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This video has some good facts about Jedi. 

They're not really a popular bunch as we all thought.

I'd like to think Rey herself doesn't want to be a Jedi. It's certainly something she didn't ask for. But the Force being a part of her is a different story. 

The Jedi will be renewed, and the old ways need to be reevaluated and a new kind of Jedi will come about. I'm starting to think that Jedi is just a title now for Force users who wield the power wisely. It's not even about using Light or Dark. It's just using the Force, one and whole, in the best ways.

So yes, I want to see the Jedi as we know it to end and make way for a better iterration.

Just because Pablo and Rian seem to get along does not mean they agree on everything. Rian might still introduce new concepts that Pablo does not like or does not see as new concepts. Rian seems to enjoy layered cakes, Pablo a bit less. So I can't wait to see a scenario where at the end of the ST, the strict Jedi rules fans will go like "See, it's the same cake, it has the Jedi icing on it" and the Grey or Candy Pink Jedi fans will go like "Right, half of the ingredients are different, only the icing is the same, but yeah, let's say it's the same cake." The discussion will never be settled because it happens between people who devotedly follow the recipe in the book and others who do free style baking. In the end if the ones eating the cakes are happy, whatever, although as a free style cooking and baking fan, I do get annoyed when I get lectured by the strict recipe followers. Free style baking can lead to insightful ideas. I tell you, some traditions are just begging to be broken.

SanghaRen wrote:Just because Pablo and Rian seem to get along does not mean they agree on everything. Rian might still introduce new concepts that Pablo does not like or does not see as new concepts. Rian seems to enjoy layered cakes, Pablo a bit less. So I can't wait to see a scenario where at the end of the ST, the strict Jedi rules fans will go like "See, it's the same cake, it has the Jedi icing on it" and the Grey or Candy Pink Jedi fans will go like "Right, half of the ingredients are different, only the icing is the same, but yeah, let's say it's the same cake." The discussion will never be settled because it happens between people who devotedly follow the recipe in the book and others who do free style baking. In the end if the ones eating the cakes are happy, whatever, although as a free style cooking and baking fan, I do get annoyed when I get lectured by the strict recipe followers. Free style baking can lead to insightful ideas. I tell you, some traditions are just begging to be broken.

@SanghaRen

I have no doubt that Rian will explore a wider understanding of The force, it's where that exploration leads that I'm musing on.

Luke Skywalker was Rian's childhood Star Wars hero and the character he still identifies as his favourite. No matter what disagreements Mark Hamill had with him over Luke's direction in TLJ, I honestly cannot see Luke emerging from this with his heroic status horribly tainted in any way. Rian might have Luke facing a dark night of the soul and wanting to walk away from it all but only with the purpose of making the moment when his faith is renewed all the more punch-the-air-worthy.

When it comes to Rey, well, she's the Luke Skywalker of the ST so whatever happens with the Jedi she has to be at the forefront of it and integral to it. It may well be, as with the OT, romance occurs between the secondary protagonists like Finn and Rose but not the central protagonist, as Luke never got a love interest. As I said before, the reverse Anakin r.e Kylo suggests to me an unselfish love in the end. Even if there's temptation between Rey and Kylo as she explores what she wants, it could be she decides to follow the Jedi path and be accepts that and supports her.

Like George Lucas explained, the true Jedi way isn't easy, it's hard because you have to let go of everything but it's where peace is found. This is where it mirrors the zen way of shedding attachments and desires.

I'm still in the camp that if you take a character who's been deprived on human connection/affection/relationships for her entire life, including being shown as hungry/thirsty which is frequently a motif for deeper emotional/psychological needs, and the reward at the end is to become a space nun, that frankly sucks and is cruel to the character. I can see why some fans (and I'm not picking on anybody here, this is an argument I've seen made so many other places) make this argument about how because Luke was the protagonist of the OT, whatever happens to Rey is fine as long as it mirrors exactly what happened to him. But they seem to confuse that Rey being the protagonist coming in their powers and taking up the mantle to mean that Rey should be an exact stand-in/proxy for Luke. It stems from the same type of reasoning that makes people believe that Rey has to be Luke's daughter. And Rey shouldn't be an exact stand-in/proxy for Luke. For one thing, Luke has been given various privileges and advantages in his life that the writers never afforded to Rey. The big one is gender, hence all of the "Rey is a Mary Sue" bullshit arguments. The other big ones are that sure, they're both orphans. But Rey's life up until meeting BB-8 and Finn was one of deprivation and isolation. Luke may have been schlepping away on a moisture farm, but he had adoptive parents who took care of him. Rey never had that. So I find a lot of the "Rey will be fine ending up on her own as an acetic space nun" arguments to be about as clueless as the "Rey should end up falling to the Darkside and having to go through a crisis argument. " The woman's whole life up until the point of TFA has been one of misery and deprivation. Yes Coming-of-Age means going through trials and struggle in order to grow, mature, and figure out who you are and your place in the world. But for God's sake, like give the poor woman just some of the basics of what she already spent her life not having.

Also I'll cop to regional bias, but it's easy for somebody like Lucas who's very well off and living in one of the most affluent (like ridiculously wealthy compared to the rest of us) counties of the place I'm from to talk about letting go of things/attachments when you have them. I came away from TFA with the impression that one of the cornerstones of Rey's life up until that point is that she's somebody who doesn't even have anything or anybody to let go off - so that's why some of these discussions irritate me. It's like the people who pat themselves on the back about adopting a minimalist lifestyle without a jot of awareness that it comes off as wanting to have the virtues of poverty without any of the hardships/challenges.

