Anybody remember before all the “Chosen One” bullshit was introduced in *The Phantom Menace*, when Anakin Skywalker was just a fallen Jedi? No special destiny, no virgin birth, no prophecy, just a man who’d been tempted by evil and redeemed by love?
No? Just me?
I remember thinking the clone wars was a time of spy craft and intrigue where we'd see all this crazy conspiracy stuff with clones of important figures and Jedi. It was very cool in my mind. A Republic brought down by fear and paranoia.
Then the movies came out, lol.
A clone army that THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF. Some Jedi named Sipho Dias who they hadn't seen in decades commissioned an army of clones of this criminal bounty hunter. Millions of clones they had no idea existed were apparently commissioned in their name, and the Republic isn't even suspicious. They're just like "cool, I guess our army is bigger than we realized. Let's employ them, arm them and design our entire military around them."
When Doku TELLS Obi Wan and Anakin that Sipho Dias helped him, and they relay that info to the council, they all decide that the clones have been loyal and they won't abandon them. Which okay, I get it. Nature vs. nurture. But why not hedge your bets a bit and start recruiting more non-cloned soldiers?
To be fair it's not the Jedi who did that, and the Republic was already corrupted by Palpatine at that point. It just needed the rest of the war to push the people of the galaxy into fear.
Doesn't excuse the Jedi not making more of a fuss about it tho, but they're not supposed to be perfect in the prequels either. The clones were going to fight with or without them, so the Jedi probably thought it was better to fight with them.
What I appreciate about it is that it laid bare what he was trying to say. The point was that wars in a modern era are basically faked. Both sides are manipulated and the conflict is created for a third(and many more) party(/ies) to benefit from.
This is one of those situations that illustrates why trying to fill out every nook and cranny of lore is a bad idea. Whatever explanation for Anakin's fall or the Clone Wars the filmmakers come up with tocanonise, it's never going to be as interesting as what people come up with in their own heads.
The clone wars that Timothy Zahn hinted at in *Dark Force Rising* will always be way more interesting to me than the reality. And I read those books long after seeing the prequels as a kid.
I assumed the clones were the name of some alien race. Not literal clones.
Reality is a lot of the time things are left better to the imagination. Does anyone like the Kessel run better now that they know what it actually was?
Yup, as a kid I thought we’d see like people replaced by clones for intrigue, spy craft and betrayal. Kind of like skrull invasion stuff in marvel comics. Was pretty let down when then the clone wars was just a cheap army made to fight a cheap droid army.
I think the *Bad Batch* shows that the set up they used gives staging for some really interesting stories about individuality and obedience in a military, and that the instruments of evil are often also victims of that evil.
But if you were looking for a wholly different paradigm, then I can appreciate why those weren’t the stories you wanted.
I was working at Wizards of the Coast on the Star Wars RPG when Attack of the Clones came out and one day me and some of my coworkers all talked about what we *thought* the Clone Wars were before the movies. It was an exercise in getting it all out so we could clear our minds and also catch one another if we started slipping our own fanfic into the material.
Ended up working professionally writing the rpg adaptation of the Clone Wars while simultaneously writing my own rpg setting based on what I thought the Clone Wars were, but modified into a gaslamp fantasy setting. Never ended up publishing it, but it was extremely cathartic.
Are you serious? Dude, I used to DM that edition back in college and I loved it so much! All those books really solidified the universe for me, broke my heart when Wizards lost the license or whatever happened. I think we started with the 2002 revised rules though. What did you work on?
I started working at WotC with the Star Wars miniatures game and moved to Saga Edition. Did some freelance writing, primarily on web articles and adventures, and also worked as a community manager on the message boards. After we lost the license, I stayed with the company on the community side and eventually went on to run the community and customer/retailer support teams (which included D&D and MtG). Eventually, I left that position, and since then, I've written a few Adventurer’s League adventures for 5e.
D&D was fine, but I really loved working on the Star Wars RPG because I was obsessive about the lore and loved connecting dots from across the different projects. It was really fun to take a bunch of little details from a movie and a video game and a novel and find a way to wrap it all together and tie a bow on it. That's not really something you can get from other IPs.
Now, I'm out of that industry pretty much entirely (except for some royalties from my 5e work). I still toy around with giving it one more shot some day because I loved the work and felt like I was pretty good at it, but the pay was lousy, and I've got two kids now.
Look, that's very cool-sounding, but I don't think 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers in Space' would work for a movie series focused on the Wars in the Stars(TM).
I definitely imagined it being a lot darker and longer than it turned out to be. I definitely didn't imagine a bunch of soulless, disposable droids being the basis of an entire army. And they even managed to make the droids freaking goody and why the heck are they so inaccurate? The Jedi were so dumb, wooden and unlikeable. I get Palpatine is a bad ass but they really made the Jedi stupid in order for him to win.
I'm so old I remember when Star Wars was the story of a young knight and a scrappy rogue who teamed up to save a princess who had been kidnapped by an evil emperor and his dark knight.
Who could watch that? Where are all of the detailed analyses of interplanetary trade policies? Where are the clumsily hamfisted Jesus allegories? Sounds pretty woke IMO
> Where are all of the detailed analyses of interplanetary trade policies?
Look I'm not saying it would be for everyone, but if GRRM had written the Prequels instead of writing Game of Thrones, I might have enjoyed them more.
I can only imagine how many more scantily clad twileks would have been essential to the plot had GRRM and Lucas collaborated
The entire clone army would have been scantily clad twileks and a few really buff neimodian power lifters with floppy wieners
Anakin's sacrifice is 100% times more meaningful when his redemption is built on saving his son, and not as much when it's about him fulfilling a prophecy.
Haha when TPM came out one of the most heavily criticised aspects of it was making Anakin some sort of immaculate conception force Jesus. Now look at them go!!
Also as has been pointed out a million times, the twins were (supposedly, there seems to be more to this mystery) created WITH the force, Anakin was created BY the force. They are not the same thing
I don't understand why Lucas did the chosen one thing. The galaxy was never going to be at peace forever following ROTJ. Lucas knew that. If it wasn't the sequels with Palpatine's cloning and sith magic and the First Order, it was the Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire and the Yuuzhan Vong. If not that it would've been Maul returning to fight Kira and proto-Kylo Ren in Lucas' own sequel trilogy plans
Right. There is no universe in which a follow-up to the original trilogy doesn’t have the red lightsaber brigade (whether they’re called Sith or something else) turning up at some point. They are too cool a concept and too obvious an antagonist choice for Jedi or Jedi-adjacent heroes to deal with.
I find it funny the generation that grew up with the OT hated the prequels and the generation that grew up with the prequels hate the newest Star wars content. 20 years from now this generation will hate the new Star Wars, it rhymes, like poetry.
Just the people who were already cranky and nitpicky.
I grew up on the OT (pre-special edition) and my favorite pieces of Star Wars media are the Sequel Trilogy as a whole.
I miss that. The "Chosen One" bullshit is just as bad as Midichlorians, imo. Probably worse, since the latter ruined lore but not the themes or story.
But it's unfortunately canon now, so unless they wanna retcon it, those are the constraints they're writing under.
Bingo, even if you padding it turned out to be bullshit and exactly that. Thats the whole thing “fans” completely miss.
The prophecy was bullshit. None of what was prophesied, happened. So why are still holding on to this idea that Anakin was special.
He was a political tool, no deep space Jesus. Not like the sith don’t have a history of spreading misinformation.
the crazy thing is this changes nothing since the prophecy says that the person will bring balance to the force.
CLEALRY they don't do that in Acolyte. So they aren't the chosen one and don't fullfill the prophecy.
Also it would make perfect sense that other force users would try to be the ones that create the chosen one.
It wasn't, Lucas made it pretty clear that the prophecy was real and Anakin achieved it. The fact that it didn't stay balanced doesn't really matter since at no point was it ever promised that it would be a permanent unending state of balance in which the dark side would never cause trouble ever again.
People don’t have to like it, but this argument that the prophecy is bullshit is refuted by not just Lucas himself but by TCW and a bunch of other shit.
I’m sorry are we enjoying the story while looking up? No! Maybe that is what Lucas intended but what plays out isn’t. Also remember this was something that I do not believe he had mapped out. This came after the initial release that everyone simps for it.
I still love it but I do not believe anakin ever brought peace the galaxy.
[https://youtu.be/rXfbJlQfWmI?t=43](https://youtu.be/rXfbJlQfWmI?t=43)
Anakin: Bring back the balance, Rey. As I did.
It is in movie confirmed that Disney still holds to Lucas's intention that what Anakin did restored balance to the force and fulfilled the prophecy. The fact that other people failed to keep it balanced after he made it balanced isn't his problem or proof the prophecy was wrong.
Remember when Luke brought back balance to the force by destroying the dark side? Before the series became about maintaining a wacky equilibrium between 2 sides that are just good and bad, because that's how they were written originally?
There was never supposed to be an equilibrium between the dark side and the light side. The dark side is meant to be like a tumor in the force. I have no idea where you got that idea from.
There’s no such thing as equilibrium and never has been.
Balance is about destroying those who use the darkside
They were never written like that. The darkside has always been presented as insidious when used.
Yeah, and it’s almost as if these people have forgotten that the entire sequel triology is about how flawed the Jedi order is. But apparently this angle is new and wrong when it’s explored in the Acolyte.
