last Jedi is so polarizing because there’s so much to nitpick, whereas The Force Awakens mainly had only one general complaint leveled against it (it was too much like A New Hope).  One fan may be okay with Leia's Mary Poppins scene, while also despising how Luke became a cranky hermit.  Each potential negative has to be overlooked to come out of it with a positive view, but it’s a lot easier to focus and harp on the negatives.  And that's what's happened online, and, yes, in this post.  Also, killing off Luke for no reason was dumb.

Before I go, I want to mention how overrated Looper was.  Interesting concept, but it falls apart at the farm.  And they gave that director a Star Wars film, while taking one away from the guys who did the Jump Street movies and The Lego Movie.  Sigh.

If JJ sticks the landing with Episode 9 and churns out a terrific film, perhaps TLJ can be viewed in a new light.  And opinions do change over the years.  But even though Revenge of the Sith was pretty good, no one looks back fondly at the prequel trilogy.

(you might say we are encouraged to love)

I received an ask requesting I make this response its own post in full (which of course I don’t mind doing!) so here it is:

An anon in the original post asked why, “Anakin/Vader is seen as interesting for women,” and that could be a bit of a loaded question, but I think there’s a definite rationale behind it. The way it was phrased made me think of a post I saw which addressed the fundamental split between Anakin and Vader as seen by certain audiences, why Anakin is treated by many derisively because there’s an element of the “heroine’s journey” that happens in relation to his arc and the struggles he goes through. It’s here and it’s really interesting in its entirety. “The constant barrage of degradation and trauma and unfairness of a system that benefits at your expense and refuses to validate you for it. And some of that he might have been able to reconcile by “growing up,” the same way a lot of us learn to come to terms with social fuckery, but Anakin doesn’t get the space to do that. He gets a giant bundle of unaddressed trauma and psychological issues and handed a kind of ambiguous destiny about needing to save the entire universe.” <- Imagine the burden of that, and they put it on a child and then give him zero structure to cope with it.

I’m also going to add this comment from that post because I think it’s worthwhile to note: if someone makes you angry and you show anger with your very own face you are weak, you have lost face, you have shown yourself vain and driven by a selfish, animal, irrational, feminine urge to defend yourself; but if you show anger without a face, if you show it unpersonally (the less it’s connected to direct accusation or a specific ill), especially in order to execute a role, then you suddenly appear to be the one in the position of strength, because you can no longer be directly accused of selfishness. The more you can cloak anger in the guise of necessity, the more you meet the societal expectation to be dispassionate, rational, always controlled - the more justification and legitimacy and power to you, even though this mode of anger is often more destructive than the first. This dynamic, assuming it exists as I’ve hypothesized it, is why I think Anakin codes as feminine to many, while Vader appeals to a certain masculine ideal.

Basically, the gist of it is that the emotional turmoil, the trauma, the way he’s exploited for his talents or what he can provide others, the way his agency is stripped repeatedly from him again and again tends to not be the way “male” hero journeys are told. It’s feminine coding (unfortunately) for those themes to be explored. For those emotions to be plumbed and portrayed with a substantive sense of sorrow and helplessness in the central male hero - it is not the “macho” standard. Why they thought they’d get a macho, unyielding masculine power trip from Anakin Skywalker remains a mystery to me, this is the same series where its original hero, Luke (who is his son! of course there were going to be essential parallels and contrasts between them), purposefully throws his weapon away and refuses to fight, and is characterized by his capacity for intrinsic compassion rather than any outer physical strength (even Han is much less of a “macho” guy than dudebros tend to make him out to be - not only because he’s unmistakably the person in distress who has to be rescued from capture in ROTJ, he has a lot of interesting facets that break down that ‘scoundrel’ stereotype, but I digress other than to say I love the OT, and the subtle distinctions in Luke, Leia, and Han that make them break the molds of expectation). SW fundamentally rejected toxic masculinity and the suppression of emotions from its inception, Luke’s loving triumph and role as redeemer only happens because he refuses to listen when he’s told to give up on his friends or on his belief that there’s good in his father, his softness is his ultimate strength. Anakin was never going to be some epitome of tough masculinity, and George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing crafting him in that way. The audiences who wanted Bad Seed Anakin from the beginning didn’t know how to reconcile this sensitive, kind-hearted, exceedingly bright kid, with their spawn of the Dark Side notions, and I think, unfortunately, far too many then either rejected him completely or refused to understand what the central points in his characterization are about.

The fact that this narratively would have made no sense (if Anakin had been “born bad,” then there would have been no miraculously surviving glimpse of light for Luke to save - I’ve said this before, but imagine how profoundly essential to his true self that goodness had to be for it to even exist any more at that point, after all he’d suffered, after all he’d done. the OT tells us more than once what a good man Anakin Skywalker was, it’s part of what makes the father reveal as powerful as it is - if we hadn’t heard the fragments of stories about Luke’s father, it wouldn’t be nearly as shocking, but we KNOW he was a hero, an admirable man, a good friend). I can’t fathom how tricky telling the prequels had to have been to that extent - the audience knows what will happen in the end, it’s a foregone conclusion, we know he will fall, we know Vader will be created, we know the Empire will rise (though that would have happened even if Anakin had remained in the light, which is a whole other discussion). So the question became, who is this person? What influenced him? What shaped his destiny? And that ended up being a far more complex and morally fraught and stirringly emotional story than just “badass Jedi becomes badass Sith lord.”

That talented, highly intelligent boy is taken in by the Jedi after he has already developed independent thought and very intricate emotional dimension - the argument that he’s “too old” to be trained is because he’s not malleable enough to be indoctrinated the way Jedi usually treat the children they take. They may blame this on his attachment to Shmi, but she’s not the problem (if anything, had they not been so unfeeling and rigid, and had they freed her and allowed her to at least stay in contact with her son while he was training because it was a special case - they’re the ones who stick that “Chosen One” mantle on him, you’re telling me they couldn’t make an exception? but no, because they put that weight on him and then never help him carry it and constantly undermine it and question and mistrust him - Anakin would have been stronger in his training, and he would never have fallen to the Dark Side at all. There are so many moments, over and over, where his fall could have been averted, and everyone fails him to the bitter end, when he fails himself). 

And so he is traumatized, due to years of abuse and difficulties as a slave, due to having to leave his mother behind because the Jedi would not free her, due to being told to repress his emotions over and over again when he is, at his core, an intuitive and perceptively empathetic person (he wants to uphold that central tenet of his training - “compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life”), yet he’s made to feel he is broken/wrong/constantly insufficient. He’s wounded by abandonment issues and lack of validation and the human connection/affection he craved, and he develops an (understandable) angry streak, he’s socially awkward due to the specific constraints/isolation of a Jedi’s life and due to the fact that they tried to stamp out what made him uniquely himself, which makes him continually conflicted with a never-ending pulse of anxiety (see absolutely ANY moment where he breaks down emotionally, and you’ll see him say something to the effect of “I’m a Jedi, I know I’m better than than this,” “I’m a Jedi, I’m not supposed to want [whatever very basic human thing he wants, because they make him feel like he can’t even ask for or accept scraps of decency]” - they fracture his sense of his own humanity, Padme tries to validate those feelings but that Code is a constant stumbling block in his mind). He is troubled by fear and the constant press of grief (I would argue he has PTSD at the very least), and all around he’s met by mistrust and sabotage. 

