Lit Anyone else think that Abeloth origins were a brilliant retcon ?

Pomojema - the deity whose temple had the Kaiburr crystal, in Splinter of the Mind's Eye, looked very Cthulhu-ish in the comic version.

 

Damn it, why will people not let me have good things?

 

It's Splendid Ap.

 

I personally thoroughly enjoyed her origins. They saw the clone wars episodes would muddy the waters if they were two different races, so they ended up doing a solid job to make it work. I'm ok with standing by perhaps one of the most unpopular opinions in the EU.

 

I didn't mind her origins. It didn't bother me that it had to do with the Mortis thingie. It would have been more effective if her origin had been revealed around Conviction rather than the last half of the last book in a 9 book story arc.

 

ran for office, ran from Luke, it did alot of running

 

Was there ever any mention of what the plot / plan would have been if she was not linked to Mortis?

 

She was perfectly happy eating Skywalker's girlfriends first. Then she decided that running for office is a stepping stone to godhood for some reason.

I don't get it either.

 

Obviously even Abeloth felt Daala being Chief of State was stupid, and felt she could do better.

 

I didn't mind her origin, but I felt it had no background in the book series. The series had built her up as this big, mysterious, almost omnipotent being of some mysterious origin, and then the last book of the series decides to connect her to a trilogy of TCW episodes that had previously had no connection to the series. FotJ itself had had either none or almost no references or connections to TCW, and it seemed really strange the last book is like, "Oh yeah, this whole thing is because of Mortis." It felt tacked on, rather than the natural conclusion. The connection itself is pretty good and interesting, but if there had been more hints, clues, and foreshadowing prior I think it would have been more well received.It felt like they were going in one direction, and then they took a sharp turn into totally different territory. And the whole Yoda having told Luke about Mortis, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka, along with the Father, Son, and the Daughter feels really awkward. It's a pretty good way for the information to be found, but the fact that Luke has known about these "Force Gods" for about 40 years and not said anything about it to anyone or even taught the Jedi Order about it feels really weird and just makes no sense at all.

If the reveal had been built up and written more naturally, it would have been a fantastic way to combine the Litverse with the TCWverse. Instead, it just made fans dislike any possible connections more.

 

Like others here have said, I don't necessarily mind linking Abeloth to Mortis. I think making her the missing 'Mother' actually fit well. But the way they actually did it was abominable and hugely disrespectful to the readers. But what else is new from the last few years of Del Rey?

Actually I don't think Ahsoka is mentioned at all in Apocalypse, when Luke is giving the summary of the Mortis episodes. Which of course made me wonder if there's an OOU reason for that.

But I thought a much better way to link it, if they absolutely had to wait until the last FOTJ book to do so, would be to have it so that the information on Mortis came from Obi-Wan's mysterious datapad with its UR coordinates from Tatooine Ghost. Yeah, it was supposed to refer to Outbound Flight originally, but it wouldn't be the first time Denning has changed some piece of foreshadowing from that book to fit in better with a later plot.

Although thinking on that, it makes me glad that the Outbound Flight novel has already been written, otherwise I might be worried that Crucible would be the story of how the Outbound Flight crashed into Mortis or how Abeloth made the galactic hyperspace border or something like that.

 

I would have preferred if the information about Mortis was discovered by the Jedi in an old holocron or datapad, rather than Luke remembering Yoda told him. Exactly when did Yoda tell him anyway? Yoda did not tell him that Anakin fell to the Dark Side during training in TESB, so the Mortis story would not make a lot of sense. I don't see how it could have happened in ROTJ before Yoda vanished. Is it implied that Yoda's Force ghost told the story to Luke?

 

I was wondering about that myself.... it doesnt seem like Yoda had very much time to tell Luke. The holocron idea would have made much more sense... As for the backround story itself, I kinda liked the link to TCW. It was very last minute, but I think it worked pretty well...

 

Wasn't Luke with Yoda for 6 months?

 

Its one of those really, really... vague parts of the movies. Sort of like how the Falcon got to Bespin, other sources have said the Falcon limped there on a backup hyperdrive, instead of actually just flying there at sublight speeds of course, but there's still not an exact time, I think. Since from when they all escaped Hoth to when Han and Leia arrived on Bespin, it could have been anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and then its not like they spent months there while Vader waited to reveal himself. Not sure an exact time has ever been specified, but six months might be pushing it, no offense.