I think it would be kind of...lame for Rey to just end up where Luke was before it went to hell. Didn't turn out so well for Luke, now did it? If Kylo was presented as being pure evil that needs to be put down, I could see it being a thing where Rey's goal is to get rid of him and return to the status quo. But he isn't, and I doubt it will be. Why throw the "time for Jedi to end" if nothing is going to change in the end?

I hope they have something more interesting in mind.

See, I do think the philosophy of letting go is where peace is found - for some. It's been so for countless monks and nuns in history. The urge for transcendence is a powerful urge - for some.

But it is a lonely life for those who have an urge to fall in love and start a family, which is an urge that most human beings still have. And it is curious to think that being born with a certain talent would automatically destine you to a life of self-denial, if you happen to have this (not at all unusual) desire for a family.

So it'll be interesting to see where Rey's story is headed. What I find curious here is that she started out living the life of an anchorite, in solitude and deprivation. Unlike Luke, who started out as a simple farmboy, but had a family and a stable life. I think of Harry Potter as a comparable situation - assuming for a moment that we're getting an ending for Rey that's meant to be happy and satisfying, of course - of someone who starts out in deprivation, unloved, lacking a family. He finds belonging with close friends, and finally ends up being integrated through marriage in a warm and loving family that has become a sort of adoptive family to him. I didn't think the romance with Ginny was particularly well done, but there was a definite logic in Harry being rewarded, after all his trials and tribulations, with the opposite of what he started out with: quite an abundance of family. In that sense, the marriage was almost symbolic, the way that fairytale endings often are; the hero is rewarded with a princess and a fortune even if the hero and princess have zero romantic history. But in Harry's case, the satisfaction doesn't come from an abstract symbol of triumph but from the very concrete warmth of the Weasley family, the exact opposite of the lonely cupboard under the stairs.

ETA: @snufkin said it better while I was typing my post

I think Rey has to get love from somewhere since she obviously craves it. Space nun would be a terrible fate for her indeed. She has Finn, but they're kind of going their separate ways in part 2. Doesn't seem like she'll be reunited with her family. Luke? I don't think she'll get much affection from him any time soon. Then there's Kylo who seems eager to spend quality time with her. Surely through some more character development and back story she'll come to sympathize with him, etc, etc 

Didn't Daisy Ridley say that being a loner was key to Rey's who her "parents" were? Everyone seemed to jump on that as Reywalker evidence, but Luke had a family and didn't grow up alone? I never understood that assumption. I think Daisy's was just saying that she was an orphan and her parents are unknown... I don't think every aspect of these movies is a parallel to something or someone else.

I must admit I haven't been aware of the Jedi Monk thing up until the prequel era.

In my kid's brain it was completely natural that Vader had a wife and it was nothing wrong with it, as well I did expect Luke would get married one day.

Darth Dingbat wrote:See, I do think the philosophy of letting go is where peace is found - for some. It's been so for countless monks and nuns in history. The urge for transcendence is a powerful urge - for some.

But it is a lonely life for those who have an urge to fall in love and start a family, which is an urge that most human beings still have. And it is curious to think that being born with a certain talent would automatically destine you to a life of self-denial, if you happen to have this (not at all unusual) desire for a family.

So it'll be interesting to see where Rey's story is headed. What I find curious here is that she started out living the life of an anchorite, in solitude and deprivation. Unlike Luke, who started out as a simple farmboy, but had a family and a stable life. I think of Harry Potter as a comparable situation - assuming for a moment that we're getting an ending for Rey that's meant to be happy and satisfying, of course - of someone who starts out in deprivation, unloved, lacking a family. He finds belonging with close friends, and finally ends up being integrated through marriage in a warm and loving family that has become a sort of adoptive family to him. I didn't think the romance with Ginny was particularly well done, but there was a definite logic in Harry being rewarded, after all his trials and tribulations, with the opposite of what he started out with: quite an abundance of family. In that sense, the marriage was almost symbolic, the way that fairytale endings often are; the hero is rewarded with a princess and a fortune even if the hero and princess have zero romantic history. But in Harry's case, the satisfaction doesn't come from an abstract symbol of triumph but from the very concrete warmth of the Weasley family, the exact opposite of the lonely cupboard under the stairs.

ETA: @snufkin said it better while I was typing my post :)

@Darth Dingbat

Hey I think you said it better with the Harry Potter comparison. Which again is gender. I think it's a lot easier for people to expect that female characters (or women in general) should have to give up those things because we're always expected to be the 'stronger' sex. If Rey were Ray, nobody would even be making that argument. And Luke ending up single was always intended because he was written to be in love with Leia (prior to the decision of "oh we'll merge her character with the hidden sister") but it's one-sided because she's in love with Han and stays faithful to his memory as a widow after the death HF had wanted. Even without being her brother, he never stood a chance at having a LI in the OT. It's just that it worked out that way because of sloppy planning/story telling. There's no moral or spiritual reason behind the original ending.

I dont think there is anything wrong with the jedi way per se.....if we look at the order itself, we know it lasted at least 1000 years and within that time, only 20 masters left the order....and not all the 20 left because they turned to the dark side. Also, it wasn't like some secret society where people who joined couldn't leave for the rest of their lives... if they wanted to marry and have a family, they were free to leave the order and do so....it was another matter that Anakin wanted to keep everything in his hand- get married, become a jedi master and rule the galaxy.

Now coming to people's perceptions....

