So the Messiah in Star Wars is supposed “to bring balance to The Force,” but I never understood what it meant.
Star Wars is extremely dualistic–there is a good side and an evil side, a light side and a dark side, the Jedi and the Sith. Every plotline is based around a manichean struggle where only one side can win by annihilating the other.
The “good side”, the Jedi, are explicitly looking a savior to provide “balance” while at the same time imposing all sorts of restrictions on which force powers are allowed and which aren’t. For an order whose messiah is based on Taoist equilibrium, they are positively Christian in their obsession with purity.
I think there is an implicit subtextual critique of the Jedi Order in the prequels that they incompetent, as you might expect from the leaders of a theocracy, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I think the closest we get to ANY real discussion of balance is Luke’s vision on Degobah, where he must see himself as potentially Darth Vader, which can be interpreted as an attempt towards wholeness OR as a warning to not stray into evil.
Can anyone square this circle?
Edit: It’s funny to me that there are more comments than upvotes. People want to share. I love it.
I think the Jedi were incredibly stupid in Episodes 1, 2, 3.
They had a prophecy about one to bring Balance in a time when the Jedi were unquestionably dominant. Well Balance during that time, would obviously require the Jedi to be taken down. Anakin was that balance. The Jedi order was destroyed and the Sith began their period of domination. Creating Balance.
The next obvious story for Episodes 7, 8, 9, would have been a the creation of a new order, neither Jedi or Sith, that fostered Balance within each member. That’s where Rian Johnson was going with Ep. 8. But the idiot Glass Union came back and shat the bed trying desperately to unravel all that. He decided to go back to the same old thing all over again.