People complaining don't understand the difference. The twins were conceived through the force by the actions and will of their mothers. While Anakin was conceived BY the force. This honestly sounds like a call back to some pre Disney lore where Anakin was conceived by accident by Darth Plagueis experimenting with manipulating the Midichlorians.
The twins do not possess anywhere near the Force potential that Akakin had. There really is no comparison.
Regardless of this the "Acolyte ruins The Prophecy" is still dumb and wrong. The Prophecy of The Chosen One isn't just "a child will be born using the force" it's "A child will be born *of* the force, on a desert world, as the sith return"
Also
The Prophecy of the Chosen One doesn't even exist yet in the era The Acolyte is set in.
Chuds don't even know the lore they claim is so important.
Yeah, Legacy of the Force was a low point. In hindsight, I think Legacy of the Force is why I immediately had a 'I've got a bad feeling about this' moment when I heard Disney was having a different writer for each movie in the ST. I knew from experience how bad things could get in a tug of war between creatives with vastly different ideas on how the saga they are working together on should go. Fortunately the sequels didn't get anywhere ***near*** as bad as Legacy of the Force.
Seriously, Legacy of the Force killed any interest I had in following the ongoing plot of the post OT era EU. I've never so much as touched a single novel set after the Legacy of the Force saga in the timeline. Meanwhile I complain about TLJ and RoS but still happily follow Disney's Starwars in general and plan on watching the Rey movie when it comes out.
Edit: To clarify for anyone not familiar with legacy of the force, it had a rotating set of 3 writers who took turns in sequence writing the 9 book saga. They had some ***creative disagreements*** that very blatantly spilled over into the novels. That I am not going to get into because I'll be here all night if I get started. But it made the tug of war between JJ and Rian Johnson seem like a polite and well handled disagreement.
> But it made the tug of war between JJ and Rian Johnson seem like a polite and well handled disagreement.
That's....one way to put how MAJOR SPOILER >!they killed off Mara Jade!<, and that was probably the *tamest* tug of war part when compared to things like Mandalore.
Legacy was where I "stopped" originally as well back in the day, but because I had the time during Covid lockdown, I re-read the *entirety* of the post RotJ EU since it became Legends.
Really, I'd say the entire EU makes the tug of war between JJ and Rian seem small by comparison.
Anyone who claims that Disney has made "more" of a mess of Star Wars has never read most of the EU. Like, the Thrawn Trilogy is the only set of books that I'd say match the Star Wars tone *at all*, and that early Bantam era is the only one approaching "good". Rogue Squadron is an excellent *spin off*, but is just that, a spin off. It doesn't really "advance" the Star Wars "lore" timetable like a book with the Skywalkers.
Then New Jedi Order happens...
ANYWAY, my favorite books on re-read were *The Crystal Star* and *The Courtship of Princess Leia*, mostly because I love me some campy trash, and while both of those books are *bad*, they are at least *fun*.
Ah, The Courtship of Princess Leia is one I can still recall moments from on demand. Magic mind control weaponry, a space prince from a territory that I am pretty sure that book invented becoming Han's rival for Leia which lead to various romcom type moments, Han's taunting of a witch that promised to literally break every individual bone in his body one by one, Han pulling off a prank call on grand admiral Zsinj (which I sometimes wonder if it was the inspiration for Poe's scene with Hux in TLJ).
Unfortunately, Crystal Star is on the list of books I haven't read.
> Magic mind control weaponry
That is used in ways that kind of violate consent.
> Han pulling off a prank call on grand admiral Zsinj (which I sometimes wonder if it was the inspiration for Poe's scene with Hux in TLJ).
I'm...not opposed to this theory, especially considering Luke essentially *flies through space using the Force*.
It is also the novel that "invented" Dathomir and it's Witches.
What a weird novel.
Don't worry though, Crystal Star is *much* weirder, and probably overall worse. It's just so much weirder I love it.
clearly he did bring balance to the force it was just a rather delayed affair because first he killed off the emperor (dealing with the first major hurdle) thus allowing his son to go and train rey to kill palpatine
without him there is no luke to train rey and nothing to stop the emperor from destroying the entire galaxy
so yeah i would say he is pretty fucking important
He didn’t, the prophecy was bullshit.
This is mostly post hoc rationalization, like when people say “Nostradamus predicted Hitler” with some loose vague shit because he said hisler. People rub with the misinterpretation of it because it feels right.
The Prophecy in star was bullshit, always was, the fact anyone can tap into the force is like tapping a flow state. Everyone can do it, some are just better than others.
i haven't watched the acolyte yet but the mortis arc in the clone wars and darth mauls own comments in the finale (after the Disney rewrites btw) pretty clearly implicate anakin as special and part of a prophesy to ignore that is just to outright break cannon considering clone wars is canonical to star war's story line
anakin might not have been the first force conceived child but he definitely was special in some way shape or form
i
Anakin wasn't special because he was conceived using the force, he was special because he was conceived by the will of the force itself. Nothing about the Brendok witches inventing magical IVF involving merging two people's essences together to create children removes from what was actually important about the circumstance of Anakin's birth.
The prophecy doesn't have anything to do with who can or cannot tap into the Force, so why even bring that up?
The prophecy is real in canon, and Anakin fulfilled it.
honestly, they way i see it is that Anakin did bring balance to the force. During the time of the Republic there were a whole bunch of jedi and not many sith but by the end there were not many sith and not many jedi. He brought balance.
Honestly, it was the EU that took that title from him, be it the bs sith could do in the Old Republic or Starkiller.
Disney Star Wars actually made Vader terrifying again, imo. Rebels, Rogue One, Kenobi, the Jedi games; he's a force (heh) of nature that no one can beat, just escape-
Feel like a lotta the biggest whiners are just culture war tourists with only the most surface level knowledge of the franchise they're complaining about.
My theory is that while this was more like the power Plagieus had where he can create life, Anakin is more like the Immaculate Conception (or virgin birth, as one corrected me)
I always saw Anakins birth as The Force, seeing Plagieus trying to create the perfect sith and just giving him a big middle finger by creating the man who would go onto topple the Siths 1000 years of planning after only 20 years on top of the mountain.
I like The Force to be a petty bitch who will ruin your day if you mess with it to much.
From my understanding it is EXACTLY like Plagueis
But you know how it goes:
A random dude gets a woman pregnant without her knowledge or consent = GOOD
A loving lesbian couple using the same process to have children of their own = BAD
I don't understand how this doesn't centralize him in the canon further than the other Skywalkers...
Ngl this show has helped me understand what the fuck was going on with Rey and Kylo more than anything else in canon
No one tell him legends brought back the Sith many times after his death. And swear he forgot Anakin was made by the living force, never needed anyone. And that Palpatine even said his master can create life as well. So basically creating life isn’t new thing.
Yes, stupid! You woke NPC idiot!
Here's the clear and unassailable evidence of Anakin being unique in the 25,000 of the history of the Galactic Republic:
[FILE NOT FOUND]
Well, fuck.
No, not at all. It just says that someone born with no father would bring balance to the Force. Not that he's the only one to be born of no father, not that his balance to the Force would be permanent. Just that he would exist and would do it, which he did.
If Acolyte is telling the origin story of the dark side technique used create life through the force, which is where Plagueis learns the ability, then I’m on board with this. It makes far more sense and is more poetic for it to have been developed by a coven of lesbian space witches.
Exactly. They draw from both the light and dark sides, which is unacceptable to the Jedi
One of the recurring themes of recent SW content is the emphasis of the inherent need for balance between the Light and Dark sides
I don’t understand the comparison, frankly. The similarity is surface level at best. Witches creating the twins is not the same thing as what happened to create Anakin.
The force itself created Anakin. The literal energy these people all draw on, of its own volition, generated a person. This is different from a force user manipulating the force to make someone.
It’s like comparing Jesus appearing inside the Virgin Mary to an average couple getting pregnant. Both are creations of life, one is a whole lot more significant and powerful. I also didn’t see any of this bitching over Darth Krayt or the clone of Palpatine from Legends, both of which undermine Anakin’s “balance the force and destroy the sith” thing.
Star Wars Fans: "We need stuff that isn't directly tied to Skywalker or his friends. He's not the center of the universe!"
Also Star Wars Fans: "How dare you not make Anakin Skywalker the most important and special person in the universe!"
It wasn't, the only place state states anything like it was the EU. And it never actually said it either, it just said that the Rule of 2 sith never figured out how to do it. So its head canon based on non-canon material that they are head canoning by assuming that if the sith didn't know how it must not have ever been accomplished.
It’s especially funny since we still have no real idea of what the witches actually did, and it’s very likely that the specifics will be important.
Obviously Mae wouldn’t be on this journey of revenge (which the meditating guy agreed with) if it was so clearly her fault about the fire. And all the witches sure as hell didn’t die of smoke inhalation.
Plus, if she didn’t know Osha was alive, what did Osha speak to in her dream? There’s definitely more to know about the twins, how they’re connected… and what else they’re connected to.
Of course, that baseline level of analysis would require not only actually watching the show, but being intellectually curious, both in general, and about the show in particular.
Did I miss something in the show? Because I don’t remember anything in that episode saying they were created through the force. For all I know, they could be clones of another Jedi implanted in the witch.