1. One of the main reasons people disliked them was the belief that jedi kidnapped children for their order....while the jedi did take children at a young age from their families, they never forcefully kidnapped them.

2. The second was the fact that the jedi were blamed for the Clone wars and considered power hungry. We know the power hungry part isn't true but in the recently released book Star Wars Propaganda, we learn that Palpatine ensured that the clones were seen as heroes of the war and jedi were hidden. Any poster depicting jedi as heroes was not allowed by him. Thus, over a period of time, Palpatine ensured that the jedi were seen as evil people ready to sacrifice real people in a war against droids i.e. the separatists. Hence, people were ready to hate them.

3. Some people liked the jedi after order 66 but began to hate them because they vanished when people needed them the most.....this viewpoint is reflected in a lot of recent books.

4. Now for the actual reason the jedi could be wrong- instead of following the will of the force, they followed the will of the republic. Palpatine was able to use this to move among them and slowly destroy them.

Now coming back to the question of attachments and family....what is family? Does family mean a father, mother and their biological kids? Does it mean someone bringing up their dead friend's kid like Bail with Leia? Does it mean someone running an orphanage for lost kids like the Disciples of the Whills and giving the children love? Does it mean finding home with the resistance like some of the Post-Empire orphans? Or finding belonging in the company of a fellow exile like Jar Jar and the little refugee boy?

I disagree that a life without marriage and children is an unfulfilling loveless one....family is any situation where one finds one is loved. I don't think that just because the heroine is a woman that it automatically means she has to marry someone and procreate. It could mean that but it doesn't have to. Rey might marry Kylo in a big white wedding and have a football team worth of kids.....Rey might decide to stay single, become a jedi and set up a new order giving love to a whole new generation of force sensitives....Rey might decide to be single and travel the galaxy seeing new places and learning new things....Rey could end up being a lost princess who finds family and belonging with her people....

The point I am trying to make is that the story can go in many directions and not all involve Rey having to get married and have kids to find belonging....at the end of the day, I will be happy with a good story and there can be many ways this can happen. ...that being said, I feel they will retain the jedi code as is since non-attachment brings objectivity and doesn't create situations that put loved ones in danger where stupid decisions get made.....the question will be whether Rey chooses to become one or not.

Fantastic post @panki You summed up exactly what I've been thinking about the Jedi and Rey's options.

Coming out of TFA, I don't think we can be sure of what Rey wants because she hasn't figured it out herself yet. She will be doing exactly that in TLJ. Would Ahsoka have become a sad and lonely space nun if she'd gone on to become a Jedi? She essentially stuck to all she learned from them, anyway. If you look at what Dave Filoni is doing with Rebels and Ezra and Kanan, I see no sense of Lucasfilm painting the Jedi as something that needs to be destroyed. Every Jedi faces his/her individual trials and sometimes they fail but that doesn't mean you tear the whole thing down.

@panki

Great thinking concerning Jedi - I agree point number 4 as one of the most crucial of the negative opinion - at least from the info we have so far (I don't want to mix in the rumor we heard about something really bad that Luke discovered Jedi wise)

I have a question to ask you:
What do you think if the attachments have been allowed, would Anakin still had fallen to the dark side?

Somehow I had an impression and still have it: that the main problem with the attachment and Anakin and Padme was the fact that it was forbidden and all of it resulted in the tension and "living a lie" as I can remember.
At least I thought it was presented that way in the movie.

Mrs Ben Solo wrote:
I have no doubt that Rian will explore a wider understanding of The force, it's where that exploration leads that I'm musing on.

Luke Skywalker was Rian's childhood Star Wars hero and the character he still identifies as his favourite. No matter what disagreements Mark Hamill had with him over Luke's direction in TLJ, I honestly cannot see Luke emerging from this with his heroic status horribly tainted in any way. Rian might have Luke facing a dark night of the soul and wanting to walk away from it all but only with the purpose of making the moment when his faith is renewed all the more punch-the-air-worthy.

When it comes to Rey, well, she's the Luke Skywalker of the ST so whatever happens with the Jedi she has to be at the forefront of it and integral to it. It may well be, as with the OT, romance occurs between the secondary protagonists like Finn and Rose but not the central protagonist, as Luke never got a love interest. As I said before, the reverse Anakin r.e Kylo suggests to me an unselfish love in the end. Even if there's temptation between Rey and Kylo as she explores what she wants, it could be she decides to follow the Jedi path and be accepts that and supports her.

Like George Lucas explained, the true Jedi way isn't easy, it's hard because you have to let go of everything but it's where peace is found. This is where it mirrors the zen way of shedding attachments and desires.

@Mrs Ben Solo

Fair enough. This could indeed be the end. I guess that to me such an ending would not be very modern. I'll give an example. As much as I admire the Dalai Lama as a spiritual guide showing us the way to being more compassionate and tolerant, imho, he's not the biggest change maker. It's the ones following his principles while still having a firm foot in real life that really make it happen. Obviously they are also the ones getting damaged in the process because it means oscillating between higher principles of virtue and the perks and sometimes ugliness of reality - not saying that the Dalai Lama did not get his share of sith and believe me when I say that I am a fan.