Male heroes shouldn’t be treated as infallible in their own narratives (none of them are that, as no character of whatever gender/origin is, as none of us are), but at the very least we usually see them treated with respect by others. Anakin often gets no such luxury. He’s treated the way we frequently see women treated, and that treatment comes from the same rotten core - the idea that emotions are weak, that expressing them makes you lesser, that crying is a sign of deficiency, that fragility of any kind cannot be tolerated. Anakin is even the hopeless romantic in this situation - Padme, while gracious and warmhearted, is much more pragmatic and tries to reason her way out of her blossoming love for him until she’s of the belief that it doesn’t matter anyway because they’re about to die, and she wants him to know the truth before they do. (I’d also like to note that the closest people to him all speak their love aloud when they’re at the point of death - Shmi when he finds her bound and tortured with the Tuskens, Padme in the Arena, Obi-Wan watching him burn on Mustafar, and how unbearably sad is that? even though his mother had said it before, even though he got to hear it many times again from Padme - and it’s her last entreaty to him - we shouldn’t be pushed to the brink of death to express it). Anakin is the one gazing at her dreamily and tearing up about it and professing earnest, dramatic love in front of the fireplace (idc what anyone says about the dialogue, the way he expresses himself is entirely sincere, it’s the rawness of that sincerity that I think makes people uncomfortable bc it’s unexpected), she’s the one who talks about living in reality. She, too, has been taught to guard and temper her emotions from her time as a child queen and the years she’s spent navigating the murky political waters of the Senate, but she’s become adept at it, unlike Anakin. If anything, they’re the only person the other has with whom they can be truly genuine and unafraid of exposing the recesses of their hearts, they’re the only safe place the other has, it’s no wonder they give themselves over to that, and the fact that they do is beautiful, it’s not wrong (which I have more cohesive thoughts on here and it was the underlying thesis of my heart poured into the super long playlist for them too /linking all the things). They see the joy and spirit in the other that no one else ever sees, and they make a home there.

Anakin becomes an esteemed general not only because he’s awesome in battle and strong in the Force and a gifted pilot and a skilled leader (all of which are true), but because he shows those around him respect, and great care. So, yet again, there’s a subversion of what might have been expected. No one is expendable to him. He views the Clone troops as individual human beings. He mourns their losses (many of the Jedi, with their no attachments rhetoric, allow the Clones to be used without much hesitation or thought for their status as sentient beings born and bred and programmed to die in war, but Anakin was a slave. He comprehends their status more than anyone else could). Anakin is a celebrated hero to the public, and in private is being chewed up by fear and uncertainty. Anakin is devoted to and completely in love with his wife, but has to keep it a secret. Anakin still craves freedom that even being a Jedi has not afforded him, because of their rigor. Anakin still desperately has to scrape for even the bare minimum of approval from the authority figures around him - even his closest mentor and friend, Obi-Wan, while they are irrevocably bonded and care for each other in a myriad of important ways, often doesn’t understand him and dismisses his feelings, refuses to advocate for/stand up for him when he needs it, or tells him to calm down. I’m surprised they never tell him he’s being hysterical when he gets upset, but the connotation of being told to “calm down” when angry or sorrowful or frustrated is something most women can identify with all too well. His desperate desire to protect Padme as everything begins to curl and smoke and turn to ash around him has a very clear nurturing aspect to it underneath the layers of terror and frustration and building paranoia - all he really wants is to be able to protect and care for his family, all he hopes is to save them and have a life with them away from all the war and the political in-fighting and the stifling Order. He’d quit right that second but he needs help due to his nightmares, and no one is willing to give it to him. (Except, ostensibly, Palpatine, who has been grooming him and deftly manipulating him and warping his perceptions since he was a child, all under the guise of magnanimous, almost paternal, care. Palpatine is brilliant in his machinations, perfectly cunning in his evil. He knows exactly how to slip in and break people, and he plays Anakin to the furthest extreme. I’m not saying Anakin doesn’t have choices, he does, and he makes the worst possible ones, but Palpatine pulls the strings in a way that makes him feel that he has no agency - and in truth, he does have very little agency throughout every step of his arc, marrying Padme and loving her in spite of the rules is one of the only independent choices he ever makes that isn’t an order, a demand, a fulfilling of duty - and Palpatine poises himself as the answer to all the problems, if Anakin does as he’s told. He’s been hard-wired to take orders for too long. He is so damaged by this point, and so distrusting - Hayden said something once about how Anakin is still very naive in ROTS, even after what he’s been through in the war, he’s still so young and unknowing about many things, and then his naivete is shattered by complete and utter disillusionment, and that shock is terrible and incomprehensible for him, so he clings to the one source of power he’s given, and it’s catastrophic). He is haunted by grief and impeded by fear of loss, and it drags him into an abyss. We watch all of this happen with bated breath, we see everyone fail him, we see every moment where he could have been helped, we see every path he could take if only he had the ability to stand up for himself and had been given the tools to cope with his psychological and emotional baggage, we see that he very nearly turns back, up until the death knell at the end. We know it’s coming from the moment they land on Tatooine and meet him and decide to make him a Jedi. We know, and we still hope for it to turn out differently. We know, and it still breaks our hearts.

I don’t want to make blanket statements about typical male viewers vs. typical female viewers, that’s too dismissive of a stance to take, but on a seemingly wider scale, I don’t think many of the former (especially the ones who were either older fans or who were teenagers themselves at the time) were as interested in political nuance and a tale of abiding love and a young man burdened with more than should ever have been put on his shoulders. Since the question was basically “why does he appeal to women,” (and not just cishet women) I imagine that the answer to that varies greatly depending on any one perceptive outlook, but has a similar core in each case of us wishing we could help change the outcome, even though we know we can’t, and of wanting to understand his actions and his pain, wanting to see his positive choices and his goodness validated, wanting to see him learn healthy strategies, wanting to see his love flourish, wanting to see him freed from the shackles he drags with him, from childhood to Jedi to Vader. The crush of the standards of society and expectation on him may speak to many. He is never liberated (until his final moments of free breath). His choices are either taken or horrifically tainted. His voice is drowned out by those more powerful around him. His talents and intelligence go largely unrecognized. His good, expansive heart is treated like a hindrance. The depth of his empathy and love is underestimated - and that, in the end, is important, because that underestimation, ending with Palpatine, becomes the Dark Side’s ultimate downfall and undoing. Vader may literally pick up an electric Palpatine and throw him down a reactor shaft, but that physical action is the final answer to a much more complete emotional and spiritual journey. He throws him down and the chains go with the slave master, and for the first time, certainly since before he lost Padme, his heart is unfettered, his love is reciprocated, and he is offered a true voice, a moment of his true self, a sliver of forgiveness, before being embraced again by the transcendence of the light. It is his act of rebellion, it is his own personal revolution, his final blow in the war. The entirety of the arc hinges upon him in that moment, Luke has been valorous and immeasurably valuable, but he’s done all he can do - the final choice is Anakin’s (and it’s such an interesting case because where else have we ever been able to fear and appreciate a villain, and then totally transform and re-contextualize him?). He is in that moment, indeed, the Chosen One.

All these facets are fascinating to watch unfold if you’re willing to be open-minded and heartfelt and sympathetic to the journey, if you’re willing to dig into the complex depth of his pathos.