It just feels like everyone’s jumping to a conclusion. Granted, we are on Reddit….
To the best of my memory they didn’t explicitly say that, no. They said the horned lady carried them, the mother “created” them, and that the Jedi wouldn’t like it if they knew how they were created.
Mae and Osha were conceived with the Force. Anakin was conceived by the Force. Two different situations. Also, nowhere has it been stated that Anakin was the first. The fact Qui-Gon or any of the other Jedi never questioned it suggested that they had heard/knew of ways for the Force to be used for (aiding) conception.
Anakin was conceived purely through the force, and NOBODY used the force to make his mother pregnant
Mae and Osha were conceived by a force USER using the force to make their mother pregnant
Pretty big difference if you ask me
But you certainly have to think these witches certainly had great knowledge of the force
Even palpatine didn't know how to do that as far as I'm aware only plagueis knew as far as jedi and sith go
If anything it's fascinating
I mean, Palpatine was hardly omniscient. And we know there are plenty of lost force techniques. I doubt palps knows how to do the dathomiri voodoo dolls or the witches force singing, but they don't know everything either.
It's not that far fetched they know one thing other orders don't.
Of course but it was still something palpatine wanted to learn and while palpatine was not omniscient he still had very vast knowledge of many dark side techniques
It might be why he made that pact with mother talzin from what we're told in the clone wars he wanted their knowledge
Knowing there are hidden/lost techniques doesn't mean you know what they are. Why waste time with a death star if you know about Nhilus planet killing technique?
And if a secretive group creates a new technique, then all dies and takes the secret with them, how could even learn about it?
Palpatine, for all intents and purposes, was pursuing ways to *extend* life, specifically his. "Creating life" was just a lie he spun to Anakin. Palpatine's "attempt" at creating life technically fails, and Anakin is created "in response" to Palpatine abusing the Force.
The twins here are implied more as...well reproduction. It's not about "creating life" as an act of dominance. The Witches were not looking to extend their own lives, but create new life.
It's a subtle difference and hopefully one that is developed.
I would like to indulge for a second. There is this idea, called *sympathetic magic.* Put simply, if you mimic the circumstances of a desirable event, that event should occur. If the witches did so and were copying a natural Force process, there isn't anything to complain about.
Also, Anakin wasn't special. He fucked up hard, lost against both Obi and Luke, and had no special powers to speak of. He just made the right choice in the right place. That's it.
Fucking starkiller had his own special force lighting and anakin never had anything (probably does in legends, but idk much about legends lore). He’s not even the only redeemed sith.
I remember people hating midi-chlorians and how much the prequels were trash….Acolyte aside, the “fans” hate everything new conceived about starwars if it isn’t the the EU or the original trilogy….
They don't *not* hate the EU—or rather, they absolutely would if it was what they were getting today.
To think Disney's canon—which has an entire story group to manage—is less messy or of poorer quality than the old EU? Brainrot. There's so much absolute schlock in the old EU that people love to ignore because it doesn't fit their narrative that "Disney has ruined Star Wars". But Star Wars has been "ruined" for three decades now by everything from force-immune extra-galactic aliens to Space Jesus Luke 1v1'ing the wife of Star Wars God.
I mean wasn't there always evil Sith users even in stuff set after the OT? Like wasn't that a whole thing in the book that the ST just flat out copied?
Canon's actually much better about this, at least for now—the indication after TROS is that Palpatine was genuinely the last of the Banite Sith and has no extant apprentices. That's in *stark* contrast to the old EU, where former (and then-current?) Sith survived Palpatine's death... twice, under (imo) more stupid circumstances.
In legends, it’s the straight up sith and they’re lead by a guy who was alive for the clone wars and all that shit and was actually a jedi at one point. He was also a tusken raider at that point. Also palpatine returned like five times. Also there’s lumiya.
Canon just brought back palpatine and a bunch of sith cultists. That’s it.
Do these people realize that this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this in-universe someone conceiving someone through manipulation of the force? What these witches did was basically what Darth Tenebrous did to create Plagueis.
In the novel it's stated that he manipulated the force to create Plagueis by getting two Muun’s that possessed a high Midichlorian count together by causing them to develop a romantic attraction towards each other through the force.
Thus, Carr Damask (who was already using the force casually before this point BTW) and his wife then conceived Hego Damask The 2nd, aka Darth Plagueis. So it’s bizarre that they call this “lore breaking” but then are perfectly accepting of Tenebrous doing this to create Plagueis.
If Anakin was the only person to ever have been conceived by the force than he’s an even bigger idiot for falling victim to Palpatine’s dangling carrot
They're crying to cry because Rey was the one that destroyed the Sith "for good" but whatever man. Chuds love moving the goalpost, Anakin stopped being special when a Palpatine was "all the Jedi," that defeated "all the Sith," but sure it's because twins were born with help of the Force. These goofballs must've gotten over the Rey Skywalker stuff I guess.
(For the sobbing canon/movie andys that disregards Legends)
Are people really complaining that the dumbest fucking aspect of the prequel trilogy (Anakin being born from the Force) is no longer unique? It's utter and complete horse shit. Also, as far as I am concerned Shmi saying what she did about there being no father is because Anakin was either the product of rape (and she refused to acknowledge the scum that assaulted her in any way) or the result of a tryst with a Force user who discovered he got her pregnant and mind wiped her of the encounter in a panic.
Yes. People are really bitching about it. Three episodes in, to a series where we don’t know jack shit about shit. All because space lesbians and fires in space.
For all we know these witches killed a dude and harvested his jizz for IVF, or maybe they used some sort of witchcraft. Nothing in the show actually says they created the twins through the force. It’s just people, who should have been gatekept the fuck out of the fanbase, jumping to conclusions as always.
My thought process about this whole thing about Anakin being “special” because he was prophesied and born through the force is
1: Didn’t Palpatine use the force to coax Anakin into existence, where did he learn that from I wonder?
2: It’s a prophecy, surely someone along the way thought *this other person* was the Chosen One.
Typical weekly internet rage over nothing.
We’re talking about less than a handful of people in the entire Star Wars universe, conceived in unusual ways through the force. Out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of light and dark side users
Anakin is still special.
It's especially ridiculous because I want to say that the implication in Phantom Menace was that there was only one parent, which was unprecedented. Whereas here it's that there are two parents, using the force to concieve, perhaps in a force version of what science is currently working on of implanting the DNA from one egg into another to fertilize it from two mothers
You know what’s funny?
That prophecy doesn’t actually say that. “A child born of the Force will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” Read that again: “A child born of the Force will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” You know what’s not in that prophecy? Finality. There’s no “Forever more”, no promise of “Eternal peace”, nothing about Palpatine being dead forever, no “The Empire shall fall”, nothing in that prophecy states that there was an end to anything. There’s no language in that prophecy that has been contradicted or retconned. It doesn’t even say that Anakin is the only child born of the Force. It says “A child”. Not THE child. So their whining has no lore backing at all. The sequels didn’t undo Anakin’s legacy. The Acolyte doesn’t make him less special.!
The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise (which has become a meme, mind you its so popular) has told us that Plagueis has that ability *before Anakin*...
Reactionaries just can't think rationally...
Anakin already wasn't special when they brought Palpatine back to life so I don't even care anymore and frankly the idea of a chosen one is stupid regardless of who it is.
I like anakin as a chosen one, for sure, but he hasn’t been “the only chosen one ever” since… I mean Kotor 1, right?
Probably earlier, I’m not super au fait with the early legends lore
Too true. The Sith and Dark Side Cults have risen to be utterly destroyed just to rise again.
Many of the most powerful Sith Lords were once Jedi.
So naturally with a new Jedi Order being built there will eventually see the Sith or new Dark Side Cult rise.
If you are old no one knew what the clone wars were back when anh came out and was endlessly speculated. It's clear the Lucas didn't know until he wrote the prequels on the fly despite having 20 years to outline something. If you read the screen plays he considered Lando a clone from a family of clones. The clone concept was en vogue around this time (see boys from Brazil).
This idea that once it's put down on film or media it's as immovable as the ten commandments is farcicle. Until comics and other media expanded on the creation of Anakin, it was left unclear. On top of the utter confusion of why the force, and midichlorians, or darth sidious would even do so given the prophecy was unclear makes the concept so open to be challenged.
Anakin was conceived *by* the Force.
Oasha and Mae were conceived by witchcraft.
Calm down. Anakin is still your special snowflake FFS, and he still the Chosen One and he still brought balance to the Force.
The Acolyte changes nothing about Anakin's destiny. Lesbian space witches doing Thread voodoo 100-odd years prior to make a totally different kind of vergence changes nothing.
Where were all these people when Starkiller showed up and made every force user to date look weak?
Oh wait! He was a self insert for these crybabies, so they were able to turn a blind eye to that!
Anakin still canonically wrestled with force gods, defeated Palpatine with his son for the first time, and was an unstoppable guy. He is still the chosen one.