I think there is a growing trend nowadays to believe that each individual can contribute to changing the world. Our role models are no longer Gods or Superheroes, but flawed humans who make choices. I'd call them peace warriors. So I am not sure the whole zen concept is still something people will look up to, at least not as it was in the 70s and 80s. The zen attitude nowadays is more something integrated in our "regular" lives to achieve balance. And even if SW is a fairy tale, there still needs to be a sense of identification with the protagonists and their satisfactory ending. I have my issues seeing the old Jedi monk ways for Rey being a satisfactory ending in our current society's mindset. No matter if she gets married or not, has children or not, the issue for me is detachment and living outside of the realities of society and what makes humans humans that seem to go with the old Jedi ways. There is a reason why religion is no longer part of the governing parties in some countries and why even some old political parties are being criticized. When people feel that the ones that manage their country live in another world and do not understand them, they react.

If anything, the modern and tolerant way would be to have one public school mixing force sensitive and none force sensitive. Actually is it not implied that everyone can feel the force? So everyone could benefit from lessons in the force. General lessons for everyone together and special courses for the force sensitive kids.

But hey, we can discuss it as much as we can, the direction is in Rian's hands for now

And while I was writing this post at snail pace, the discussion continued. I should learn to write shorter posts or faster.

@SanghaRen I do appreciate what you're saying and for the world we live in, I totally agree. I'm personally not at all religious, although I have looked into various religions and studied western and eastern philosophy. I would love it if we got something more complex and true to the world as we know it from Rian and the ST as a whole. I've just been musing on how I think things might go based on what Lucasfilm are currently putting out in their canon Star Wars stuff and what key figures like Dave Filoni and Pablo are saying. I don't always like or agree with the things Pablo says but he is deeply involved in the future of the Star Wars franchise, like it or not. I guess I'm just trying to manage my expectations and be open to other options because I feel like my Reylo obsession has given me tunnel vision at times. I do want bold storytelling and not just something that falls back on the tried and tested, I just have to wonder how all that will work in the context of the ST. It's not that I don't think audiences, especially kids, can handle stories that are less black and white in their morality but I do think we still need heroes, flawed as they may turn out to be.

In the context of the Star Wars universe itself, Rey could end up being and doing anything, and having a family is certainly not the one and only way to have a fulfilling life in a real-world context either. I'm an unmarried, childless woman myself, and my goals in life have nothing to do with starting a family, so I know that very well

But it's my storytelling instinct that feels Rey would probably end up with a family of her own.

She might have been a simple farmgirl leading a modest and comfortable, if dull, life, who turns out to have an important destiny that demands sacrifices from her (Luke, Frodo, etc). She might have been a haughty princess who learns the path of humility, renunciation and selflessness as a Jedi. She might have been a reluctant heir to some great destiny who learns how to be the leader she was meant to be. And so on, and so on. There are a zillion things Rey might have been at the start of her journey.

But instead, she comes from the same "family" as Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter - orphan heroes suffering extreme deprivation, deprived of love as well as life's bare necessities as children and adolescents. When such characters get a happy ending, they tend to get exactly what they were once deprived of. It is rare that a happy ending for such a hero doesn't involve getting a "real" family unit. At the moment, I can't think of any examples who didn't. (Though I'm sure there are some.) In its purest fairytale form, a happy ending of this kind would involve both family and riches.

Heroes who started out with hard lives are tested, but don't ultimately need to learn the lesson of humility, they don't ultimately need to learn selflessness and renunciation and kindness, because they usually start out as humble and good-hearted already, ready to share of what little they have (like Rey, when she doesn't sell BB-8 ). That doesn't mean they don't have to learn some such lessons along the way, but that's not ultimately the point of their journey.

So I really can't help but feel that a heroine whose journey is to learn selfless renunciation and the value of true friendship between her fellow Jedi would have started out in a different place. Not with extreme deprivation and loneliness, for starters.

Purely in storytelling terms, Rey can't find her belonging with new Jedi who don't even exist yet. If her journey is to find family and belonging with the Jedi specifically, that means her journey, in this trilogy, will be about finding that (platonic) love with Luke. And as I think @FrolickingFizzgig and others have often pointed out before, it would be quite odd if a young but already grown-up woman's coming-of-age journey is about finding a surrogate father. If Rey were ten years old, that would be the perfect story. But she's not.

Darth Dingbat wrote:In the context of the Star Wars universe itself, Rey could end up being and doing anything, and having a family is certainly not the one and only way to have a fulfilling life in a real-world context either. I'm an unmarried, childless woman myself, and my goals in life have nothing to do with starting a family, so I know that very well

But it's my storytelling instinct that feels Rey would probably end up with a family of her own.

She might have been a simple farmgirl leading a modest and comfortable, if dull, life, who turns out to have an important destiny that demands sacrifices from her (Luke, Frodo, etc). She might have been a haughty princess who learns the path of humility, renunciation and selflessness as a Jedi. She might have been a reluctant heir to some great destiny who learns how to be the leader she was meant to be. And so on, and so on. There are a zillion things Rey might have been at the start of her journey.

But instead, she comes from the same "family" as Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter - orphan heroes suffering extreme deprivation, deprived of love as well as life's bare necessities as children and adolescents. When such characters get a happy ending, they tend to get exactly what they were once deprived of. It is rare that a happy ending for such a hero doesn't involve getting a "real" family unit. At the moment, I can't think of any examples who didn't. (Though I'm sure there are some.) In its purest fairytale form, a happy ending of this kind would involve both family and riches.

Heroes who started out with hard lives are tested, but don't ultimately need to learn the lesson of humility, they don't ultimately need to learn selflessness and renunciation and kindness, because they usually start out as humble and good-hearted already, ready to share of what little they have (like Rey, when she doesn't sell BB-8 ). That doesn't mean they don't have to learn some such lessons along the way, but that's not ultimately the point of their journey.