I remember seeing AOTC as a teenager, and my love was Padme, she was where I was invested, I identified with her, I loved her kindness and her bravery and her sense of honor and justice, I loved that her femininity did not in any way diminish her and was an asset, I loved that, while she takes charge and has the fortitude to rush headlong to the rescue, while she can fight and tote a gun and blast a droid army as well as anyone, her superpowers are her intellect and her giving heart and gentle spirit. I totally get why Anakin holds onto the thread of hope she gives to him for all of those years, and why he falls in love with her as he does, but since I felt a lot of the story through her eyes, I understood why she was drawn to and fell in love with him, too. He’s dynamic and a bit reckless, he’s courageous, but he’s vulnerable and needs support, he’s deeply troubled but also radiantly ebullient at times (the scene in the meadow where she’s so touched by the carefree joy he exhibits, how it delights her and takes her aback, because she’s almost forgotten what it is to feel that, she’s almost forgotten other people could, and here he is, warm and teasing and spirited), he is often guileless, especially with her, he’s fervent and loving in a way she’s never seen or experienced, and that love is given with abandon to her. Who…wouldn’t fall in love with that? It’s a gravitational pull. AOTC impacted me in certain other personal ways as well, I was trying to understand some nascent hollows of grief (Anakin losing his mother as he does was very affecting and heartwrenching for me, at the time I’d lost my grandfather to whom I was quite close, and I’m also really close to my own mom, so his woe had an echo to me), but that vision that I specifically had of their love, the way I interpreted it (which I may not have had words for at the time, but I certainly had the emotional response) was a dear and formative thing.

I talked about this here, but to rephrase/reiterate, by the time ROTS came out, my life had shifted completely on its axis. I was still young, but my much dreamier teenage self was being beaten down and consumed by illness, and I was angry. Anger is not a natural emotion for me (guilt and self-blame tend to be where I bury anger), and I really didn’t know what to do with it. Everything felt unfair and uncertain, like there was no ground at all to stand on. I hurt all the time, literally and figuratively, I was in constant pain. I was lonely and frightened and sleep deprived and often had nightmares (this is still kind of true lol, as is the physical pain part). Padme was still my heart and touchstone - as she remains so to this day in this story - but suddenly I understood Anakin in a much more profound way, one I’ve held onto because he’s important to me and I love him. I felt his rage, his anguish, his desire to do something, anything, to somehow change or influence the situation, to rectify his nightmares, to cling to whatever might make a difference, might save him from being drowned in the dark and from losing everything that made him who he was as a person. Seeing him try and knowing he would fail was devastating, but also…relatable, in an abstract way (obviously not the violent parts, but thematically, I felt some measure of what it was to scramble up a foundation that is disappearing beneath you, that your expectations and dreams of what your life would be can vanish in disintegrating increments). All I wanted was for someone to help rescue him, because all I wanted was for someone to help rescue me. All I wanted was the hope that things could turn around - and there is hope in ROTS, despite the unending terror and tragedy, it’s never entirely gone, because Star Wars exists as a universe with the blazing stars of hope and love ever ignited at its center - but still, it was a very personally rooted emotional exploration for me, and I only started to deal with my own floundering anger when I saw how it might consume the true and loving and softer parts of me if I didn’t hold it back. (A few years later, I went through this again in an even worse way, and the source of that rage and despair was someone I cared for, and once I got through the worst bleak ugliness of it, there were a couple of stories I returned to in an attempt to gain newfound solace and comprehension, and Anakin and Padme were in there. My compassionate, hopeful heart was being torn by that fury, and I clawed my way back up from the brink of it because I knew I could die, not even necessarily figuratively, it was…a bad time, if I didn’t find my way out. Anakin’s story is a tragedy and a fable and a kind of warning - we should not deny or suppress our emotions or our authenticity, but we also cannot let it destroy us - and then ultimately his lesson is restorative, too, that we never lose the essential part of our souls, that we must allow ourselves to feel. Balance indeed). 

As consistent and transparent as my love for Padme has always been, my Anakin emotions are actually so close and personal that I intentionally avoided ever exposing them for actual years, it’s like…basically in the past month that I’ve ever been truly honest about it on Tumblr, because exposing that felt like too much, but I don’t really care about keeping it quiet any more, and that’s very cathartic. 

I myself am an incredibly emotional person, and I don’t believe that Anakin’s emotions are negative qualities, which I meant to underscore. In fact, his open emotions are an exquisite part of him, and it’s the Jedi who are wrong for trying to stamp that out, when his emotional abilities are part of what define him in his inherent goodness and his intellect and strength. He has an undying heart. For he and Luke both to stand as male heroes who represent such depth of feeling is really special, and vital to the story. Anakin is the most acutely human character in many respects, in his foibles and his inner strengths, in his losses and his longings and his ultimate return to his true self - that’s why we feel for him, that’s why we ache and fear for him, that’s why we rejoice for him in the end.

Other people could speak to the Vader part of it much better than I can, Vader’s an amazing and very interesting villain (the fact that, as Vader, Anakin is much more adhered to the Jedi code and way of thinking than he ever was as an actual Jedi, for example - he has an order to him, he is much more dispassionate, he is very adamant about the power of the Force - is endlessly intriguing, because he’s such a contradiction). I use this term for a different character, but I’m going to apply it here - Anakin is a poem of opposites. He is a center that can serve as either sun or black hole. He is a manifestation of love and light and heroism, he is a figure of imposing power and cold rage. He’s the meadow and the volcano. The question then becomes, how expansive are we? When we’re filled with the contradicting aspects of ourselves, how do we make them whole without falling apart? When we do fail, can we ever do anything to fix it? And the answers again will vary by individual, but to my mind - we’re infinite, and thus infinitely capable of, at any point, embracing our light, even if we’ve forgotten to have faith in it, and while we may not be able to fix every mistake or right every wrong, we can make a better choice and alter the path. The smallest of our actions can ripple and extend and are more incandescent than we know. That’s what he does, against all expectation. In the end, he is an archetype not only of a hero (be that fallen or chosen or divine), but of a wayward traveler come home, a heart rekindled, a soul set free to emerge victorious in the transcendent light.

In the final resonance of that story for me personally, I love him for being a representation of that journey, that no matter how long it takes to get there, how arduous it is - that things we lose can be found again, that with the decided act of compassion, pure, redemptive love can be held onto, that the light persists and that, even when it flickers most dimly, refuses to be extinguished, and can at any point illuminate not only ourselves, but can shine brightly enough to match the stars in the universe.

I hope this is at all cogent, here’s a gif for your patience ♥

Princess Leia!

*slinks in months later* … I’m terrible, forgive me for taking as long on this as I have. Leia is such a great love, every time I’ve attempted to answer this I’ve cringed at the inadequacy of the portrayal and deleted the response, which was admittedly … counterproductive

@azalea-scroggs​ has written a really insightful response to this same meme for Leia, which I can only echo

do I like them: not at first. no, seriously, until about age twelve or so, I spent most of my head in rotj with luke and vader. leia doesn’t have any memorable lines or even much in the way of a role beyond love interest in rotj, which I think was the problem (I remember an intense hatred of the bikini and attempting to dress like luke in all black). things changed when I began to read fanfic - fernwithy’s “Father’s Heart” had a huge impact - and started to see through her eyes, to see, when rewatching the films, in her eyes and action great complexity. now she’s the main reason I return to SW (together with vader). I adore her, as I adore Carrie, and absolutely have a women’s march poster with her face on it tacked to my wall

5 “good” qualities: like @azalea-scroggs, I admire her 

restless commitment to resistance and hope, to emancipation (however defined) in a world seemingly utterly determined and controlled and fated by the imperial apparatus

bravery in the face of the worst possible odds (she doesn’t subside in complacency or resignation - except when it comes to her own son? still processing this part of tlj)

firm willingness to shoulder responsibility for her actions (to be the rock for others, to lead when few others are willing or able, to make the hard choices, and to see her cause through even if it kills her)

compassion and selflessness (she puts others before herself, to the point of self-sacrifice, in nearly every comic, in anh, and on hoth - which is not necessarily the smartest move, she is easily captured as a result - until tlj with amilyn, which I still haven’t quite processed)

quick-wittedness (to me her wit is the most devastating in the films, next to Vader’s)