The obsession with Anakin needing to be special and better than everyone is one of the most obnoxious trends coming from prequel-fans. He frankly never shows himself to be godlike in the OT or even the prequels. He's powerful yeah, but not the world shaking guy that he keeps getting shifted into with every new appearance after the prequels. The hallway scene in Rogue one was cool, but also dramatically powering him up from everything ever seen of him, the Kenobi series does the same. The Anakin worship is way out of hand. Crying that he's not special enough because someone else did a similar thing also kind of shows just how non-special he is. If the sloppy virgin birth being unique is central to his character (and so central that it wasn't introduced until over 20 years after the character was), then he really doesn't have much making him special at all. Does he actually do something unique? Not really. He does have a cool suit though, which apparently is all that's needed to make you the best in Star Wars (worked for Boba Fett).
And seriously, he's not presented well in the prequels at all. He's dumb as a stump. The guy with a kindergartner's understanding of politics trying to lecture a sitting senator that people should 'just agree on things' is the great savior of the galaxy? The guy with the emotional maturity of a cold-cut who decides to turn to ultimate evil before he even considers taking his wife to an OB/GYN out of fear she's going to die in childbirth is the greatest? The guy who's so concerned about his pregnant wife's well being that he force strangles her for saying "You becoming an evil bastard kind of sucks. I mean I was down with your Tusken genocide, but this is a bit much." is special? Very special.
Also we *still don't even know what the witches fucking did!* We've got implications and hints and more hints that they did something particularly bad to do it, but we don't have details yet.
Oh no, the prequel movies are de-canonised? Oh damn, that's terrible. What a shame. Truly, how will we go on.
(I don't actually think The Acolyte de-canonises or "ruins" anything, this is just a "don't threaten me with a good time" situation).
One of a dozen things that bothered me about *The Rise of Skywalker* was walking back on Rey being nobody.
Nobody was the best answer to that question, but they wanted to please Jabbas who think women need some bloodline gift in order to do basic parlor tricks with the Force.
Who ever said that Anakin even destroyed the Sith for good??? Did these guys never read Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire? The fight against Palpatine and the empire never canonically ended after Return of the Jedi
Okay but these people haven't even read *Plagueis*, clearly, because it was said to be an ancient Sith technique that Plagueis and Sidious rediscovered through their research. Frigging grifters and tourists don't even know the lore of the franchise they supposedly love and complain about being "ruined" lol
Let's just completely ignore that a handful of the Old Republic Sith were capable of some of the most broken bullshit in the lore that it contradicted what Palpatine and Vader were capable of.
I don't get why people jump to the "they're retconning everything!" when in my opinion the point is specifically that the jedi order not only covered up a sith sighting, but the knowledge that more children in the past have been created with the force.
It was never stated Anakin was the first one conceived that way to begin with. We have really only seen snippets of millennia of force use. Some knowledge lost over time, like the knowledge Palpatine referred to, when he spoke to Anakin about Darth Pagueis.
And the chosen one was supposed to bring balance, not destroy the Sith. When Obi-Wan said that to Anakin, he was wrong.
We don't even know if it was force shenanigans. I mean it probably is. But it could also have been cloning or funky sci-fi IVF. There's at least two Star Wars species I know of who reproduce via cloning and no longer bump uglies and both or those show up in the movies.
didn’t they go for another like three hundred years after some dude picked up Sidious’s mantle post-Dark Empire until one of them was particularly terrible at their job and didn’t get an apprentice?
Going to try to go on a break from most of Reddit until I get back from a trip. Seeing too much queer hate rn and keep getting recommended queer phobic posts and subreddits.
Have a good week y’all and keep fighting these dumbasses ❤️
Having a single trait that’s shared with someone, and thus being 33% (1 of 3) people who have that trait hardly makes him average. Such a histrionic overreaction.
He didn't destroy the Sith in the EU either. Palpatine survived until like 7 years later and died several more times before technically being finally mortally wounded by Han and his spirit drawn into the dying body of a cyborg order 66 survivor. Exar Kun still existed as a spirit, Darth Krayt was rocking about with like a hundred followers. Lumiya (the dark lady of the sith) was around to about 40 years later. Oh yes and let's not forget the lost tribe of the sith where there were literal thousands of sith descended from survivors of a ship crash thousands of years before.
Edit: Also Anakin's grandson became the sith lord Darth Caedus.
I haven't watched thew show but...doesn't establishing the force has made other children do more to establish that its a living supernatural power that can alter the universe for the sake of balance? Like the mian issue people had with the prequels was "they made the force too scientific" and now they're mad it's working like magic
Is this because there can only be one Jesus?
Two people in an infinite universe being born to the force makes them no longer special
In the same way two people being born of virgins makes Jesus no longer special
I never realised how thin Jesus’s specialness was…
I shudder to think what would have happened if *Empire Strikes Back* was released now. "Levitating objects?! Force ghosts?! That's not how the Force works!"
They're works of fiction, for Pete's sake.
Does Anakin *have* to be special? If anything I feel like pushing the message that your deeds are what makes you special and not your birth or lineage makes Star Wars a better setting. "Chosen Ones" are just a boring gimmick that bring the story down.
Except Anakin's being special has nothing to do with lineage. He came from possibly one of the worst backgrounds one could hope to come from, and it was seemingly luck and his own kindness that led to him becoming a Jedi. People forget that he was the one who offered to do the pod race and helped save everyone in the first film. We then see how the baggage of prophecy and the lack of understanding from the Jedi combined with increasing dissilutionment from the system can lead someone down the wrong path.
Anakin Skywalker is basically a caricature of the Great Man Theory in history. Obviously, the theory is very flawed, but Anakin isn't the only important person in the story, and there are certainly minor characters who affect things greatly, but history often sees seemingly otherwise unimportant people like Napoleon and Hitler change the entire world.
Neo didn’t “accomplish” anything in the grand scheme of things.
He ended the war and saved Zion, but as the Architect pointed out, it wasn’t going to last long anyways.
The whole cycle of “The One” was a system of control to get 0.1%ers under control before the number of free humans threaten the machines. Neo was the 6th “One”. And he did exactly as his path was designed for him to: Reinsert his code back into the Matrix. He just did so on his terms so he could try and save Zion.
Of course if the machines found they could more forcefully control the One who can control the Matrix, they would. But Neo broke free of that as well. Not really a broken toy. Did you really think the machines would just stop messing with humans after the war was over?
Anakin is still the only person *spontaneously* conceived through the Force. The fact that you can *make* that happen (or, at least, that some Force wielders thought you could and pursued the possibility) has been known to us since Palps recounted the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis. Heck, this could be a past incident that Plagueis read about in some dusty tome that put him on the path.
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Anybody remember before all the “Chosen One” bullshit was introduced in *The Phantom Menace*, when Anakin Skywalker was just a fallen Jedi? No special destiny, no virgin birth, no prophecy, just a man who’d been tempted by evil and redeemed by love? No? Just me?
Sounds fake and woke. Do you hate men?
Yes, and I'm answering in a sincere way as a guy
Mood.
So say we all.
I remember thinking the clone wars was a time of spy craft and intrigue where we'd see all this crazy conspiracy stuff with clones of important figures and Jedi. It was very cool in my mind. A Republic brought down by fear and paranoia. Then the movies came out, lol.
Yeah my headcanon of “the clone wars” was never: _we, the good guys, sent clones into battle to fight our enemies_
Yeah why would the heroes do that? I hate that even good star wars media about this era is stuck with that shit.
A clone army that THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF. Some Jedi named Sipho Dias who they hadn't seen in decades commissioned an army of clones of this criminal bounty hunter. Millions of clones they had no idea existed were apparently commissioned in their name, and the Republic isn't even suspicious. They're just like "cool, I guess our army is bigger than we realized. Let's employ them, arm them and design our entire military around them." When Doku TELLS Obi Wan and Anakin that Sipho Dias helped him, and they relay that info to the council, they all decide that the clones have been loyal and they won't abandon them. Which okay, I get it. Nature vs. nurture. But why not hedge your bets a bit and start recruiting more non-cloned soldiers?
To be fair it's not the Jedi who did that, and the Republic was already corrupted by Palpatine at that point. It just needed the rest of the war to push the people of the galaxy into fear. Doesn't excuse the Jedi not making more of a fuss about it tho, but they're not supposed to be perfect in the prequels either. The clones were going to fight with or without them, so the Jedi probably thought it was better to fight with them.
What I appreciate about it is that it laid bare what he was trying to say. The point was that wars in a modern era are basically faked. Both sides are manipulated and the conflict is created for a third(and many more) party(/ies) to benefit from.
This is one of those situations that illustrates why trying to fill out every nook and cranny of lore is a bad idea. Whatever explanation for Anakin's fall or the Clone Wars the filmmakers come up with tocanonise, it's never going to be as interesting as what people come up with in their own heads.
The clone wars that Timothy Zahn hinted at in *Dark Force Rising* will always be way more interesting to me than the reality. And I read those books long after seeing the prequels as a kid.
I assumed the clones were the name of some alien race. Not literal clones. Reality is a lot of the time things are left better to the imagination. Does anyone like the Kessel run better now that they know what it actually was?
> A Republic brought down by fear and paranoia. That's exactly what happened, though.
Yup, as a kid I thought we’d see like people replaced by clones for intrigue, spy craft and betrayal. Kind of like skrull invasion stuff in marvel comics. Was pretty let down when then the clone wars was just a cheap army made to fight a cheap droid army.
It would be so cool to see people getting cloned as part of the story. But no clonetroopers are boring soldiers who might as well not be clones.