So I really can't help but feel that a heroine whose journey is to learn selfless renunciation and the value of true friendship between her fellow Jedi would have started out in a different place. Not with extreme deprivation and loneliness, for starters.

Purely in storytelling terms, Rey can't find her belonging with new Jedi who don't even exist yet. If her journey is to find family and belonging with the Jedi specifically, that means her journey, in this trilogy, will be about finding that (platonic) love with Luke. And as I think @FrolickingFizzgig and others have often pointed out before, it would be quite odd if a young but already grown-up woman's coming-of-age journey is about finding a surrogate father. If Rey were ten years old, that would be the perfect story. But she's not.

@Darth Dingbat

The part in bold had my mind screaming "Kylo would be the candidate to rebuild the Jedi" after learning a few lessons such as letting go of his grudge. But then I had a not very positive thought : if that's the whole point, put the lost Skywalker back on track to rebuild the Jedi old monk way style, what does it mean for Rey? And a voice in my head said "she will be sacrificed for the greater good." Please, no. I am personally allergic to anyone of the young generation dying. Then let them rebuild it together with some adaptation.

Btw I keep seeing Ezra and Kanan being mentioned as a confirmation of Jedi still being end game, but that story has not been told yet. Let's see what season 4 actually brings. And in terms of following Jedi principles, none of the 2 follows the detachment principle. Ezra is still passionate and cares for the team. And Kanan, well, I would say that even though it's not confirmed in big letters on the screen, it is safe to assume that he and Hera have romantic feelings for each other and they acknowledge it. Maybe Ezra and Kanan will separate from the group to follow a more traditional Jedi path in this final season. Not sure if it's the best strategy since it was always about the crew and how they care for each other.

In any case if there are Jedi at the end of the ST that are allowed attachment, I'll still go back to Pablo & Co with a "So... Where are those strict Jedi rules you were lecturing us on again?"

As a Catholic I have grown up with all kinds of talk about how priests shouldn't be married because their parishioners need to be their family and because they need to be completely undistracted from their mission. I didn't buy that argument as a kid and I still don't. I've had amazing priests who left the priesthood because of this. I've known people who would have been incredible priests, but didn't choose that path because of the celibacy rule. I've seen priests fall into food and alcohol addictions because of the celibacy rule. I have also seen bitter priests and nuns who were pushed into a vocation due to family pressure and believe me their resentment leaked out of them. At the same time, I have known priests and nuns who not only had a religious calling but also a call to celibacy who were excellent servants to the people. Like @Darth Dingbat was saying, the strict rules work for some people and that's wonderful ... but they also don't work for some people, people who don't want to be so separate from regular life, like @SanghaRen was saying. These are people who have a lot to offer, and personally I always found these gatekeeping rules to be a total waste of human good will. Further, these celibacy rules were not always in existence. For about 1000 years this was not required of a priest. It is actually still an open question since just recently Pope Francis just started opening the door to it again.  Anglican priests converts bring their wives and kids with them. Certain Middle eastern Catholic rites have always had married priests, so celibacy is not dealbreaker to be a priest. Now of course the Jedi aren't priests, but the parallels run really close.

Secondly, let's just take religious thought out of it and just look at Jedi as people with great power and responsibilities over those around them. In this sense they are no different than world leaders. This kind of power leaves such leaders and their families vulnerable to revenge every day of their lives. Yet, these people take the risk and get bodyguards for their families.

An even more apt analogy might be members of a Navy Seal team. I can guarantee that the members of Seal Team 6 have wives and kids. When they went after bin Laden they knew that there could be retribution for what they were about to do ... yet they still did it. They put the needs of the country over their families. Law enforcement/judges/firefighters do the same thing. When a firefighter walks into a burning building for strangers I am sure that they think of their kids, but they still walk into that building even if their death might ruin their kids. Regular people put the community, their nation, their patients over their own interests every single day. I don't see why a Jedi wouldn't be capable of this.

In the end I think the non attachments rule was more harmful than helpful. It was a direct cause in Anakin being warped. Direct. I mean Qui-Gon couldn't have bought Shmi's freedom? Obi Wan couldn't come back later and free her and at least tell Anakin that she was okay? That is just straight up immoral and ungenerous to your fellow human, and yet the rule of non attachment was still more important. If that doesn't say that something is seriously wrong with the Jedi organization that produced  Anakin then I don't know what will.

Further by GL's own dialogue Anakin had "no greed in him" when he was with his mother. But by the time he's been with Jedi for a while he becomes as greedy as sith. Moreover, Anakin's decision to kill a bunch of kids to save his wife was immoral in the extreme. How many people would actually do this? If Obi Wan was married to Satine he would not have done what Anakin did? No he would not. Would Luke or Leia? No. Would Han? No. It's not about attachments. It's about Anakin being pathological ... and who contributed to the creation of that pathology? The Jedi and their non attachment rules that said a little kid was wrong for missing his mother. If the ST props up that definition of Jedi, then no one will have learned anything, including the writers.

Thankfully, having gotten a sense of RJ and KK, I really don't think that's the case. For all his creative gifts, I don’t think that you can ever say that GL has perfect instincts about human nature. This is the man who made "My whole world is literally destroyed" Leia comfort Luke.  For all the good he has to say, the guy has significant blind spots. I personally don't think KK and RJ share those blind spots based on past work. Therefore, I think the Jedi definition will be significantly humanized by the new team.

