A thought about the whole "Chosen One to balance the Fo

[b00tleg]

I've always been a little confused about the whole prophecy that GL had to create when the PT started up. The prophecy said that one would be born unto a woman by the will of the living Force and was destined to bring balance to the force. Anakin is the one concieved by the force in his mother Shmi Skywalker. All indicators seemed to point to him as the chosen one until he became Vader.

By the end of ROS, Yoda realizes that they definetely misinterperted the prophecy. So was it Luke who was meant to bring balance to the Force by turning his Father back to the light side of the force?

[atg]

Unless there is something I've missed didn't Yoda only say that the prophecy may have been misinterpreted.

Of course Yoda wouldn't know that Vader/Anakin would turn on palpatine in RotJ and fulfill the prophecy.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Ah but Anakin wasnt born by the Living Force he was created by Darth Plagueis, a Sith.

So he isnt the Chosen One, just a powerful Jedi/Sith.

Its possible that Luke was the Chosen One, or that the Chosen One never existed at all.

[Elheru Aran]

Ah but Anakin wasnt born by the Living Force he was created by Darth Plagueis, a Sith.

So he isnt the Chosen One, just a powerful Jedi/Sith.

Its possible that Luke was the Chosen One, or that the Chosen One never existed at all.

Anakin was NOT created by Plagueis. Palpatine himself says as much in an introspective segue in the RotS novelization, IIRC.

EDIT: To elaborate-- he says that he doesn't know where Anakin came from, that he just sprang up; if he'd known about Plagueis' role in creating him, he'd have said so. This was his personal thoughts; he had no reason to obsfucate or hide them.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Why would Plagueis tell someone who wants to kill him? There is more reason to suspect Palpatine was uninformed about the whole experiment. He might have realized who and want Anakin was at the end though, when he met him.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Anakin was NOT created by Plagueis. Palpatine himself says as much in an introspective segue in the RotS novelization, IIRC.

The issue is also further extrapolated and settled in Dark Lord: Anakin was indeed created by the will of the Force.

[Noble Ire]

Why would Plagueis tell someone who wants to kill him?

It's the Sith way, or it was for their millenium in hiding anyway. A master teaches his pupil all he can, and if, when the time comes as it always does, the student can challenge and defeat his master, he has earned the knowledge. If he dies in the attempt, the master simply finds a new apprentice, someone stronger than he is, more likely to eventually destroy the Jedi.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Anakin was NOT created by Plagueis. Palpatine himself says as much in an introspective segue in the RotS novelization, IIRC.

The issue is also further extrapolated and settled in Dark Lord: Anakin was indeed created by the will of the Force.

Well i've not read that novel.

However i'll take your point here. So it appears Anakin was created by the Living Force.

Hmm...well then that is confusing. This whole "bring balance to the force by killing the Jedi" sounds extremely tenuous but until abother theory comes long that might be the most logical on.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Destroying both the Jedi Order and the Sith is what brings ballance to the Force; it functions as a big reset, so a new Jedi Order can be introduced. The Order simply didn't seem to realise that they would have to be destroyed as well for there to be true "balance."

[Surlethe]

By the end of ROS, Yoda realizes that they definetely misinterperted the prophecy. So was it Luke who was meant to bring balance to the Force by turning his Father back to the light side of the force?

The impression I always get is that, at the time of the PT, the Force is terribly out of balance. You have thousands of light-side Jedi, organized, and the Sith are incredibly outnumbered and in hiding. By killing the Jedi, Anakin simply moved the Force back toward a natural balance point.

[PayBack]

Yup I agree with the last two posts. With thousands of Jedi, some of which are on a council that works with a republic to control the galaxy, how the hell could you bring balance without taking down the Jedi? It couldn't have been more out of balance.. to the light side.

With all of their thousands of Jedi and control of the galaxy, did they expect him to bring balance by killing the last two Sith??

[PREDATOR490]

Well as far as bringing balance he did a poor job since Luke manages to refound a brand new order within 20 years.
There were hardly any sith around at the time yet the Sith get wiped out and mostly whats left is Jedi...

Some reset that is when instead of 2 sith you end up with 0 and a bunch of New Order Jedi who end up being faced with the Yuuzhan Vong.

I do wonder if a fully trained sith or Jedi from PT would be able to detect Yuuzhan Vong better than NJO jedi.

[Base Delta Zero]

Well, the New Jedi order seems to be somewhat different from the old one, i.e. they use more dark-sideish things. Obviously not truly dark but it might be some kind of 'balance'.

[PREDATOR490]

So instead of having Uber powerful guys on the side of good and right and two even more powerful Sith of Evil and wrong.