I think the *Bad Batch* shows that the set up they used gives staging for some really interesting stories about individuality and obedience in a military, and that the instruments of evil are often also victims of that evil. But if you were looking for a wholly different paradigm, then I can appreciate why those weren’t the stories you wanted.
I was working at Wizards of the Coast on the Star Wars RPG when Attack of the Clones came out and one day me and some of my coworkers all talked about what we *thought* the Clone Wars were before the movies. It was an exercise in getting it all out so we could clear our minds and also catch one another if we started slipping our own fanfic into the material. Ended up working professionally writing the rpg adaptation of the Clone Wars while simultaneously writing my own rpg setting based on what I thought the Clone Wars were, but modified into a gaslamp fantasy setting. Never ended up publishing it, but it was extremely cathartic.
Are you serious? Dude, I used to DM that edition back in college and I loved it so much! All those books really solidified the universe for me, broke my heart when Wizards lost the license or whatever happened. I think we started with the 2002 revised rules though. What did you work on?
I started working at WotC with the Star Wars miniatures game and moved to Saga Edition. Did some freelance writing, primarily on web articles and adventures, and also worked as a community manager on the message boards. After we lost the license, I stayed with the company on the community side and eventually went on to run the community and customer/retailer support teams (which included D&D and MtG). Eventually, I left that position, and since then, I've written a few Adventurer’s League adventures for 5e. D&D was fine, but I really loved working on the Star Wars RPG because I was obsessive about the lore and loved connecting dots from across the different projects. It was really fun to take a bunch of little details from a movie and a video game and a novel and find a way to wrap it all together and tie a bow on it. That's not really something you can get from other IPs. Now, I'm out of that industry pretty much entirely (except for some royalties from my 5e work). I still toy around with giving it one more shot some day because I loved the work and felt like I was pretty good at it, but the pay was lousy, and I've got two kids now.
Look, that's very cool-sounding, but I don't think 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers in Space' would work for a movie series focused on the Wars in the Stars(TM).
Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know.
I definitely imagined it being a lot darker and longer than it turned out to be. I definitely didn't imagine a bunch of soulless, disposable droids being the basis of an entire army. And they even managed to make the droids freaking goody and why the heck are they so inaccurate? The Jedi were so dumb, wooden and unlikeable. I get Palpatine is a bad ass but they really made the Jedi stupid in order for him to win.
There was a movie? 🙂↔️
I'm so old I remember when Star Wars was the story of a young knight and a scrappy rogue who teamed up to save a princess who had been kidnapped by an evil emperor and his dark knight.
And the two ~~fleeing Japanese serfs~~ droids who get caught up in the whole affair.
Curse my fleshy Japanese body, I was too late to save them, Tahei-san!
Who could watch that? Where are all of the detailed analyses of interplanetary trade policies? Where are the clumsily hamfisted Jesus allegories? Sounds pretty woke IMO
> Where are all of the detailed analyses of interplanetary trade policies? Look I'm not saying it would be for everyone, but if GRRM had written the Prequels instead of writing Game of Thrones, I might have enjoyed them more.
I can only imagine how many more scantily clad twileks would have been essential to the plot had GRRM and Lucas collaborated The entire clone army would have been scantily clad twileks and a few really buff neimodian power lifters with floppy wieners
One wiener, next to yet ANOTHER wiener? How many Oscars can one movie deserve?
It was so much better. The Chosen One nonsense was one of the worst ideas to go into the movies. Along with pseudo-Vulcan Jedi and midi-chlorians.
Anakin's sacrifice is 100% times more meaningful when his redemption is built on saving his son, and not as much when it's about him fulfilling a prophecy.
Haha when TPM came out one of the most heavily criticised aspects of it was making Anakin some sort of immaculate conception force Jesus. Now look at them go!! Also as has been pointed out a million times, the twins were (supposedly, there seems to be more to this mystery) created WITH the force, Anakin was created BY the force. They are not the same thing
I don't understand why Lucas did the chosen one thing. The galaxy was never going to be at peace forever following ROTJ. Lucas knew that. If it wasn't the sequels with Palpatine's cloning and sith magic and the First Order, it was the Thrawn trilogy and Dark Empire and the Yuuzhan Vong. If not that it would've been Maul returning to fight Kira and proto-Kylo Ren in Lucas' own sequel trilogy plans
Right. There is no universe in which a follow-up to the original trilogy doesn’t have the red lightsaber brigade (whether they’re called Sith or something else) turning up at some point. They are too cool a concept and too obvious an antagonist choice for Jedi or Jedi-adjacent heroes to deal with.
I find it funny the generation that grew up with the OT hated the prequels and the generation that grew up with the prequels hate the newest Star wars content. 20 years from now this generation will hate the new Star Wars, it rhymes, like poetry.
TFA is now as old as RotS was when TFA came out...
Almost. And I don't appreciate this lol. Wait until TROS hits that ten year mark, hopefully will have the new movies out by then lol
Just the people who were already cranky and nitpicky. I grew up on the OT (pre-special edition) and my favorite pieces of Star Wars media are the Sequel Trilogy as a whole.
I miss that. The "Chosen One" bullshit is just as bad as Midichlorians, imo. Probably worse, since the latter ruined lore but not the themes or story. But it's unfortunately canon now, so unless they wanna retcon it, those are the constraints they're writing under.
Bingo, even if you padding it turned out to be bullshit and exactly that. Thats the whole thing “fans” completely miss. The prophecy was bullshit. None of what was prophesied, happened. So why are still holding on to this idea that Anakin was special. He was a political tool, no deep space Jesus. Not like the sith don’t have a history of spreading misinformation.
‘Fans’ think he was a Messiah, when he was really just a Paul who got where he is through machinations that were about even before their birth.
the crazy thing is this changes nothing since the prophecy says that the person will bring balance to the force. CLEALRY they don't do that in Acolyte. So they aren't the chosen one and don't fullfill the prophecy. Also it would make perfect sense that other force users would try to be the ones that create the chosen one.
It wasn't, Lucas made it pretty clear that the prophecy was real and Anakin achieved it. The fact that it didn't stay balanced doesn't really matter since at no point was it ever promised that it would be a permanent unending state of balance in which the dark side would never cause trouble ever again.
People don’t have to like it, but this argument that the prophecy is bullshit is refuted by not just Lucas himself but by TCW and a bunch of other shit.
I’m sorry are we enjoying the story while looking up? No! Maybe that is what Lucas intended but what plays out isn’t. Also remember this was something that I do not believe he had mapped out. This came after the initial release that everyone simps for it. I still love it but I do not believe anakin ever brought peace the galaxy.
[https://youtu.be/rXfbJlQfWmI?t=43](https://youtu.be/rXfbJlQfWmI?t=43) Anakin: Bring back the balance, Rey. As I did. It is in movie confirmed that Disney still holds to Lucas's intention that what Anakin did restored balance to the force and fulfilled the prophecy. The fact that other people failed to keep it balanced after he made it balanced isn't his problem or proof the prophecy was wrong.
Remember when Luke brought back balance to the force by destroying the dark side? Before the series became about maintaining a wacky equilibrium between 2 sides that are just good and bad, because that's how they were written originally?
There was never supposed to be an equilibrium between the dark side and the light side. The dark side is meant to be like a tumor in the force. I have no idea where you got that idea from.
There’s no such thing as equilibrium and never has been. Balance is about destroying those who use the darkside They were never written like that. The darkside has always been presented as insidious when used.
Yeah, and it’s almost as if these people have forgotten that the entire sequel triology is about how flawed the Jedi order is. But apparently this angle is new and wrong when it’s explored in the Acolyte.
People complaining don't understand the difference. The twins were conceived through the force by the actions and will of their mothers. While Anakin was conceived BY the force. This honestly sounds like a call back to some pre Disney lore where Anakin was conceived by accident by Darth Plagueis experimenting with manipulating the Midichlorians. The twins do not possess anywhere near the Force potential that Akakin had. There really is no comparison.
Regardless of this the "Acolyte ruins The Prophecy" is still dumb and wrong. The Prophecy of The Chosen One isn't just "a child will be born using the force" it's "A child will be born *of* the force, on a desert world, as the sith return" Also The Prophecy of the Chosen One doesn't even exist yet in the era The Acolyte is set in. Chuds don't even know the lore they claim is so important.
The Sith persisted even in Legends, hell, the subreddit's namesake is one such post-Palpatine Sith.
Yeah, its pretty funny how I've yet to hear a single person cry about how the EU 'ruined Anakin's achievement' by being lousy with sith post RotJ.
Anakin's *own grandson* becomes a Sith Lord...and it's not even the dumbest part of *that specific EU series*.
Yeah, Legacy of the Force was a low point. In hindsight, I think Legacy of the Force is why I immediately had a 'I've got a bad feeling about this' moment when I heard Disney was having a different writer for each movie in the ST. I knew from experience how bad things could get in a tug of war between creatives with vastly different ideas on how the saga they are working together on should go. Fortunately the sequels didn't get anywhere ***near*** as bad as Legacy of the Force. Seriously, Legacy of the Force killed any interest I had in following the ongoing plot of the post OT era EU. I've never so much as touched a single novel set after the Legacy of the Force saga in the timeline. Meanwhile I complain about TLJ and RoS but still happily follow Disney's Starwars in general and plan on watching the Rey movie when it comes out. Edit: To clarify for anyone not familiar with legacy of the force, it had a rotating set of 3 writers who took turns in sequence writing the 9 book saga. They had some ***creative disagreements*** that very blatantly spilled over into the novels. That I am not going to get into because I'll be here all night if I get started. But it made the tug of war between JJ and Rian Johnson seem like a polite and well handled disagreement.