Mrs Ben Solo wrote:Fantastic post @panki You summed up exactly what I've been thinking about the Jedi and Rey's options.

Coming out of TFA, I don't think we can be sure of what Rey wants because she hasn't figured it out herself yet. She will be doing exactly that in TLJ. Would Ahsoka have become a sad and lonely space nun if she'd gone on to become a Jedi? She essentially stuck to all she learned from them, anyway. If you look at what Dave Filoni is doing with Rebels and Ezra and Kanan, I see no sense of Lucasfilm painting the Jedi as something that needs to be destroyed. Every Jedi faces his/her individual trials and sometimes they fail but that doesn't mean you tear the whole thing down.

This is exactly how I feel as well....we really don't know what Rey wants...yes, she was initially waiting for her family but once she realised they weren't returning, then her mission was to bring Luke back (and to train with him, if some books are correct)....so her goals are evolving as the story progresses....now maybe her later goals will include a husband and children, but I don't think it is mandatory.

Take Ahsoka for example....she liked Lux Bonteri as a padawan...annd when she left the jedi order, she was supposed to have dated a smuggler called Nix as well....but in the end, she returned to working for the light side of the force, initially as an agent of the jedi and later as fulcrum....did her journey end in her having a dreamy romance? No, it didn't. Did it diminish her in any way? No. Similarly, look at Jyn who is also a lonely person trying to find family and belonging...in Rebel Rising she has a romance but doesn't end up with the guy (not going to spoil the story for those who want to read the book) but her story is much more than that...and she later meets Cassian...but is her story about her epic romance? No. We do have that bitter sweet moment thinking of what could have been but thats where it ends. Again her story is more than just a romance.

After all this, Rey could have a grand romance.... and while she will definitely have some romantic arc in her story, I just feel that it is not mandatory for her to have the happily ever after with some guy for the story to be good or for her to be complete.

Darth_Awakened wrote:@panki

Great thinking concerning Jedi - I agree point number 4 as one of the most crucial of the negative opinion - at least from the info we have so far (I don't want to mix in the rumor we heard about something really bad that Luke discovered Jedi wise)

I have a question to ask you:
What do you think if the attachments have been allowed, would Anakin still had fallen to the dark side?

Somehow I had an impression and still have it: that the main problem with the attachment and Anakin and Padme was the fact that it was forbidden and all of it resulted in the tension and "living a lie" as I can remember.
At least I thought it was presented that way in the movie.

I think Anakin's fall to the dark side was inevitable even if attachments were allowed and if Padme wasn't around.....and the answer is simple: Shmi.

Let us take a hypothetical situation where Shmi was free and Anakin visited her every once in a while on Tatooine....now imagine if the same set of events happened where the Tuskens tortured and killed Shmi....Anakin would have still gone crazy and headed down a dark path. The fear of losing Padme and those visions became a greater fear because he didn't follow his initial impulse and found Shmi too late... he didn't want to make the same mistake in the case of Padme.....infact having Shmi and Padme close to Anakin would have made it easier for Palpatine to harm them to push Anakin even faster to the dark side.

Regarding Anakin and Padme's attachment... the problem wasn't about their relationship being forbidden as Anakin could have quit the order anytime and openly acknowledged his relationship with Padme...it was about neither of them willing to give up their ambitions and being free to openly admit they were in a relationship....Anakin was determined to be the strongest and most powerful jedi and Padme wanted to help the republic....by the time Padme realised they should go away together, it was too late and Anakin was already Vader in ROTS.

The jedi order had a high rate of success because they trained children from infancy to become jedi, and for them family was the order....if you watch TCW and read Dark Disciple and the Kanan comics, you find that the younglings were brought up with a lot of love and affection, not in some cold monastic atmosphere....so the members never knew what they missed in the outside world. In Anakin's case, he and his mother were deeply attached to one another and the jedi council were correct in their fears that he was too old to train, especially because he had been out in the world long enough to form really deep attachments. I don't know if real world religion parallels could be fairly compared to the jedi order's rules but I think some sects of Buddhism are similar where children join when they are toddlers and more open to these ideologies and when they are older, they either remain monks or they leave the order and marry, start a family etc.....those groups have survived for centuries and haven't faced problems because of these rules.

Now going back to the jedi and taking the example of Anakin, he had the choice to leave the order if he wanted..nobody was holding a blaster to his head and stopping him. Just because one or two members of a sect go rogue in more than a 1000 years, it doesn't mean the jedi order's rules are bad....it just means those members were not a right fit for the order.

If they're going to keep milking the Skywlker saga for as long as they can there's definitely going to be  new generation of Skywalkers and they have to come from somewhere. Its called the Skywlker saga after all, so if there's going to be  new trilogy, there has to be  new, young Skywalkers. LF have to leave room for that to happen once the ST ends, and we know KK and the rest of the storygroup have been talking about this

Mana wrote:If they're going to keep milking the Skywlker saga for as long as they can there's definitely going to be  new generation of Skywalkers and they have to come from somewhere. Its called the Skywlker saga after all, so if there's going to be  new trilogy, there has to be  new, young Skywalkers. LF have to leave room for that to happen once the ST ends, and we know KK and the rest of the storygroup have been talking about this

@Mana

This is why I wonder whether Rey will be a jedi after all or whether they want to move away from the Skywalkers....but in case they do want to continue the Skywalker saga, there are ways it can be done without having to destroy the jedi order's traditions including-

- Rey could help set up the order, quit after a few years and marry Kylo (she is really young after all);
- Luke could establish the jedi order and Rey and Kylo might not be jedi but could go scouting around the galaxy for new students for him;
- Maybe Rey's family belongs to a different force user group that allows marriage and she decides to follow that tradition;
- Rey's heroic journey might end with killing Snoke after which she decides to lead a quiet life.

panki wrote:

Mrs Ben Solo wrote:Fantastic post @panki You summed up exactly what I've been thinking about the Jedi and Rey's options.