3 “bad” qualities: 

pride in the sense of entitlement - in anh especially, some of her remarks reveal potential blindnesses to her own privilege (see below)

stubbornness in the form of assuming she’s always the best suited to be in charge. this is a trope in the comics (usually to bring out her attraction to han in the form of them squabbling over who should be leading the mission), but it’s also rather padmé-esque (one woman wonder, savior complex). while things tend to work out for everyone in the end, it’s a quality marked by blindness, one with destructive potential

this is not a “bad quality”, rather a personality trait that could be used effectively for ends good or ill: for all the talk of how she’s like Anakin - her explosions of temper, tied to how she bottles things in and dismisses her own emotions - I tend to see Vader in her cool, in her cunning, in how she plots, for instance, against Jabba. I like to think she’d been planning to strangle him the entire time she was chained, and there’s something about how she seems to scheme during that sequence, in how she internalizes pain, how she rationalizes, that I could see developed in all kinds of fascinating and morally dubious directions

favourite episode/etc: anh in terms of what she gets to say and do (defy vader and tarkin with sass, take over her own rescue), esb in terms of what is implied about her (the shot of her staring out at the icy landscape as the blast doors close, faced with the renewed guilt of not merely surviving alderaan, but now too of potentially having shut her found family out to their deaths; her silent exchange with vader in the carbon freezing chamber, how she seems to read him and realize she has the time to kiss han goodbye - all that that moment could be read to imply about what vader knows of her force ability and her own latent abilities, about her daring)

otp: romantically? han/leia, which I don’t, however, tend to read. what I’m actually here for is genfic about leia and vader. don’t ask me why, I would never stop talking 

brotp: luke to an extent, amilyn to an extent also. would love to see her more with aphra, the two of them are such wild contrasts

ot3: the golden trio yadda yadda (preferably in gen though)

notp: with vader, any sort of torture porn 

best quote: nearly every one of her lines is memorable (except, perhaps, in rotj, where she suddenly lacks for wit. “We have powerful friends. You’re going to regret this” is rather dull compared to her usual repartee). I do find “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” interesting - troubling - because it’s directed against a non-human ally. that is to say, it showcases her temper, and with her temper all sorts of troubling assumptions. even if she doesn’t actually think humans superior to say, wookies, even if one reads this remark as merely an expression of her frustration with the management of her rescue, she nonetheless effectively objectifies chewbacca (commodifies him in her insult, turns him into what his fur could be useful for), not least by asking someone - namely someone human - to remove him from her exalted presence. while we know she comes to love and respect chewbacca and that she’s later committed to fighting for the rights of all beings in the galaxy, it’s not clear to me from anh that the princess from space switzerland was always that way

head canon: she hasn’t actually given up on ben, she isn’t obi-wan, she’s just … grieving and talking to a projection of her brother for what she suspects is the last time and isn’t going to derail him from what he’s come to do

The thing is that every single choice made in the movie was a deliberate attempt to obliterate the original trilogy. Luke Skywalker, the hero we all were waiting for and have loved for decades, the man who no matter what never lost hope or faith or gave up on his loved ones or his family or stopped believing in the Light? Whose entire character arc CULMINATED in his statement, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” was entirely unrecognizable. Instead we learn that despite the events of the OT, he almost murdered his nephew in his sleep—an act so disgracefully out of character that I literally CRIED. Instead of the hero we all know and love, they wrote that into the script explicitly to give Kylo Ren a more “sympathetic” back story—so they literally cared more about getting the audience to sympathize with and excuse the actions of a fascist murderer than they cared about the legacy of and integrity of Luke Skywalker, without whom they wouldn’t even HAVE a franchise to screw up. In addition to this, Luke has turned his back on his sister—not even willing to help her when she’s begging for him to come back or when he learns that Han Solo is dead, despite the fact that one of his defining qualities in the OT is his outright refusal to abandon Leia and his intense love for and loyalty to her to the extent that it’s the threat against HER—not against the galaxy or against himself—that causes Luke to almost lose control of his anger in ROTJ. They LITERALLY threw away the Skywalker legacy; Luke literally throws away the lightsaber like it’s pathetic, worthless garbage. This moment was not only significant within the context of the film—it had powerful implications for the audience. It was literally saying, “this lightsaber and all it represents is trash.” It was taking something we treasured—Luke’s journey and triumph—and spitting on it in front of our faces. What was the whole point of the original trilogy, of Luke’s story, if this is how the new film treats it? And add to that that he is portrayed as a grumpy, isolated, selfish coward too absorbed in self-disgust and self-absorption (as a result of the WILDLY out of character act of wanting to kill his nephew, by the way) to care about his family, or to try to at least RIGHT HIS WRONGS. He was dedicated to protecting the galaxy and now his own angst matters more to him than the fact that he alone had the power to stop the First Order from blowing up planets and enslaving and everyone, and as a result of his vanity and cowardice, that is exactly what happens. The new republic capital system is obliterated and, as the crawl informs us, “the First Order reigns” and now his nephew has become the next Emperor. Kylo Ren’s corruption just by nature of his existence in the story as a member of the Dark Side is already against the very point of the original trilogy—it’s basically blasphemy—but to try to insinuate that it’s partially Luke’s fault, and then that he doesn’t even try to make it right? There are no words for how disgraceful that is. And our hero whose greatest victory was that moment of becoming a Jedi at last spends a good hour telling the audience how stupid he was, how the Jedi should end, how he’s a failure and how we should not look upon him as a hero or hold dear his journey to our hearts. The film mocks him and does everything in its power to mar the beauty and goodness of the original trilogy, bending over backwards to say, “Luke was a blinded, self-absorbed fool and now look where he is.” This was deliberate. They invalidated the original trilogy on purpose.

And even at the end of the film when Luke finally tries to help, he is still out of character the entire time, telling Leia that there’s no hope, that he won’t try to save her son—even though supposedly (though I will never accept it, it is an Untruth) it’s Luke’s fault that her son fell. And then, after buying time for his sister to escape, Luke dies an old, broken down man who had lost his faith and his purity of spirit and his dedication to his family, alone as a hermit after having spent years in self-imposed exile so he could have a pity party and let the galaxy crumble and his sister suffer. Don’t be fooled. Rian Johnson and Lucasfilm knew that this was not Luke Skywalker. Anyone with half a brain can see that they systematically stripped him of every single thing that made him Luke Skywalker, right down to stating that he could find peace in death finally now that he’s had purpose, indirectly telling us all that he’d been a failure until then and that the events of the original trilogy, which the audience had been told throughout the course of the film were a farce—were inconsequential, and that the only path left to him was to sacrifice himself to just barely try to “redeem” himself for being such a failure and a coward and a piece of shit.

This is all, of course, in conjunction with Han and Leia’s son being a cold-blooded and deranged killer who embraces and represents EVERYTHING that his parents and uncle fought to destroy. This is in addition to Han and Leia’s love story being entirely invalidated, as well, with their marriage ending in estrangement and misery, with JJ Abrams stating in interviews that the two of them were incompatible and never have worked out. This is in addition to Han’s whole arc being ignored and him being reduced to a selfish smuggler again—his son is running around being not only a Space Nazi but basically the right-hand Space Nazi and is singlehandedly murdering countless people in the name of the First Order and his wife is all alone and in constant danger fighting a war with no help and trying to get their son back, and Han Solo just decides to traipse around “swindling people” and reverting to little more than petty crime instead of wanting to help or protect his wife or find Luke or do literally anything about what was happening. This was done despite the fact that Han was selfless and brave at every single turn of the OT, and that his whole story was about devoting himself to his friends and risking his life to save them and admitting that he’s not an apathetic criminal but a hero who is willing to go toe to toe with Vader himself to protect Leia, to save the galaxy, to do what’s right. And they stripped him of that entire arc and painted him as selfish and wrote his relationship with Leia as futile and miserable and resulting in the monster who is destroying the galaxy.