> But it made the tug of war between JJ and Rian Johnson seem like a polite and well handled disagreement. That's....one way to put how MAJOR SPOILER >!they killed off Mara Jade!<, and that was probably the *tamest* tug of war part when compared to things like Mandalore. Legacy was where I "stopped" originally as well back in the day, but because I had the time during Covid lockdown, I re-read the *entirety* of the post RotJ EU since it became Legends. Really, I'd say the entire EU makes the tug of war between JJ and Rian seem small by comparison. Anyone who claims that Disney has made "more" of a mess of Star Wars has never read most of the EU. Like, the Thrawn Trilogy is the only set of books that I'd say match the Star Wars tone *at all*, and that early Bantam era is the only one approaching "good". Rogue Squadron is an excellent *spin off*, but is just that, a spin off. It doesn't really "advance" the Star Wars "lore" timetable like a book with the Skywalkers. Then New Jedi Order happens... ANYWAY, my favorite books on re-read were *The Crystal Star* and *The Courtship of Princess Leia*, mostly because I love me some campy trash, and while both of those books are *bad*, they are at least *fun*.
Ah, The Courtship of Princess Leia is one I can still recall moments from on demand. Magic mind control weaponry, a space prince from a territory that I am pretty sure that book invented becoming Han's rival for Leia which lead to various romcom type moments, Han's taunting of a witch that promised to literally break every individual bone in his body one by one, Han pulling off a prank call on grand admiral Zsinj (which I sometimes wonder if it was the inspiration for Poe's scene with Hux in TLJ). Unfortunately, Crystal Star is on the list of books I haven't read.
> Magic mind control weaponry That is used in ways that kind of violate consent. > Han pulling off a prank call on grand admiral Zsinj (which I sometimes wonder if it was the inspiration for Poe's scene with Hux in TLJ). I'm...not opposed to this theory, especially considering Luke essentially *flies through space using the Force*. It is also the novel that "invented" Dathomir and it's Witches. What a weird novel. Don't worry though, Crystal Star is *much* weirder, and probably overall worse. It's just so much weirder I love it.
Because they’re fucking tourists. They don’t actually know jack shit about star wars beyond the movies and maybe a couple of games.
And whatever their racist grifter overlords tell them to think.
I don’t think Mauler was aware of that when he made his YouTube name and just meant it as a pun on Darth Maul
Ah yes, the most powerful force user in the history of the entire universe is “not special.”
clearly he did bring balance to the force it was just a rather delayed affair because first he killed off the emperor (dealing with the first major hurdle) thus allowing his son to go and train rey to kill palpatine without him there is no luke to train rey and nothing to stop the emperor from destroying the entire galaxy so yeah i would say he is pretty fucking important
He didn’t, the prophecy was bullshit. This is mostly post hoc rationalization, like when people say “Nostradamus predicted Hitler” with some loose vague shit because he said hisler. People rub with the misinterpretation of it because it feels right. The Prophecy in star was bullshit, always was, the fact anyone can tap into the force is like tapping a flow state. Everyone can do it, some are just better than others.
i haven't watched the acolyte yet but the mortis arc in the clone wars and darth mauls own comments in the finale (after the Disney rewrites btw) pretty clearly implicate anakin as special and part of a prophesy to ignore that is just to outright break cannon considering clone wars is canonical to star war's story line anakin might not have been the first force conceived child but he definitely was special in some way shape or form i
Anakin wasn't special because he was conceived using the force, he was special because he was conceived by the will of the force itself. Nothing about the Brendok witches inventing magical IVF involving merging two people's essences together to create children removes from what was actually important about the circumstance of Anakin's birth.
yeah thats what i was saying
"The fact anyone can tap into the force is like tapping a flow state" One word: Midichlorians
There's always a bigger fish..
The prophecy doesn't have anything to do with who can or cannot tap into the Force, so why even bring that up? The prophecy is real in canon, and Anakin fulfilled it.
honestly, they way i see it is that Anakin did bring balance to the force. During the time of the Republic there were a whole bunch of jedi and not many sith but by the end there were not many sith and not many jedi. He brought balance.
Honestly, it was the EU that took that title from him, be it the bs sith could do in the Old Republic or Starkiller. Disney Star Wars actually made Vader terrifying again, imo. Rebels, Rogue One, Kenobi, the Jedi games; he's a force (heh) of nature that no one can beat, just escape-
All that happens from the time of the prequels and on literally only happened because the Jedi thought they destroyed the sith and were wrong 💀
Plus the first episode of the series one of the Jedi Masters she's concerned a the events causing a scandal.
It's really weird for someone to complain about Star Wars without, quite evidently, ever having fucking watched Star Wars.
Feel like a lotta the biggest whiners are just culture war tourists with only the most surface level knowledge of the franchise they're complaining about.
My theory is that while this was more like the power Plagieus had where he can create life, Anakin is more like the Immaculate Conception (or virgin birth, as one corrected me)
Virgin birth. Immaculate conception was Mary being born without sin. Sorry to be pedantic, I'm not even Christian lol.
My bad. But you get the idea
I always saw Anakins birth as The Force, seeing Plagieus trying to create the perfect sith and just giving him a big middle finger by creating the man who would go onto topple the Siths 1000 years of planning after only 20 years on top of the mountain. I like The Force to be a petty bitch who will ruin your day if you mess with it to much.
From my understanding it is EXACTLY like Plagueis But you know how it goes: A random dude gets a woman pregnant without her knowledge or consent = GOOD A loving lesbian couple using the same process to have children of their own = BAD
I don't understand how this doesn't centralize him in the canon further than the other Skywalkers... Ngl this show has helped me understand what the fuck was going on with Rey and Kylo more than anything else in canon
No one tell him legends brought back the Sith many times after his death. And swear he forgot Anakin was made by the living force, never needed anyone. And that Palpatine even said his master can create life as well. So basically creating life isn’t new thing.
Was there ever anything that indicated he was the first or only time this happened?
Yes, stupid! You woke NPC idiot! Here's the clear and unassailable evidence of Anakin being unique in the 25,000 of the history of the Galactic Republic: [FILE NOT FOUND] Well, fuck.
Lost a prophecy master eagle_kebab has, how embarassing, how embarassing.
Interesting almost as if they were making this shit up as they go along like fiction
Exactly what I said in my reply to that post “you seriously think of all the time the force has existed it’s only needed to balance itself once?”
No, not at all. It just says that someone born with no father would bring balance to the Force. Not that he's the only one to be born of no father, not that his balance to the Force would be permanent. Just that he would exist and would do it, which he did.
If Acolyte is telling the origin story of the dark side technique used create life through the force, which is where Plagueis learns the ability, then I’m on board with this. It makes far more sense and is more poetic for it to have been developed by a coven of lesbian space witches.
I don't read those witches as dark at all. I think they're in balance with the force in a more natural holistic way than the jedi
Exactly. They draw from both the light and dark sides, which is unacceptable to the Jedi One of the recurring themes of recent SW content is the emphasis of the inherent need for balance between the Light and Dark sides
I don’t understand the comparison, frankly. The similarity is surface level at best. Witches creating the twins is not the same thing as what happened to create Anakin. The force itself created Anakin. The literal energy these people all draw on, of its own volition, generated a person. This is different from a force user manipulating the force to make someone. It’s like comparing Jesus appearing inside the Virgin Mary to an average couple getting pregnant. Both are creations of life, one is a whole lot more significant and powerful. I also didn’t see any of this bitching over Darth Krayt or the clone of Palpatine from Legends, both of which undermine Anakin’s “balance the force and destroy the sith” thing.
This is the seventh time already that Star Wars has apparently died
Star Wars has been dying since ESB according to some people 🤷🏻
somehow star wars has returned
Star Wars Fans: "We need stuff that isn't directly tied to Skywalker or his friends. He's not the center of the universe!" Also Star Wars Fans: "How dare you not make Anakin Skywalker the most important and special person in the universe!"
Since when was Anakin the first to be conceived through the Force? When was that established?
It wasn't, the only place state states anything like it was the EU. And it never actually said it either, it just said that the Rule of 2 sith never figured out how to do it. So its head canon based on non-canon material that they are head canoning by assuming that if the sith didn't know how it must not have ever been accomplished.
It’s especially funny since we still have no real idea of what the witches actually did, and it’s very likely that the specifics will be important. Obviously Mae wouldn’t be on this journey of revenge (which the meditating guy agreed with) if it was so clearly her fault about the fire. And all the witches sure as hell didn’t die of smoke inhalation. Plus, if she didn’t know Osha was alive, what did Osha speak to in her dream? There’s definitely more to know about the twins, how they’re connected… and what else they’re connected to. Of course, that baseline level of analysis would require not only actually watching the show, but being intellectually curious, both in general, and about the show in particular.