Coming out of TFA, I don't think we can be sure of what Rey wants because she hasn't figured it out herself yet. She will be doing exactly that in TLJ. Would Ahsoka have become a sad and lonely space nun if she'd gone on to become a Jedi? She essentially stuck to all she learned from them, anyway. If you look at what Dave Filoni is doing with Rebels and Ezra and Kanan, I see no sense of Lucasfilm painting the Jedi as something that needs to be destroyed. Every Jedi faces his/her individual trials and sometimes they fail but that doesn't mean you tear the whole thing down.

This is exactly how I feel as well....we really don't know what Rey wants...yes, she was initially waiting for her family but once she realised they weren't returning, then her mission was to bring Luke back (and to train with him, if some books are correct)....so her goals are evolving as the story progresses....now maybe her later goals will include a husband and children, but I don't think it is mandatory.

Take Ahsoka for example....she liked Lux Bonteri as a padawan...annd when she left the jedi order, she was supposed to have dated a smuggler called Nix as well....but in the end, she returned to working for the light side of the force, initially as an agent of the jedi and later as fulcrum....did her journey end in her having a dreamy romance? No, it didn't. Did it diminish her in any way? No. Similarly, look at Jyn who is also a lonely person trying to find family and belonging...in Rebel Rising she has a romance but doesn't end up with the guy (not going to spoil the story for those who want to read the book) but her story is much more than that...and she later meets Cassian...but is her story about her epic romance? No. We do have that bitter sweet moment thinking of what could have been but thats where it ends. Again her story is more than just a romance.

After all this, Rey could have a grand romance.... and while she will definitely have some romantic arc in her story, I just feel that it is not mandatory for her to have the happily ever after with some guy for the story to be good or for her to be complete.

Darth_Awakened wrote:@panki

Great thinking concerning Jedi - I agree point number 4 as one of the most crucial of the negative opinion - at least from the info we have so far (I don't want to mix in the rumor we heard about something really bad that Luke discovered Jedi wise)

I have a question to ask you:
What do you think if the attachments have been allowed, would Anakin still had fallen to the dark side?

Somehow I had an impression and still have it: that the main problem with the attachment and Anakin and Padme was the fact that it was forbidden and all of it resulted in the tension and "living a lie" as I can remember.
At least I thought it was presented that way in the movie.

I think Anakin's fall to the dark side was inevitable even if attachments were allowed and if Padme wasn't around.....and the answer is simple: Shmi.

Let us take a hypothetical situation where Shmi was free and Anakin visited her every once in a while on Tatooine....now imagine if the same set of events happened where the Tuskens tortured and killed Shmi....Anakin would have still gone crazy and headed down a dark path. The fear of losing Padme and those visions became a greater fear because he didn't follow his initial impulse and found Shmi too late... he didn't want to make the same mistake in the case of Padme.....infact having Shmi and Padme close to Anakin would have made it easier for Palpatine to harm them to push Anakin even faster to the dark side.

Regarding Anakin and Padme's attachment... the problem wasn't about their relationship being forbidden as Anakin could have quit the order anytime and openly acknowledged his relationship with Padme...it was about neither of them willing to give up their ambitions and being free to openly admit they were in a relationship....Anakin was determined to be the strongest and most powerful jedi and Padme wanted to help the republic....by the time Padme realised they should go away together, it was too late and Anakin was already Vader in ROTS.

The jedi order had a high rate of success because they trained children from infancy to become jedi, and for them family was the order....if you watch TCW and read Dark Disciple and the Kanan comics, you find that the younglings were brought up with a lot of love and affection, not in some cold monastic atmosphere....so the members never knew what they missed in the outside world. In Anakin's case, he and his mother were deeply attached to one another and the jedi council were correct in their fears that he was too old to train, especially because he had been out in the world long enough to form really deep attachments. I don't know if real world religion parallels could be fairly compared to the jedi order's rules but I think some sects of Buddhism are similar where children join when they are toddlers and more open to these ideologies and when they are older, they either remain monks or they leave the order and marry, start a family etc.....those groups have survived for centuries and haven't faced problems because of these rules.

Now going back to the jedi and taking the example of Anakin, he had the choice to leave the order if he wanted..nobody was holding a blaster to his head and stopping him. Just because one or two members of a sect go rogue in more than a 1000 years, it doesn't mean the jedi order's rules are bad....it just means those members were not a right fit for the order.

@panki

Actually I must disagree with the bolded. I firmly believe that if it was the case (if he had a chance to visit Shmi from time to time) Anakin would be more secure in himself and would not have suffered the consequences of the separation so badly, so in the case of the tragedy he would probably react more mature and would be able to accept the loss without being pulled to the dark.

I agree very much with @SoloSideCousin that the non attachments rule was more harmful than helpful in the Anakin's case.

@Darth_Awakened

Lets just agree to disagree on this but I think Anakin survived for 10 years in the jedi order without any major problem because he was kept away from Shmi- he always had the potential to turn to the dark side due to his existing attachment to Shmi from the time of TPM...so having her around would have only created one more weakness for Palpatine to exploit.