Leia has now lost EVERYTHING. She lost her entire PLANET in the OT, and found a family and solace in the man she loved, in her brother, in her friends, and in the freedom and democracy she almost singlehandedly brought to fruition, and they ripped all that away from her. They destroyed the New Republic and also made it a point to DISCREDIT HER, to let us all know that the no one was even taking her seriously about the First Order anyways. They made Han leave her side even though her safety was his top priority from every single moment in the OT as soon as they met. They cast a black shadow on her marriage to let us all know that they were doomed to fail and suffer, and then they killed Han Solo to serve Kylo Ren’s story just like they sacrificed Luke to that same story, ruining Leia’s life further in the process. They made her son be evil. They made Luke abandon her so that she didn’t even have her brother there by her side, and then they killed him too. So Leia has NOTHING. They made it a point to tell us that not one single person in the galaxy was willing to come to Leia’s aid when she uses her personal code to send a distress signal. They even stripped her of her NAME. No no no, this isn’t Princess Leia. She’s GENERAL ORGANA and you’d better accept it.

Let the past die, because we’re murdering it.

That’s what the sequel trilogy has done. They have deconstructed every single victory the OT had, made the heroes miserable at every chance they got, stripped them of all the best qualities of their characters, systematically undid every single part of their happy ending, and then even took it a step further to not only make it so that they didn’t win, but to make it seem that their actions—what had until now been victories—were actually “vanities” and indirectly blamed them for every single bad thing that’s happened since. Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm did everything in their power to ruin the original trilogy to such an extent that it is IMPOSSIBLE that it wasn’t deliberate.

These movies are not Star Wars.

i’ll put this under a cut, last jedi spoilers below; this is basically just me working through the movie. unlike tfa which i left in silent emotional meltdown i feel like i have a solid hold on this movie even after one viewing so here we fuckin go

overall, as said before: not a tremendous disappointment, as i feared. it avoided some of the pitfalls i was most afraid of and it did some interesting things, while definitely having a few things i found entirely unconvincing, unnecessary, or downright bad

caveat: both some of the things i like and dislike here could be changed or muddled in a heartbeat depending on their choices in episode 9. things could be pulled in a lot of different directions

things i liked:

- the first scene of the movie. honestly, it was fucking electric; the action was heartpounding, i fell in love with (then mourned) paige in just a couple minutes, good development for poe. it started off the movie really well and it left a good taste in my mouth that helped me treat the rest of the movie more optimistically. also i did cry. in fact i cried several times but here first

- no reylo. the reylos can pretend all they like, but frankly, it’s just not real and to me that was obvious.

- imo, interesting development between kylo ren and rey. it had some moments i disliked which i’ll touch on later but overall i thought it was well done; the parallels to return of the jedi, then the realization that this is /not that/ and that these are different people and different times with different solutions and outcomes, was good

- in general, and people can disagree, i appreciate the more specific, granular, less archetypal character focus. clumsy at times, but still

- tying into, i am so glad snoke is dead. the false palpatine, the false emperor, the pretender. soon as i saw his ship arrive in person i knew he was dead, and soon as rey aimed towards his ship i /knew/ he was dead. i want a little more detail of how he got where he is, but honestly i wouldn’t mind if it came in a throwaway line or in the eu. it just hit, strongly, that this is a different story with a different ending that still mirrors the old; but distorted and new

- speaking of, scene with the royal guards (force sensitive somewhat, certainly) was neat

- hitting on this again but from a different angle, the clear separation (and yet hearkening back to; books in the falcon) between old and new was refreshing. i’m not surprised they didn’t go full ‘the jedi must truly end’ even though i kind of wanted it, but the very clear signal and clear choices made to show that things are going to be different from hereon out was necessary and good

- like yet again, it definitely parallels both esb and rotj, but the details of the plot struck different chords and the setting of the battlestar galactica type chase was i think a good one

- speaking of, though imo he came off too snarky one too many times, luke was convincing to me, and his arc made a lot of sense, all in all (talk about the ending of all that in a bit)

- moving back a bit, poe’s arc was. surprisingly good? interesting, made sense with what we knew about him, they didn’t just make Holdo wrong and stupid; he clearly learned, and it made perfect sense imo

- loved seeing the rich, capitalist, war profiteering assholes composing ‘the worst place in the galaxy in contrast to what we’ve seen before; loved seeing their shitty city get shat on

- maz’s scene was lit

- leia like. used the force? rad. weird way of shooting the scene but i’ll give it a pass

- acting good; more billie lourd good

- at least some steps towards background diversity

- i actually felt like kylo ren’s emotional arc made sense and i feel like he’s going to die in the next film. once again, new problems, new solutions, even if we are playing some of the same melodies. him as essentially the main bad guy in the next movie will be fascinating one way or another

things i /didn’t/ like:

- Finn’s story arc. he didn’t end up accomplishing anything; they didn’t hit his growth hard enough, didn’t interact with rey or poe enough, didn’t get enough emotional pay off. just generally there wasn’t enough and it pissed me off; he’s a centerpiece for these movies and he needs to remain one for them to really work. the whole ‘protect what you love not destroy what you hate’ is not bad but it needed to be hit way harder and invole poe and rey directly

- specific related quibble: why the fuck didn’t finn and rey get a single scene in which they fucking talked

- i loved rose and i don’t think it really implies that Finn like, likes her, but the kiss was vaguely annoying and unnecessary.

- the way luke ‘died’ and did that whole fight sequence was not terrible, but it didn’t quite do it. i feel like we need more out of him in ep 9 to finish that off for real

- speaking of? yoda never got enough character development to realize that like, moving on and making a new world and blowing up that tree was necessary. yoda is a hidebound, set-in-his-ways dude and i wasn‘t convinced by that; it was a cheap way to accelerate luke’s development and choices

- moving ever further back, rey’s whole flirting with the dark side thing either needed to genuinely not be hit much at all or be hit harder. it had potential but then just kinda got dropped. the throne room scene and the mirror scene were both undercut by not having delved into her psyche better and more deeply. i might change my view somewhat here on a second viewing but

- like thor: ragnarok, i felt like the use of humor to that extent undercut emotional weight and muddled the tone.

- wish it didn’t feel so much like different directors; the fact that the background cast--including temmin wexley, who is important in the new eu stuff--from tfa basically disappeared was a little jolting, esp after having watch tfa last night

- speaking of. porgs. hmmm.