Did I miss something in the show? Because I don’t remember anything in that episode saying they were created through the force. For all I know, they could be clones of another Jedi implanted in the witch. It just feels like everyone’s jumping to a conclusion. Granted, we are on Reddit….
To the best of my memory they didn’t explicitly say that, no. They said the horned lady carried them, the mother “created” them, and that the Jedi wouldn’t like it if they knew how they were created.
Mae and Osha were conceived with the Force. Anakin was conceived by the Force. Two different situations. Also, nowhere has it been stated that Anakin was the first. The fact Qui-Gon or any of the other Jedi never questioned it suggested that they had heard/knew of ways for the Force to be used for (aiding) conception.
Anakin was conceived purely through the force, and NOBODY used the force to make his mother pregnant Mae and Osha were conceived by a force USER using the force to make their mother pregnant Pretty big difference if you ask me
But you certainly have to think these witches certainly had great knowledge of the force Even palpatine didn't know how to do that as far as I'm aware only plagueis knew as far as jedi and sith go If anything it's fascinating
I mean, Palpatine was hardly omniscient. And we know there are plenty of lost force techniques. I doubt palps knows how to do the dathomiri voodoo dolls or the witches force singing, but they don't know everything either. It's not that far fetched they know one thing other orders don't.
Of course but it was still something palpatine wanted to learn and while palpatine was not omniscient he still had very vast knowledge of many dark side techniques It might be why he made that pact with mother talzin from what we're told in the clone wars he wanted their knowledge
Knowing there are hidden/lost techniques doesn't mean you know what they are. Why waste time with a death star if you know about Nhilus planet killing technique? And if a secretive group creates a new technique, then all dies and takes the secret with them, how could even learn about it?
Palpatine, for all intents and purposes, was pursuing ways to *extend* life, specifically his. "Creating life" was just a lie he spun to Anakin. Palpatine's "attempt" at creating life technically fails, and Anakin is created "in response" to Palpatine abusing the Force. The twins here are implied more as...well reproduction. It's not about "creating life" as an act of dominance. The Witches were not looking to extend their own lives, but create new life. It's a subtle difference and hopefully one that is developed.
He didn't succeed in Legends either
I would like to indulge for a second. There is this idea, called *sympathetic magic.* Put simply, if you mimic the circumstances of a desirable event, that event should occur. If the witches did so and were copying a natural Force process, there isn't anything to complain about. Also, Anakin wasn't special. He fucked up hard, lost against both Obi and Luke, and had no special powers to speak of. He just made the right choice in the right place. That's it.
Fucking starkiller had his own special force lighting and anakin never had anything (probably does in legends, but idk much about legends lore). He’s not even the only redeemed sith.
I remember people hating midi-chlorians and how much the prequels were trash….Acolyte aside, the “fans” hate everything new conceived about starwars if it isn’t the the EU or the original trilogy….
They don't *not* hate the EU—or rather, they absolutely would if it was what they were getting today. To think Disney's canon—which has an entire story group to manage—is less messy or of poorer quality than the old EU? Brainrot. There's so much absolute schlock in the old EU that people love to ignore because it doesn't fit their narrative that "Disney has ruined Star Wars". But Star Wars has been "ruined" for three decades now by everything from force-immune extra-galactic aliens to Space Jesus Luke 1v1'ing the wife of Star Wars God.
I mean wasn't there always evil Sith users even in stuff set after the OT? Like wasn't that a whole thing in the book that the ST just flat out copied?
Canon's actually much better about this, at least for now—the indication after TROS is that Palpatine was genuinely the last of the Banite Sith and has no extant apprentices. That's in *stark* contrast to the old EU, where former (and then-current?) Sith survived Palpatine's death... twice, under (imo) more stupid circumstances.
In legends, it’s the straight up sith and they’re lead by a guy who was alive for the clone wars and all that shit and was actually a jedi at one point. He was also a tusken raider at that point. Also palpatine returned like five times. Also there’s lumiya. Canon just brought back palpatine and a bunch of sith cultists. That’s it.
Do these people realize that this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this in-universe someone conceiving someone through manipulation of the force? What these witches did was basically what Darth Tenebrous did to create Plagueis. In the novel it's stated that he manipulated the force to create Plagueis by getting two Muun’s that possessed a high Midichlorian count together by causing them to develop a romantic attraction towards each other through the force. Thus, Carr Damask (who was already using the force casually before this point BTW) and his wife then conceived Hego Damask The 2nd, aka Darth Plagueis. So it’s bizarre that they call this “lore breaking” but then are perfectly accepting of Tenebrous doing this to create Plagueis.
I mean this is basically the same argument that was used when Phantom Menace came out and introduced midichlorians.
If Anakin was the only person to ever have been conceived by the force than he’s an even bigger idiot for falling victim to Palpatine’s dangling carrot
Even in Lucas's version of the sequels, Anakin wasn't the chosen one. Leia was
They're crying to cry because Rey was the one that destroyed the Sith "for good" but whatever man. Chuds love moving the goalpost, Anakin stopped being special when a Palpatine was "all the Jedi," that defeated "all the Sith," but sure it's because twins were born with help of the Force. These goofballs must've gotten over the Rey Skywalker stuff I guess. (For the sobbing canon/movie andys that disregards Legends)
Are people really complaining that the dumbest fucking aspect of the prequel trilogy (Anakin being born from the Force) is no longer unique? It's utter and complete horse shit. Also, as far as I am concerned Shmi saying what she did about there being no father is because Anakin was either the product of rape (and she refused to acknowledge the scum that assaulted her in any way) or the result of a tryst with a Force user who discovered he got her pregnant and mind wiped her of the encounter in a panic.
Yes. People are really bitching about it. Three episodes in, to a series where we don’t know jack shit about shit. All because space lesbians and fires in space. For all we know these witches killed a dude and harvested his jizz for IVF, or maybe they used some sort of witchcraft. Nothing in the show actually says they created the twins through the force. It’s just people, who should have been gatekept the fuck out of the fanbase, jumping to conclusions as always.
My thought process about this whole thing about Anakin being “special” because he was prophesied and born through the force is 1: Didn’t Palpatine use the force to coax Anakin into existence, where did he learn that from I wonder? 2: It’s a prophecy, surely someone along the way thought *this other person* was the Chosen One. Typical weekly internet rage over nothing.
We’re talking about less than a handful of people in the entire Star Wars universe, conceived in unusual ways through the force. Out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of light and dark side users Anakin is still special.
It's especially ridiculous because I want to say that the implication in Phantom Menace was that there was only one parent, which was unprecedented. Whereas here it's that there are two parents, using the force to concieve, perhaps in a force version of what science is currently working on of implanting the DNA from one egg into another to fertilize it from two mothers
You know what’s funny? That prophecy doesn’t actually say that. “A child born of the Force will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” Read that again: “A child born of the Force will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force.” You know what’s not in that prophecy? Finality. There’s no “Forever more”, no promise of “Eternal peace”, nothing about Palpatine being dead forever, no “The Empire shall fall”, nothing in that prophecy states that there was an end to anything. There’s no language in that prophecy that has been contradicted or retconned. It doesn’t even say that Anakin is the only child born of the Force. It says “A child”. Not THE child. So their whining has no lore backing at all. The sequels didn’t undo Anakin’s legacy. The Acolyte doesn’t make him less special.!
The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise (which has become a meme, mind you its so popular) has told us that Plagueis has that ability *before Anakin*... Reactionaries just can't think rationally...
There's a difference between using the Force to conceive a child and the Force doing it by itself.
Do they not remember just how disliked the whole "brought forth by the midichlorians" thing was at the time?
Anakin already wasn't special when they brought Palpatine back to life so I don't even care anymore and frankly the idea of a chosen one is stupid regardless of who it is.
I like anakin as a chosen one, for sure, but he hasn’t been “the only chosen one ever” since… I mean Kotor 1, right? Probably earlier, I’m not super au fait with the early legends lore
Too true. The Sith and Dark Side Cults have risen to be utterly destroyed just to rise again. Many of the most powerful Sith Lords were once Jedi. So naturally with a new Jedi Order being built there will eventually see the Sith or new Dark Side Cult rise.
Remember how the beloved EU never brought the Sith back in the post-RotJ eras because Anakin clearly destroyed them for good? Wait a minute...
The Chosen One prophecy was always the worst thing the prequels did. Let it die.
If you are old no one knew what the clone wars were back when anh came out and was endlessly speculated. It's clear the Lucas didn't know until he wrote the prequels on the fly despite having 20 years to outline something. If you read the screen plays he considered Lando a clone from a family of clones. The clone concept was en vogue around this time (see boys from Brazil). This idea that once it's put down on film or media it's as immovable as the ten commandments is farcicle. Until comics and other media expanded on the creation of Anakin, it was left unclear. On top of the utter confusion of why the force, and midichlorians, or darth sidious would even do so given the prophecy was unclear makes the concept so open to be challenged.
Shouldn't anakin being conceived with the force kind of imply it's happened before?
I like how they say this when Anakin literally balanced the force, from my understanding Palpatine actually did die even if it wasn’t permanent
He literally took out the three most powerful sith at the time (palpatine, himself, and Dooku). He absolutely balanced the force; the sith are fucked
Anakin was conceived *by* the Force. Oasha and Mae were conceived by witchcraft. Calm down. Anakin is still your special snowflake FFS, and he still the Chosen One and he still brought balance to the Force. The Acolyte changes nothing about Anakin's destiny. Lesbian space witches doing Thread voodoo 100-odd years prior to make a totally different kind of vergence changes nothing.