Let us not forget that Palpatine had his eye on Anakin for a long time....he would have done anything to bring him to the dark side, including destroying loved ones. To quote something by Darth Plagueis from legends regarding the sith's way of teaching their apprentices-

Tell me what you regard as your greatest strength, so I will know how best to undermine you; tell me of your greatest fear, so I will know which I must force you to face; tell me what you cherish most, so I will know what to take from you; and tell me what you crave, so that I might deny you…



It was only when Shmi was abducted and Anakin realised he could have saved her if he acted on the instinct that she was in danger that he started an actual descent into the dark side. Till then he never talked of wanting power- if you go back to AOTC, you'll see that this is the case and this was the actual moment he begins to change. And it was this fear that propelled him into all kinds of reckless decisions- starting with his disobeying Obi-wan, rushing at Dooku and losing a hand in his hurry to finish the fight and find Padme after she fell off their ship.

Anakin would never have accepted Shmi's death....infact he would have turned to the dark side even sooner if Sidious had discovered Shmi and got her killed off.

And I agree that non-attachments were bad in Anakin's case...this is precisely why he should never have become a jedi or he should have quit the order when he realised he wanted to marry Padme....remaining in the order only brought both him and the whole galaxy a heap of misery....but that doesn't make the jedi order or its rules bad.

@panki

Yeah. We're absolutely approaching the thing from the different persepctives. Probably my persepctive is more influenced by real life and how the things wok there.
I'am aware that the fiction and the real life are not the same thing. And things usually work different in the fiction.

I tend to see the PT and Anakin's fall as a result of his early separation from Shmi as a main cause for his vulnerabilty in the future events (Palpatine's influence included).
The separation that made him unstable in the moments of crisis in his life. I do believe that Shmi's potential presence could only benefit him in terms of self confidence and not add further distractions.
Among other things he would never blame the Jedi for the forceful separation from his mother.

@Darth_Awakened

Maybe your real life experiences shape your thinking but so did mine...my views are not just based on SW lore but as someone who has a lot of friends who took up a spiritual/ascetic life at a very young age and had no issue with non-attachment, not getting married, having kids etc. because this is a path they are comfortable with.

I agree with the point that Anakin couldn't technically blame the jedi for keeping him away from Shmi if they allowed him to be around Shmi....but if Palpatine would have killed her anyway, Shmi being around him would have made no difference and he still would have turned to the dark side and taken the galaxy down anyway.

To draw a parallel example, Dooku was deeply attached to Qui Gon like a father and obviously spent time with him from a young age but it didn't reduce his attachment to Qui Gon or give him any confidence- it only increased the attachment....he was so attached that the attachment extended to an extent to even Obi-wan, being Qui Gon's padawan (Dooku tried to save Obi-wan's life even when Sidious was keen to kill him).

When Maul killed Qui Gon, Dooku turned to the dark side anyway, despite having spent all those years around Qui Gon....Qui Gon's constant presence in his life just messed him up even more and made him easy prey for Sidious....and we must remember Dooku was a senior jedi master, not a young knight like Anakin.



Dooku turned to the dark side with a vengeance and committed large scale genocide, including killing his fellow jedi .....so having someone you are for around for years makes no difference if someone kills them anyway...it only deepens the attachment and increases the pain.

Anakin had a whole lot of baggage when he joined the jedi order unlike other younglings and padawans- his hard life as a slave, his attachment to his mother etc.....I still argue that he should have never been a jedi and we cannot blame the jedi's rule of non-attachment for his personal issues- if anyone is to blame, it is Qui Gon for making unreasonable deathbed requests...and even if Anakin went through the training, he should have quit the order when he fell for Padme (which he easily could have done)....not made the galaxy pay the price for his angst.

Darth Dingbat wrote:She might have been a simple farmgirl leading a modest and comfortable, if dull, life, who turns out to have an important destiny that demands sacrifices from her (Luke, Frodo, etc). She might have been a haughty princess who learns the path of humility, renunciation and selflessness as a Jedi. She might have been a reluctant heir to some great destiny who learns how to be the leader she was meant to be. And so on, and so on. There are a zillion things Rey might have been at the start of her journey.

But instead, she comes from the same "family" as Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter - orphan heroes suffering extreme deprivation, deprived of love as well as life's bare necessities as children and adolescents. When such characters get a happy ending, they tend to get exactly what they were once deprived of. It is rare that a happy ending for such a hero doesn't involve getting a "real" family unit. At the moment, I can't think of any examples who didn't. (Though I'm sure there are some.) In its purest fairytale form, a happy ending of this kind would involve both family and riches.

@Darth Dingbat

I think though that what muddies the waters with Rey is that none of the other stories mentioned made a mystery of their protagonist's heritage, they were unambigously orphans. Harry learns about how his parents really died early on in the first book. Whereas with Rey, we're one third into her story and we don't even know with 100% assurance that her parents are dead (though it's extremely likely). She could have been a simple orphan, but she's not and there's obviously some story there. Not knowing what that story is, it's hard to know what's really ahead for Rey. It could be about giving her a personal motive against Snoke, it could be about her destined to do or be something, etc. We don't know yet what's her place in the Force!universe and what importance her Force abilities are going to play in her life. At the moment she's just mostly bewildered by them.

Also, while we can gather from the bits about TLJ that Luke is going to disappoint Rey in some way, I very much doubt that Luke's role in Rey's life will stop at Disappointing Teacher, the end. I'm pretty sure that the dynamic between Luke and Rey will evolve somehow just like her dynamic with Kylo will.