- ice foxes? cute but a cheap way out for that last bit. finn should have used the force that he definitely should have to find the way out. or leia

- some weird cutting that felt kinda disjointed with the scene changes

- i have other quibbles, but two main, big things left that are separate from other stuff in significant ways

- one: a technical quibble. or more like a MASSIVE FUCKING HYPERSPACE SIZED HOLE IN AN ENTIRE FLEET HOLY SHIT YOU REALIZE THIS RUINS TACTICS THROUGHOUT ALL STAR WARS RIGHT. RIGHT. I GET THAT THAT’S WHAT HAPPENING BUT MAKING US SEE IT MEANS WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT AND THAT IS VERY, VERY BAD. like seriously. how many times could that fucking tactic have changed entire battles? wars? like??? please give me some dumb reason why that usually wouldn’t work i dearly need it for my sanity here. in fairness though? cool as shit. but like, not worth the grief it’s causing me and will continue to cause me through all future star wars properties

- lastly, and debatably most importantly. and i’ll start small and specific. that very last scene, the one with the little kid, is emblematic of the fundamental cowardice of disney, lucasfilm, rian, whomever. the opportunity to have our little force-wielding kid be literally anything but a white person (and a white boy)? so fucking there. begging to be brought to life. an alien? focus on the little black boy instead? anything else?? like, not only does it frustrate me from a sheer rep perspective--as in, it’s basically canon that only white humans can do anything meaningful with the force, which is shit--but it also fundamentally undercuts the themes of the film, cheapening the concept (still unproven, admittedly) of having rey be not a legacy kid to a fucking massive degree. it left a terrible taste in my mouth.

- and relatedly? the general lack of aliens in resistance roles? the sidelining of finn? combined with those themes? dumb. stupid. bad. cowardly. and the lack of any lbgt stuff of any kind? no real interaction between poe and finn for the most part? related, and bad.

stuff i’m ambivalent about (incomplete list)

rey random. i kind of like that it’s not a legacy, though i get why some disagree. still not convinced that’s like, real though. i think the theming of rey needing to accept that she’s here on her own power not on that of legacy, and of anyone having the potential to great ill or good regardless of their bloodline, has potential, but it heavily depends on what they do with it in episode 9. glad i never go invested in any of those theories tbh

overall. not bad, definitely flawed. i feel pretty confident about where i’m at with it except with the rey flirting the dark side arc; i need to see it again to determine whether i’ve missed something. anyway i’m sure no one will read this but at least it helps to put it down somewhere

The Last Jedi, or SOMEONE REALLY SHOULD HAVE EXPLAINED HOW ANAKIN FELL TO LUKE IN A WAY THAT WASN'T SPOKEN IN RIDDLES.

Spoilers ahead but also some meta. I don't know how to add a line break/cut on mobile.

I loved the last Jedi but some stuff about luke's character bothered me. He felt ooc from what his character arc ended with in ROTJ. Granted this is a man haunted by failures and the death of legit everything he worked for, but I even then it felt out of character for Luke Skywalker, the Jedi who brought anakin back from the dark side, to believe that killing his nephew was the only thing he could do to stop his fall. That's not the man who almost died because he believed his father had good left in him, even after all the crimes Vader committed.

So here's my theory: back when sidious was manipulating anakin, the Jedi council missed HUGE signs that something was up with Anakin. They knew there was sith involved, but didn't suspect it was palpatine. (Despite the FLASHING NEON WARNING SIGNS). All they knew was that anakin was a shatter point, a dangerous one (still should have trained him harder and maybe not let him get all cozy with palpatine in ways NO OTHER JEDI WAS REALLY ALLOWED, but I digress.) But not how he played into it. Or how palpatine played into it. This is because palpatine was able to manipulate the force enough to cloud even the foresight of yoda. He was virtually untraceable in the force. This made him able to plant seeds of doubt in anakin's mind that over the course of the clone wars were one by one confirmed.

Seed one: padme would die. Palpatine manipulated anakin's force visions to constantly torment him with visions of padme dying. Anakin's love for her, which was a good thing and could have done wonders for the order, became instead a tool of control. Anakin would do anything for her.

Seed two: the Jedi were corrupt and wanted power, and didn't think him worthy enough to be a Jedi knigt, and that the Jedi were turning from their own code and becoming hypocritical. Palpatine manipulated the way anakin viewed the council and its actions. As more and more death came of the Jedi actions throughout the war, anakin slowly began to have his doubts confirmed. The loss of his padawan, Ahsoka Tano, to the machinations of another padawan who had lost faith made anakin even more wary of the Jedi. Palpatine used the destruction of the war to frame the Jedi order in an even worse light. When Obi-Wan was no longer immediately at Anakin's side to ground him and help him see clearly, Anakin was weak to Palpatine's influence. It came to a head when the council tried using him as a spy on palpatine, because by then Anakin believed palpatine to be a loyal and sympathetic friend who shared his doubts about the order and would listen to his problems. He saw the jedi council's caution as hypocrisy and a power move. This escalated when, upon revealing the identity of the sith lord to them, mace windu did as Jedi usually do with sith and IMMEDIETLY went to confront him. Anakin saw this as betrayal- a peace keeping order that supposedly fought for justice was going to murder a man that had otherwise been a good person and strong leader throughout a bloody and destructive war. There would be no trial, no negotiations. Just straight up slaughter. This confirmed what palpatine had been feeding him about the Jedi order; they wanted power. This is why he was so quick to jump to Palpatine's aid. The jedi had been lured into a position where they looked like the villains.

Seed three: isolation. Because the war was wrapping up by episode 3, the Jedi were spread out. Anakin didn't have his padawan to distract him as she left the order herself. He wasn't always able to see padme, and despite the fact they were unstoppable together, He and Obi-Wan were not put on the same campaigns. The lack of friends around himto bolster his bonds and make him stronger in the light side allowed for palpatine to slip into anakin's mind. He slipped seeds of distrust and doubt about Obi wan and Padme , both of whom were taking stands against palpatine in ways the chancellor manipulated in anakin's mind to look sinister. Obi-Wan was a Jedi loyal to the council; padme was one of the senators most outspoken against the chancellor's draconian laws and regime and the sudden powers he's was wresting that seemed to turn him autocratic. ( mind you that Anakin was a long time soldier in the war and saw all of palpatine's increased powers and official decrees as necessary. The war was bad. )

So though the failure of the jedi to perceive the manipulations of palpatine, both the force influenced ones and ones he manipulated through his actions ad grand chancellor and leader of the Republic army, the jedi had fallen into a trap where their most powerful student felt utterly betrayed by the order that saved him. It didn't help that they had somewhat alienated him during his training, treated him with less respect than he believed he deserved, and many high council members straight up didn't trust him. It also didn't help that by that point in the war the Jedi had become more combative than peace keeping. Mace windu struck first, asked questions later. It seemed a far divide from how Jedi were supposed to do things.

Now, one would think that yoda would have passed this knowledge onto Luke during his training so that Luke didn't make the same mistakes. But luke fell for the same trap as his teachers.

1.) He saw ben's power and aggression and instead of teaching him proper ways to handle it, reprimanded it, which created tension between himself and his nephew that Snokes could easily manipulate from frustration between student and teacher to outright hatred.

2.) He failed to sense Snokes manipulating ben's mind through the force. And even then failed to adequately guard his students from the dark side.

3.) Snokes was able to use ben's frustration and growing resentment to begin to isolate the teen just as palpatine did to anakin. We see ben in his own little shack, with o other students. This is not how Jedi typically function, where every student was together in shared spaces. Luke seemed to contribute to the isolation of Ben, which made him easy prey for snoke.

3.) Snokes planted seeds of doubt into Ben's mind that distanced him further from luke. He no longer saw luke's lessons as helpful or even purposeful. He began to see the training of the Jedi as laughable to those teachings of the sith. The more luke struggled to reign in Ben and teach him, the more hypocrisy Ben saw.