The Force decides to say "fuck this, your doing too well, Time to introduce the reset function..."

*Reset*

Now we have no Fully trained Sith but we have a half trained Jedi who uses that training to spring forth a New Jedi Order.

This seems biased to me personnally especially if it was meant to be a complete balancer and not some sort of shift sider.
I also want to know who made this phrophecy. Did someone just randomly meditate and *poof*
Or was it some special guy that said it decades ago ?

[Kurgan]

I don't think Lucas really had the EU in mind when he created the "prophecy." About the only thing he need have assumed is that Luke will "pass on what he has learned," and before someone tries to leap up and accuse me of bashing the EU, let's get it straight that Lucas didn't use the EU to create the prequels, he just made it up as he went along, and that's perfectly fine since the EU is lower level canon. Plus the prophecy means a lot less taking the EU into account because you had all these lost light and darksiders running around even after the purge, and Luke had plenty of students who left the order and fell to the darkside (the Jedi Order only lost 20 in a thousand years or so, but how is that compared to Luke's running total? Not much of an improvement in teaching techniques that I can see...).

Also the "Son of the Suns" prophecy is from the Star Wars novelisation, and appears to be totally different than the "chosen one to bring balance to the force" prophecy of the prequels. Though we also have the "Son of the Suns" audio easter egg in ROTJ SE and TPM which is never officially explained, to my knowledge.

The "Will of the Force" seems to have been to eliminate the Sith. Perhaps it felt that sacrificing all but two of the Jedi was worth it to get rid of the greater evil, who knows, but we need not assume that, do we? Dune rules, and I'm sure Lucas appreciated it, but it need not be the same kind of thing going on here.

Can people post the relevant quotes from Dark Lord since I probably will never read it? I mean the quotes describing Anakin's conception and how Plagueis fits into this (if at all).

I don't know of killing the Jedi Order off really had anything to do with the prophecy. Why would it have to be? We might as well insist that all the evil acts Vader did were part of the prophecy. The trouble is we never actually get the prophecy in the movies, only bits and pieces of it, that may be quotes or may be interpretations. Something about a "vergence" in the Force, something about being concieved by the midichlorians, something about "one who will bring balance to the force" or "the only one who can restore balance" (deleted scene from AOTC), "destroy the Sith not join them", "bring balance to the force not leave it in darkness" (ROTS), "the chosen one" etc.

Luke was concieved and born the usual way, so if the prophecy requires a miraculous birth, then he doesn't fit the bill.

[chitoryu12]

[quote="b00tleg"]The prophecy said that one would be born unto a woman by the will of the living Force and was destined to bring balance to the force. quote]

The prophecy is probably talking about Luke because Anakin is the living Force. He was created by the Force, so he is, essentialy, the Force itself. Luke is Anakin's son, so he was born by the will of the living Force. Get it now?

[Kurgan]

CANON!!

[18-Till-I-Die]

Its entirely possible the Chosen One doesnt exist.

Just because they believe this prophecy doesnt make it true, more so just because Anakin's mom said she had no husband/boyfriend/whatever doesnt mean it's true either.

So its entirely possible that the Jedi were screwed basically, there is no prophecy, and Anakin was just a guy with a lot of power who Palpatine exploited.

[Kurgan]

But he did destroy the Sith, so maybe he did fulfill their prophecy, from a certain point of view.

If I prophecized that George W. Bush would destroy the earth, and eventually he somehow did it, wasn't my prophecy "fulfilled" even if it was just a lucky guess and he did so indirectly after a bunch of other things that would have suggested the opposite outcome? (Not that this would ever happen of course)

Jedi can see the future, but apparently they just couldn't see that far ahead (neither could palpatine). Otherwise prophecies wouldn't really be that big a deal, they could just mediate for a bit and go "nope, sorry."

[Cos Dashit]

According to the prophecy, Luke cannot be the Chosen One, because he/she would need to be concieved by the Force. Luke was concieved by Anakin.

One thing I have always had a problem with: As long as there are Jedi, there are Sith. You cannot 'bring balance to the Force'. They two are nearly alike in almost every way, even Palpatine says so. One uses emotion (hate, anger, passion, even love) to tap into the Force, while the other uses meditation and inner peace. The Sith came from the Jedi during the first part of the whole 'organization process' when the Force-adepts came together, and two groups disagreed on the proper way to tap into the Force. This happened many times, starting about 25,000 years BBY.

So what I am trying to say is that the whole 'bring balance to the Force and rid the galaxy of the Sith' is a load of bull. Nothing more than a fantasy.