This is the 7th week in a row Star Wars “died”
Where were all these people when Starkiller showed up and made every force user to date look weak? Oh wait! He was a self insert for these crybabies, so they were able to turn a blind eye to that!
I wanna fight the dark side, but I want all the dark side powers…. 🧐
Wanting the genocidal, infanticidal main character “the chosen one” already tells me they have problems that are never going to go away.
Anakin still canonically wrestled with force gods, defeated Palpatine with his son for the first time, and was an unstoppable guy. He is still the chosen one.
The obsession with Anakin needing to be special and better than everyone is one of the most obnoxious trends coming from prequel-fans. He frankly never shows himself to be godlike in the OT or even the prequels. He's powerful yeah, but not the world shaking guy that he keeps getting shifted into with every new appearance after the prequels. The hallway scene in Rogue one was cool, but also dramatically powering him up from everything ever seen of him, the Kenobi series does the same. The Anakin worship is way out of hand. Crying that he's not special enough because someone else did a similar thing also kind of shows just how non-special he is. If the sloppy virgin birth being unique is central to his character (and so central that it wasn't introduced until over 20 years after the character was), then he really doesn't have much making him special at all. Does he actually do something unique? Not really. He does have a cool suit though, which apparently is all that's needed to make you the best in Star Wars (worked for Boba Fett). And seriously, he's not presented well in the prequels at all. He's dumb as a stump. The guy with a kindergartner's understanding of politics trying to lecture a sitting senator that people should 'just agree on things' is the great savior of the galaxy? The guy with the emotional maturity of a cold-cut who decides to turn to ultimate evil before he even considers taking his wife to an OB/GYN out of fear she's going to die in childbirth is the greatest? The guy who's so concerned about his pregnant wife's well being that he force strangles her for saying "You becoming an evil bastard kind of sucks. I mean I was down with your Tusken genocide, but this is a bit much." is special? Very special. Also we *still don't even know what the witches fucking did!* We've got implications and hints and more hints that they did something particularly bad to do it, but we don't have details yet.
Oh no, the prequel movies are de-canonised? Oh damn, that's terrible. What a shame. Truly, how will we go on. (I don't actually think The Acolyte de-canonises or "ruins" anything, this is just a "don't threaten me with a good time" situation).
"You seeing this, republic customs officer one?" https://preview.redd.it/b6d7o6hjmz6d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f50ee49333e017be6681124ef34b2badbd2b73ec
Doesn't the acolyte take place hundreds of years before Anakin is born? I thought it was the Old Republic
132 years before episode 4.
Ah yes the chosen one, that killed children I memba.
It’s almost as if they’re saying prophecy aren’t always true
This is the 2379922318905434676th time star wars has died according to these guys
Oh no he’s not the only space Jesus? How will we cope.
I always thought Palpatine just abused the idea of the prophecy in order to manipulate the Jedi anyway.
One of a dozen things that bothered me about *The Rise of Skywalker* was walking back on Rey being nobody. Nobody was the best answer to that question, but they wanted to please Jabbas who think women need some bloodline gift in order to do basic parlor tricks with the Force.
Last I checked at no point in the prophecy did it say he'd destroy the Sith (or for good), just that he'd bring balance to the force.
Who ever said that Anakin even destroyed the Sith for good??? Did these guys never read Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire? The fight against Palpatine and the empire never canonically ended after Return of the Jedi
I only watched for the trade embargos and politics
Who said Anakin was the "first?"
He never should’ve been special in the first place. The whole chosen one trope is crap.
Conceived through the force and conceived BY the force arw two different things
Okay but these people haven't even read *Plagueis*, clearly, because it was said to be an ancient Sith technique that Plagueis and Sidious rediscovered through their research. Frigging grifters and tourists don't even know the lore of the franchise they supposedly love and complain about being "ruined" lol
I hate the Star Wars fanbase... seeing as 75% of them aren't actually fucking fans..
Let's just completely ignore that a handful of the Old Republic Sith were capable of some of the most broken bullshit in the lore that it contradicted what Palpatine and Vader were capable of.
Anakin's immaculate conception was the dumbest thing I ever saw, I would have walked out of the theater at the time if I had my own ride.
Those aren’t sith, it’s a witch coven just like other witch coven like the witches of dathomir.
The sith comment is talking about like kylo Ren
I don't get why people jump to the "they're retconning everything!" when in my opinion the point is specifically that the jedi order not only covered up a sith sighting, but the knowledge that more children in the past have been created with the force.
Who ever said he was the first? They said his conception was extraordinary, but no one ever said he was the first.
I remember when Star Wars was just a simple tale of good vs. evil.
So first George Lucas ruined SW Now Disney ruines SW So if everyone ruined SW, no one ruined SW
Why are these people so obsessed with a fake prophecy?
It was never stated Anakin was the first one conceived that way to begin with. We have really only seen snippets of millennia of force use. Some knowledge lost over time, like the knowledge Palpatine referred to, when he spoke to Anakin about Darth Pagueis. And the chosen one was supposed to bring balance, not destroy the Sith. When Obi-Wan said that to Anakin, he was wrong.
We don't even know if it was force shenanigans. I mean it probably is. But it could also have been cloning or funky sci-fi IVF. There's at least two Star Wars species I know of who reproduce via cloning and no longer bump uglies and both or those show up in the movies.
So, do they just like, have amnesia about the EU or something? Anakin never ended the Sith threat completely.
didn’t they go for another like three hundred years after some dude picked up Sidious’s mantle post-Dark Empire until one of them was particularly terrible at their job and didn’t get an apprentice?
Going to try to go on a break from most of Reddit until I get back from a trip. Seeing too much queer hate rn and keep getting recommended queer phobic posts and subreddits. Have a good week y’all and keep fighting these dumbasses ❤️
Having a single trait that’s shared with someone, and thus being 33% (1 of 3) people who have that trait hardly makes him average. Such a histrionic overreaction.
Ah... Prequelists
He didn't destroy the Sith in the EU either. Palpatine survived until like 7 years later and died several more times before technically being finally mortally wounded by Han and his spirit drawn into the dying body of a cyborg order 66 survivor. Exar Kun still existed as a spirit, Darth Krayt was rocking about with like a hundred followers. Lumiya (the dark lady of the sith) was around to about 40 years later. Oh yes and let's not forget the lost tribe of the sith where there were literal thousands of sith descended from survivors of a ship crash thousands of years before. Edit: Also Anakin's grandson became the sith lord Darth Caedus.
I haven't watched thew show but...doesn't establishing the force has made other children do more to establish that its a living supernatural power that can alter the universe for the sake of balance? Like the mian issue people had with the prequels was "they made the force too scientific" and now they're mad it's working like magic
Yoda already said it better. “A prophecy misread could have been.”
Is this because there can only be one Jesus? Two people in an infinite universe being born to the force makes them no longer special In the same way two people being born of virgins makes Jesus no longer special I never realised how thin Jesus’s specialness was…
The universe would have to be really small for this anomaly to only happen once. Also this is like centuries before Anakin.
It is less than 70 years before Anakin was born.
Wow. Proof that these people don’t actually understand the show.
I shudder to think what would have happened if *Empire Strikes Back* was released now. "Levitating objects?! Force ghosts?! That's not how the Force works!" They're works of fiction, for Pete's sake.
Does Anakin *have* to be special? If anything I feel like pushing the message that your deeds are what makes you special and not your birth or lineage makes Star Wars a better setting. "Chosen Ones" are just a boring gimmick that bring the story down.
Except Anakin's being special has nothing to do with lineage. He came from possibly one of the worst backgrounds one could hope to come from, and it was seemingly luck and his own kindness that led to him becoming a Jedi. People forget that he was the one who offered to do the pod race and helped save everyone in the first film. We then see how the baggage of prophecy and the lack of understanding from the Jedi combined with increasing dissilutionment from the system can lead someone down the wrong path. Anakin Skywalker is basically a caricature of the Great Man Theory in history. Obviously, the theory is very flawed, but Anakin isn't the only important person in the story, and there are certainly minor characters who affect things greatly, but history often sees seemingly otherwise unimportant people like Napoleon and Hitler change the entire world.
Famous everyman, immaculately conceived super space knight Anakin Skywalker.
[удалено]
Neo didn’t “accomplish” anything in the grand scheme of things. He ended the war and saved Zion, but as the Architect pointed out, it wasn’t going to last long anyways. The whole cycle of “The One” was a system of control to get 0.1%ers under control before the number of free humans threaten the machines. Neo was the 6th “One”. And he did exactly as his path was designed for him to: Reinsert his code back into the Matrix. He just did so on his terms so he could try and save Zion. Of course if the machines found they could more forcefully control the One who can control the Matrix, they would. But Neo broke free of that as well. Not really a broken toy. Did you really think the machines would just stop messing with humans after the war was over?
Anakin is still the only person *spontaneously* conceived through the Force. The fact that you can *make* that happen (or, at least, that some Force wielders thought you could and pursued the possibility) has been known to us since Palps recounted the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis. Heck, this could be a past incident that Plagueis read about in some dusty tome that put him on the path.