4.) I'm of the opinion Snokes manipulated luke himself. Luke failed to see the struggled Ben was undergoing, the torment Snokes was putting him through. Instead he saw a teenager falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. He began to believe that Ben could not be saved. This is out of character for luke, who we saw struggle with the dark side and draw anakin back to the light. I feel like, as with mace windu, whose mind was clouded and who could not sense the deeper machinations of sidious, only that there was a sith and they needed to be disposed of, luke was lured into believing the only way to stop Ben's descent before it reached critical mass was to destroy him. That sort of thinking is dark side thinking l. The nagging doubts in luke's mind that told him killing was the only answer? That's the dark side. That's fear taking control and manipulating him. Only, luke realized too late that he was falling dangerously close to the dark side. He realized it only when he went to slay his nephew while he slept, stopping at the last minute with a "Holy shit wtf am I doing?"

5.) Unfortunately he still walked right into the trap because at that moment Snokes pulled the strings. Luke never got the chance to explain because Ben woke up to find his uncle standing over him with his lightsaber. In that moment all the lies and manipulations and doubts snokes had been feeding him were confirmed. He defended himself against his attacker and betrayed by someone who was supposed to guide and protect him, fell to the dark side.

So yeah. Luke fell to the same trap the Jedi Order did. Let's hope rey doesn't do the same. Like, yoda confirming that everything Rey needs is inside her ND also she took the Jedi texts, things that CLEARLY no one has read in a damn long time, might actually help prevent this from happening again. I like how yoda is like "we were meant to pass on our successes, and our greatest failures." And honestly I think Rey will be able to actually learn something from Luke's failure. I'm not sure if she will be able to destroy Kylo Ren by bringing Ben Organa-Solo back to the light side (or to the light side for the first time ever). It was kind of clear Kylo Ren, now turned loose without Snokes pulling his strings, is now completely chaotic. He truly is the dark side made manifest; driven by passionate hate and lust for revenge, out of control and hell bent on destroying everything to dominate it all. But at least Rey will know the true extent of what a sith lord can do, and how deep manipulation goes. At least now she knows personally that the dark side is tempting, it promises answers, but what it delivers really conclusions she could have drawn for herself and eventual ruin. She fell for 2.5 seconds, and found that the dark side did not answer her questions, did not give her what she wanted, and only left her with the conclusion she had already known, but didn't want to admit to herself.

Leia Organa, INFP

Recently I read a fantastic post by @bestmixtapeintherecorder about how Han and Leia are so often misjudged as an introvert and an extravert, respectively, when it’s really vice versa. This is something I’ve also been thinking about for a long time, particularly with Leia. In MBTI terms, Leia is almost always typed as either an ESTJ or an ENTJ, and that’s never sat right with me. Both of those seem more like typings based on a pop culture idea of who Leia is rather than on the Leia we actually see in the movies and books. While I realize that as a fictional character, the minutia of her personality is somewhat open to interpretation, I think I have ample reason to argue that she’s an INFP instead.

Disclaimer: I myself am an INFP. Maybe this makes me biased. Maybe this means I have unique insight into how an INFP would act when thrown into Leia’s situation. Maybe both! Either way, I think there’s plenty of evidence to back up my opinion. BUT: one of the joys of fictional characters is that we get to project ourselves onto them, and consequently they shape our perception of our own journeys and who we are. So if you prefer an ESTJ Leia or some other type entirely, more power to you. Feel free to ignore this (or argue away to your heart’s content). I’m writing this for everyone else who isn’t satisfied with that typing.

I’m going to be drawing evidence from not only the movies, but also from parts of the new Disney canon like Bloodline and the Aftermath Trilogy, as well as what I see as generally accepted fanon (particularly among fanfic writers). If you’re not into Disney canon, don’t worry — there should still be enough without it to back up my argument.

You may be asking, why INFP? Aren’t INFPs more of a quiet, soft and gentle type compared to Leia, who takes charge and will not hesitate to put you in your place? Truth is, INFPs often get stereotyped as the most cinnamon roll type of all the cinnamon rolls, but this is, quite frankly, wrong. They certainly can act like cinnamon rolls at times (when they’re at their least stressed), often being very kind, tolerant, sensitive and compassionate. But cross their deeply-held values, or get them stressed, and they will wipe the floor with you. In reality, INFPs are the type that looks like a cinnamon roll but will kill you.

I’m going to argue that most of the time we see Leia in the movies (especially in ANH and ESB), she is really stressed. Consequently, we see a lot more of her inferior function, Te, than we would otherwise. This is why people often mistakenly type her as a Te-dom (ESTJ or ENTJ). In doing so, they’re failing to account for the fact that Leia has had/is having a whole lot of super freaking stressful and traumatic things happen to her, which is naturally going to shape how her personality appears to us.

First let’s take a look at each of the INFP cognitive functions and how Leia exhibits them, and then I’ll do some further expounding and comparison with ESTJ/ENTJ.

Dominant Function: Introverted Feeling (Fi)

Leia’s core motivation for everything she does is her values — this is what drives her. Very idealistic, she throws her entire life into championing her cause and fighting for justice, freedom, and everything she believes is right. In the SW Rebels episode A Princess on Lothal, she tells Ezra, “I feel like because I can fight, I have to, for those who cannot.” (Te-doms, on the other hand, while having Fi as their inferior function, are driven more by a need to direct, organize and problem-solve.) While she may be a lot more open-minded on lesser matters, she will rigidly defend her values when they are challenged and can be somewhat black and white when it comes to them.

She doesn’t feel the need to conform. She is strong-willed and stubborn, and can be a bit rebellious, willing even to defy her superiors in order to do what she feels is right. We can see this in the Princess Leia comic when she disobeys General Dodonna’s orders in order to gather and protect the galaxy’s remaining Alderaanians, in Aftermath: Life Debt when she defies Mon Mothma and runs off to rescue Han and help liberate Kashyyyk, in Bloodline when she engages in some questionably legal behavior because she feels her investigation is so important, and of course, in her position as a rebel to begin with.

Additionally, growing up, she sometimes struggled with conforming to what was expected of her as a princess or learning certain things (such as her aunts’ etiquette lessons and politics) if she didn’t think they were meaningful, true to her values and/or herself. Eventually, after talks such as the one she remembers having with her father in the Princess Leia comic (#2), her eyes were opened to the meaning and potential in politics, how it could be used to champion a cause, and she decided to follow in Bail’s footsteps.

At the beginning of Bloodline, Leia is disillusioned by the state of the Senate and wants to quit her role as senator.  She tells Han, “Every debate on the Senate floor turns into an endless argument over ‘tone’ or ‘form’ and never about issues of substance.” When she takes action later, she feels much more like herself again, because she feels like she’s doing something meaningful. This shows she’s less concerned about the organization of the New Republic than about defending the values and causes that are close to her heart.

Leia is incredibly passionate. Like all Fi-doms, she has a rich inner world of emotion, though it is sometimes not apparent to others due to her natural guardedness. She can appear cold, but underneath the surface she is anything but. She may be able to analyze her own feelings but have trouble opening up about them to others, except in the occasional outburst. She struggles with admitting her feelings for Han aloud, instead talking about him in the context of her values/the cause (e.g. in the corridors of Hoth — Han is directly asking her to admit her feelings for him and all she can allow herself to say is “You’re a great help to us. You’re a natural leader….”). Later, when confronted by Luke about the truth of her family in RotJ, as @bestmixtapeintherecorder has already said, she shuts down emotionally. She is extremely distressed but unable to open up to Han about everything just yet (she needs more time to process it all inside, first). And yet, throughout the movies, I get the sense that even though she doesn’t always express it, just underneath the surface is a well of deep passion and feeling (which Han can sometimes be pretty good at provoking). I think it is clear that she has a deep emotional fire that both fuels and assails her, and helps drive her in her fight for justice.