[Kurgan]

Actually you could wipe out the Sith or the Jedi because they are a set of teachings and traditions. Unless those particular teachings and traditions are all revealed supernaturally (in which case, why the need to "train" anyone?), then you could simply destroy all their records (or hide them) and kill everyone who knew the info.

There might always be a "Dark side" that Jedi could fall to, but once the teachings are destroyed and anyone who remembers them destroyed, their tradition is effectively dead. If Yoda and Obi-Wan had died without training Luke, the Jedi would have effectively died as well (since Vader converted, he was no longer considered a Jedi, and so when he died, no more Jedi stuff possible, unless somebody dug up any surviving records and implemented them).

And forget all the EU stuff about the history of the Sith, Lucas wrote his own story, so you retcon the old stuff based on the new, not the other way around. So some prophecy from the EU about there always being Sith and Jedi eternally at war until the end of time really doesn't hold much weight in interpreting the prequel created prophecy. Lucas said Anakin fulfilled the prophecy. Of course someone will say that Lucas's behind the scenes comments don't mean jack, but there you go, clear statement of authorial intent right on the DVDs.

Again the EU muddies all this because the Jedi and Sith are just drops in the ocean of force users all over the galaxy, and the Jedi Purge missed a ton of people anyway, and there is no attention given to the Rule of Two (because that's something else Lucas made up, that the EU authors were not privy to before TPM) so you have plenty of dark siders trained by Palpatine, Vader and so on.

If you take the EU stuff without retcons, I'm inclined to say that yes, the Prophecy was baloney. They wiped out 96% of the Jedi (or so, since we have plenty of surviving Jedi after the purges, according to the EU) and 1% of the Dark Side users. Maybe they killed the Sith Order, as only a handful of people since ROTJ have claimed to be Sith, and you could just say they are pretenders to the throne, claiming the name just to latch onto their feared reputation. With all those force users running around both dark and light, and Luke's students dropping to the dark side like flies, you'd think the "prophecy" had very little impact on galactic affairs. So maybe the "chosen one" is still to come, if it wasn't just all a lie.

Also, the Jedi Order wasn't destroyed, because you still had Yoda and Obi-Wan who passed it on to Luke. And he (presumably) passed it on to others after the closing credits of ROTJ, starting with Leia. The Sith Order on the other hand, was destroyed, because there were only two Sith, and both died before they could train anyone else in their ways.

[Shadowtraveler]

It could just be that it hasn't had a chance to finish yet. The prophecy's, what, a thousand years old? At least? What harm's another century or two gonna do?

[Cos Dashit]

Actually you could wipe out the Sith or the Jedi because they are a set of teachings and traditions. Unless those particular teachings and traditions are all revealed supernaturally (in which case, why the need to "train" anyone?), then you could simply destroy all their records (or hide them) and kill everyone who knew the info.

Yes, but there records are only what they learned about the Dark Side. If every single one was wiped out, a new Force-adept could begin to learn it, and teach it to pupils, and they learn more about it, etc. until they are back at the point they were. And with Jedi around it is far easier to re-learn.

There might always be a "Dark side" that Jedi could fall to, but once the teachings are destroyed and anyone who remembers them destroyed, their tradition is effectively dead. If Yoda and Obi-Wan had died without training Luke, the Jedi would have effectively died as well (since Vader converted, he was no longer considered a Jedi, and so when he died, no more Jedi stuff possible, unless somebody dug up any surviving records and implemented them).

See above.

And forget all the EU stuff about the history of the Sith, Lucas wrote his own story, so you retcon the old stuff based on the new, not the other way around. So some prophecy from the EU about there always being Sith and Jedi eternally at war until the end of time really doesn't hold much weight in interpreting the prequel created prophecy. Lucas said Anakin fulfilled the prophecy. Of course someone will say that Lucas's behind the scenes comments don't mean jack, but there you go, clear statement of authorial intent right on the DVDs.

Isn't the purpose of canon to add to the story? Technically, in none of the movies did it say that Mace/Yoda couldn't be wrong about bringing balance to the Force. How could you just throw it out the window?

[Spartan]

Your kidding right...the Sith aren't gone, their a whole planet of Dark Lord spectres just waiting for some idoit force sensity to come to Korriban in a quest for power. As long as a force ghost or sith artifact remains their will always be Sith...their worse than cockroaches.

[Cos Dashit]

Your kidding right...the Sith aren't gone, their a whole planet of Dark Lord spectres just waiting for some idoit force sensity to come to Korriban in a quest for power. As long as a force ghost or sith artifact remains their will always be Sith...their worse than cockroaches.

Yes, I agree, you could never destroy the Sith. You would need to destroy the Force.