Saying Yoda mentioned Mortis to Luke is also kind of a lame excuse for adding it in... but then it was from the same author who had Artoo start replaying some of the darkest moments from RotS just to mess with Luke's head and slow him down for the final battle. It was probably the most direct way to reference TCW, rather than having Luke remember Mortis from occasional mentions in old holocrons or recovered texts or ancient ruins (how about those ruins on Abeloth's planet? Did they ever bother to examine them much? But then most of the Jedi were stuck on Coruscant for far, far too long, dealing with politics rather than actually helping Luke, who was then left with only the Tribe for aid... and he had to waste half his time convincing them he wasn't going to backstab them at a moment's notice to actually get them to do anything .

I don't mind going to the killiks to ask for some hints, as they are a very old species with their memories stretching back thousands of years, but they're also already known to have very... flexible memories, and that was when they were led by a human joiner at that, so without a human joiner they're even more fluid. Well, it was partially a last, desperate attempt to find more info, but still.

Anyway, considering how Luke was at most only on Dagobah for a few months, and Yoda was already giving Luke a crash course in the basics of Jedi techniques and philosophy, adding in the Mortis legend seems... unlikely and unnecessary for a really rushed Jedi education (what should take years compacted into months... and Luke left earlier than they wanted, although he had apparently matured enough that Yoda didn't have much to teach him when Luke returned, although Yoda wasn't in good shape either by that time). But then FotJ novels don't bother to let little things like logic slow them down.

I'm still surprised that they linked it up to the Mortis legend like they did, not the part about adding Abeloth to the "family" of Force gods as the mother figure (though I didn't care about that either), but because they're basically implying that Anakin failed his big Chosen One destiny moment when he didn't take the Father's place, leading to Abeloth's release... when I thought DVD commentaries or stuff like that said Anakin fulfilled his destiny when he killed Palpatine in RotJ, and most things usually don't override or rewrite the movies or DVD commentary like that. Not unless its another Lucas-directed project like TFU (Starkiller is the super strongest bestest Force user ever! And he came back from the dead perfectly fine too! ) Not to mention how the series jumped all over the place, that blowing up Centerpoint probably did it, then that because Jacen screwed around with the Throne of Balance vision released her, or that the general bad shape of the galaxy required it be cleansed (look at who the Chief of State was at the time ), but that because there was no more Son or Daughter to oversee the killiks, there wasn't anyone left to lock Abeloth back up eventually. So it was either all of none of the above or something like that, which basically is a perfect description of FotJ's joke of an attempt at a plot.

 

This is bringing up memories of old arguments on this board from many years ago. As I recall, it has been pretty much been determined that Luke was only training on Dagobah for a few weeks. Are we to assume Yoda told him about the prophecy of the chosen one and the Mortis story but suggest that Darth Vader screwed it all up by killing Anakin Skywalker?

 

Rereading FOTJ for the first time in so long. I love Abeloth.

 

By the way I know this is an ancient forum, but found it on Google lol

 

I liked the Mortis arc but I didn't like Abeloth's connection as the "Mother" (or "Step-mother"). She should never have been directly connected to the Ones, instead just being someone high up who went insane not as part of the three.

 

(emphasis mine)

 

Well if you want to know where Abeloth Truly came from... well, a certain article released this very day sheds some light on that.

 

Yah I never read this stuff either but it's really weird to reconcile how one tells the story of Anakin Skywalker and Mortis and just leaves out "Uhm, yah, it was all right because he did become Darth Vader".

 

I haven’t read “Supernatural Encounters” yet, but this thread did make me wonder how Abeloth’s origin would have been revealed if it had not been connected to the Mortis gods.

I know it was mentioned in some interview that the plan was to link her to the Celestials somehow, not directly (i.e., she was never going to be a Celestial herself), but in a way similar to how it ended up. But how would that have worked if it wasn't a family dynamic that she became a part of?

Anyway, I have very mixed feelings about FOTJ, after thinking about it over the years. I was drawn into it solely by the intrigue of Abeloth from Abyss, which is still excellent. But they never truly did much with her.

One thing I wish I’d seen, for example, was multiple “avatars” interacting. Sort of like a multi-Doctor Doctor Who story, only where the quirky ancient alien is a murderous Tangela monster and probably won’t stay for tea (unless you’re Luke).

And yet, I still look at Laura Dern’s Holdo and think, “She’d make a good Abeloth avatar.” Or even Winona Ryder in Stranger Things, since whoever wrote Callista into being once described her as Ryder-esque. Yup, this mind-drinker sure occupied possibly too much of my mind at one point.

 

Am I crazy, or does anyone else remember some interview Denning gave in the time that FOTJ was coming out where he talked about having conversations with Filoni about how to fit Abeloth into Mortis?