Auxiliary Function: Extraverted Intuition (Ne)

Leia chose to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a senator. I doubt she would have done this if she was utterly lacking in Ne, a function that balances the strength of her Fi by helping her to engage empathetically with people and see many possibilities. She is skilled in diplomacy — we see this firsthand in her interaction with the Ewoks in RotJ, whom she is able to befriend and consequently rally to her cause, and throughout the expanded universe (both Disney Canon and old EU). Caring and open-minded, she is able to see and understand multiple points of view (though she may still oppose them rigidly if they run up against the values of her Fi). Her comment to Luke about Han in ANH, “He’s got to follow his own path, no one can choose it for him,” illustrates this. Also, in Bloodline, she is able to acknowledge the perspectives of both Populists and Centrists to some extent, and while she firmly rejects certain Centrist viewpoints, she is willing to seek a compromise for the sake of the bigger picture (her value of protecting the New Republic) when most of her fellow Populists aren’t. She does not dogmatically take a side and stay there unquestioningly. Instead, using her Ne in combination with her Fi, she evaluates all sides of an issue and determines what fits with her values.

She is a good listener, and others may find themselves confiding in her, as Luke does on the way to Yavin, or as Casterfo ends up doing in Bloodline.

Ne also helps her adapt to a situation and be resourceful. We see this in her finding a way out of the detention block through the garbage chute in ANH, her use of the chain that bound her to Jabba to strangle him, and countless other ways.

Fanon usually describes Leia as a broadly intelligent person with wide academic interests and an appreciation for the arts and sciences. While we don’t have a chance to see this side of her in the movies simply because it’s wartime, Ne would make her curious and eager to learn and understand (at least whatever her Fi tells her to be interested in). It would also give her a measure of creativity and a way to healthily channel her emotions, something which she has no opportunity to do while at war, to her own detriment. An INFP’s Ne can also give them a particular skill with words and language, which we see in Leia’s ability (bolstered by the Force) to compose inspiring and persuading speeches.

Finally, her Ne may be a factor in making her particularly adept at certain Force skills. Leia seems to have a profound intuitive connection with her environment, magnified through the Force. She is very sensitive to the ambience of a place, to feelings, and impressions. We see this in her nervousness at Cloud City because something doesn’t feel right, and her sense of having “always known” during her talk with Luke in RotJ. There’s a beautiful passage in the RotJ novel where, as she’s led by Wicket to the Ewok’s village, she has a sudden awareness of the trees and the world around her that fills her with wonder, and a sense of being caught up in the grandness of the universe and the life-force. This not only fits with her Force abilities, but also with Ne.

Tertiary Function: Introverted Sensing (Si)

Si places a lot of weight on personal experiences/memories, lessons learned in the past. It is nostalgic and takes comfort in routine, tradition and familiarity (providing some balance with her Ne, which is more open to new experiences and adventure).

Leia has a good memory; she remembers “images” of her real mother (possibly from a dream). She is also committed to continuing her father’s work and upholding the ideals of Alderaan and the Republic. When she is struggling, she often turns to routine for comfort, losing herself in her work and in her efforts for the cause.


In the Aftermath trilogy, she has trouble adjusting to both her new life post-fighting and the New Republic. She is so used to being able to act when she sees something wrong, but now it seems like there are a million political hoops to jump through that weren’t there before. When faced with a breach in her Fi’s values, she falls back on tradition and, in a sense, never stops being a rebel. Later, she will found the Resistance — once again, it’s a familiar way of doing things for her, coupled with her Fi’s quest for meaning and defense of values.

Inferior Function: Extraverted Thinking (Te)

Leia has been thrust into leadership positions throughout her whole life. As @bestmixtapeintherecorder said, this doesn’t mean that she’d choose it for herself, all things being equal. In fact, in RotJ, we see her taking more of a backseat, and in Bloodline, she only accepts her nomination for First Senator with extreme reluctance. However, when put into a leadership position, she shows herself to be effective and able. Her Te also couples with her Fi to lead her to jump into a debate or fight if she feels her values are challenged.

Like I said earlier, Te is where I think everyone gets hung up when typing Leia. She so clearly exhibits Te that most people assume it’s her dominant function (hence ESTJ and ENTJ). However, throughout much of the movies, Leia is incredibly stressed. Under extreme stress, the inferior function tends to take the lead, though it often comes out in negative ways or as somewhat of a caricature of dominant Te. This is exactly what we often see in Leia, particularly in ANH and ESB. Throughout those movies, she’s lost her home and family, she’s been through torture and trauma, she’s fighting on the front lines in a war, and on top of all that, she’s struggling with her frustration at and feelings for Han. Consequently, she is frequently “in the grip” of her Te. When this happens, she lashes out at others, unleashing sarcasm and biting remarks, becoming more rigid, judgmental, intolerant and even insensitive. Everything becomes even more black and white as the tempering nature of her Ne is gone. She will often seek to gain control of a situation (and thus control of herself, too).

A good example of this is in Aftermath: Life Debt when her stress over Han’s disappearance and her frustration over what she feels are heartless political processes cause her to explode during a meeting with Mon Mothma, Admiral Ackbar, and others. We also see this at the beginning of Bloodline — when faced with Casterfo’s collection of Imperial paraphernalia (which challenges her values and likely also triggers her PTSD), she eventually loses control of her anger, forgets any semblance of tolerance she had previously tried to summon, and lets loose on Casterfo, arguing viciously with him before coldly leaving the room. And of course, we see this throughout the movies in her sarcasm and insults as she takes charge of her rescue in ANH, and in her constant fighting with Han in ESB.

Sometimes, when in the grip of her Te, she may make questionable decisions in the heat of the moment, saying things she’ll later regret or trying to “fix” a situation in a way that won’t fix it at all (for example, kissing Luke in ESB to prove a point to Han that isn’t even true).

By the second half of RotJ, while she is still in a stressful wartime situation, I’d argue that she’s much more relaxed, having Han back and feeling a new sense of determination and purpose. Consequently, we don’t see as much of her sharp tongue, angry outbursts, or need for control.

If Leia were an ESTJ or an ENTJ, her behavior would be somewhat different when stressed. An ExTJ in the grip of inferior Fi is less able to think logically or stay organized and efficient, and they will tend to be overcome by the feeling that they aren’t appreciated for what they do. I don’t think we see this in Leia at all during her most stressful moments. On the contrary, she becomes more logical, rigid, and efficient, and doesn’t seem to wallow in self-pity (though she may be very critical of both herself and others).

I also think that if Leia were an ESTJ or ENTJ, she wouldn’t be quite as idealistic as we see her throughout the books and the movies. Leia is so clearly driven by her values, by her fight for the cause, and she will and often does push back against what she sees as cold, sterile rules and bureaucracy when it hinders her fight for what she believes is right. An ESTJ or ENTJ would be more likely to see the necessity of those rules and bureaucracy.

Overall, INFPs are passionate, idealistic, caring, empathetic, stubborn, defensive, deeply emotional but closed off, sometimes tolerant and sometimes intolerant, imaginative, resourceful, sensitive, artistic, intelligent, intuitive, critical, nostalgic, intense dreamers who seek truth, justice and authenticity and are driven to make the world a better place. We see many of these qualities in Leia, and the few that aren’t as readily apparent can be easily explained due to the fact that we’re seeing her in wartime/during a time of stress, where those qualities would naturally be missing. This combined with the fact that Leia’s character and actions fit very well with the INFP functional stack, as I’ve already argued, makes me conclude that Leia is best characterized as an INFP.