Balance of the Force: Legacy Era

When asked what happen with the controversial balance of the Force in the Legacy Era, Writer John Ostrander replied:

The Force was balanced when Anakin finally ended Palpatine. Sith master and Sith appentice both died.

Does it mean the Force will ALWAYS remain balanced?

There are those who suggest it became unbalanced again when Luke started his new Jedi Order. It creates conditions under which the Sith order as we knew it -- not the original Sith -- was created. If you create Jedi don't you inherently create a situation where one can or will go wrong, turn to the Dark Side? (Kyp Durron always seemed a likely candidate to me.) If the Sith holocrons still exist (as on Korriban), doesn't it almost become inevitable that there will again be Sith?

Oriental philosophy fills SW. The concept of the Jedi themselves are (or at least seem) very like the warrior monks like the Shao-lin. From that we also get the yin/yang concept that within the light there is some darkness and within the darkness there is some light. That the dark and the light while in opposition also compliment one another. (An over simplification, I know.) I suggest that the light always will cast a shadow so long as it interacts with the real world. In short, if there are Jedi, sooner or later don't you almost HAVE to have Sith? Isn't the only way to maintain the balance is for the Jedi not to exist?

One may not AGREE but isn't this at least a possible and reasonable explanation?

Will I go into this in LEGACY itself? Depends on if/when we have a story where it's relevant.

Once I thought that the forming of the NJO was the result of the Balance. That is, the new Jedi are more dependent of themselves rather than the established the so called Jedi codes. Because in the Or era, the Jedi have stood on having no possessions, while Sith thrive on taking everything for themselves. The NJO stood in between these two ideals, thus the Balance.

I also knew that SW philosophies were based on the yin/yang or the Tao, but I never thought they based everything Star Wars on it. Also this made Anakin's sacrifice of no great importance. Why? The Balance was felt only for a very short time.

On the other side, this made me think. Do Jedi really bring the unbalance at all? Or someone from the dark side has to let go of his hatred and go the light side so balance would once again be achieved?

 

I don't buy the yin/yang comparisons for balance, because then Lucas' explicit statements about what balance actually is don't make any sense. Balance seems to be the absence of the cancerous Sith from the galaxy. It seems to be that the Force gets corrupted by dark side usage and blance is destroying that corruption.

So: as John said, no one says it'll stay balanced. And furthermore, no one has really said that it's unbalanced in the Legacy comics. We have no evidence to suggest that these new Sith are feeding a darkness and cancerous corruption of the Force the way the Rule-of-Two Sith did, and only they have ever been said to have unbalanced the Force.

- Keralys

 

As much as I hold to the "Chosen One prophecy," I admit that it's not necessarily permanent. But the Anakin Skywalker-- a person prophesized thousands of years before RotJ-- bringing balance to the Force only to have it come unbalanced in decades is ****ing insane.

I don't accept the "Yin/Yang" thing, either. Lucas explained that balance meant for the Sith to be destroyed, and he's also said that he meant Luke to restart the Jedi Order.

 

We're don't know the Force is unbalanced.

Yeah, but none of this contradicts the story.

 

Both the NJO and the New Sith Order are completly different orders to what preceded them. Luke had very little training from Yoda and Obi-Wan and most of that was teaching him to be a weapon against the Sith. He may have pieced together other parts of what being a Jedi is all about but his order is very different to the OJO and the New Sith Order with it's rule of one is very different to Palpatine's rule of two order. Maybe the restart is what was required to bring balance.

 

I like the idea that the existance of the sith brings unbalance, and the skywalker descendents are always going to be fighting the sith for balance.

 

If that was true, I'd expect to see a lot more lightwhips.

 

Too bad it's not Kenobi who had kids. He's Sith kryptonite.

Luke is naturally sympathetic to the Sith. He's the son and one and the husband of one formerly in training. He can't see the forest for the trees. He tries to think, feel, analyse, his way through allowance of darksiders. He makes excuses for the darkness in those around him and in himself. "Oh, you were brainwashed. You were really a Jedi because you were loyal and those are Jedi traits!" (Mafia scumbags must all be Jedi becausethey are loyal, by lUke's guesstimation.) "Oh, you were possessed by a Sith Spirit! No big, why spend a second in jail?" (Sith spirits; which are supposed to cease to exist, according to Qui Gon, Yoda, Obi-wan, all the other masters, etc.) "Let's never ponder this for a second and forget about the billions living on Carida. Spilled milk!!!"

Kenobi just killed them. As is right and proper. There's no such thing as a benevolent dictator, and never will be.

PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The funny thing is, the last part of your post was, well, wrong. Multiple monarchs throughout history, including some holding absolute power, can be shown to have been benevolent, stretching all the way back to certain Roman Emperors. The only rule without an exception is that every rule has an exception.

As for the Sith spirit things, just because Qui-Gon, etc. said they don't exist doesn't mean they don't. Since there is clear and incontrovertible evidence that they do exist, the old guard was, well... wrong. Just like they were on so many other things.

- Keralys

 

Too bad it's not Kenobi who had kids. He's Sith kryptonite.

How do you know he didn't?

Maybe he hooked up with a hot red head on a trip to Mos Espa named Sally Jade.

 

Obi-Wan's a pimp

 

This kind of debate is exactly why I like to think 'balance' of the Force should be nothing to do with wiping out Sith or ensuring equal levels of light and dark power. If if all it takes to imbalance the Force is too many Sith or Jedi then we should have seen multiple Chosen Ones by now. When Nihilus all but wiped out the Jedi Order, wasn't the Force out of balance? If so, why wasn't a Chosen One born in that era?

Personally, I like to think that the Force was imbalanced by the unnatural creation of Anakin by the Sith, and that the only way to restore balance was for Anakin to die (and he effectively did this himself, thus fulfilling the prophecy).

 

"Only a fully-trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor."


Luke didn't defeat Palpatine, Anakin did.

"No more training do you require. Already know you that which you need."

Which is how to take down a Sith not how to be a Jedi.

"The Force is strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned."

Yep he has the raw potential but pass on what you have learned, just in case we're wrong (again).

back on topic

I can see why with a brand new start for Force-Users in the GFFA that everything would be reset.
It could go on and on until someone reunites the orders.

 

The funny thing is, the last part of your post was, well, wrong. Multiple monarchs throughout history, including some holding absolute power, can be shown to have been benevolent, stretching all the way back to certain Roman Emperors. The only rule without an exception is that every rule has an exception.


Basically, I said "dictator". And the one good every 600 years doesn't make up for all the crazies, perverts, psychos, idiots, and half wits in between.

Democracy is the way of the enlightened.

 

I can think of quite a few democratically-elected leaders who could fall into similar categories.

The "enlightened" in this case being the Mob, or rather, those who know how to manipulate it, much the same as in any political system, in any era.

 

Actually, Lucas says that it's like the yin/yang.

"I wanted to have this mythological footing because I was basing the films on the idea that the Force has two sides, the good side, the evil side, and they both need to be there. Most religions are built on that, whether it's called yin and yang, God and the devil?everything is built on the push-pull tension created by two sides of the equation. Right from the very beginning, that was the key issue in Star Wars."

--George Lucas, ?The Mythology of Star Wars,? Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth DVD, 2001

There is good and there is evil. But if evil grows too strong, it pushes the Force out of balance. So to put the Force back into balance, the Dark Lord has to be destroyed. This is what happens in ROTJ. Good and evil will continue to exist. The Sith could very well return. But, the Sith cannot gain the same level of power that they did in Palpatine's era. Darth Kryat and his Sith do what they do in "Legacy", but odds are they did not throw the Force out of balance. The circumstances that brought the Force out of balance were all there at once. The circumstances that brought down the Galactic Alliance, the Imperial Knights, the Jedi Order and the Imperials loyal to Emperor Fel were all different.

 

If the Sith could never again be the threat they presented in the movies, then what the hell's the point in bringing them back from a storytelling perspective?

It's like bringing Sauron back in LotR but saying "oh, he can't **** things up anymore because we destroyed the ring."

 

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY for my viewpoint. Check this out. You said, "But if evil grows too strong, it pushes the Force out of balance. So to put the Force back into balance, the Dark Lord has to be destroyed." Gotta say I disagree with the simplicity of your statement simply because I think it's too myopic. Dark Lords do not have a monopoly on evil. Palpatine's rise to power was not the cause of the Force's imbalance, but a consequence thereof. Evil and corruption wer ascendant in the galaxy. The Republic was rotting, and it was this environment that bolstered that dark side and allowed the Sith to take power. They thrived on the state of the galaxy and fed on it. Evil causes imbalance, and the Sith are the embodiment of evil, but they in order to be an embodiment, evil must first exist in abstract. Killing the Sith releases a pressure valve, but I disagree with your view of the causation.

Why not?

I agree. It's circumstancial.

 

BobaMatt

darth-sinister posted:
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Darth Kryat and his Sith do what they do in "Legacy", but odds are they did not throw the Force out of balance.
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I agree. It's circumstancial.


Okay, so my question to both you, Boba and Darth Sinister is : Why could two Sith Lords, Palpatine and Darth Vader, "through the Force out of balance" while Krayt and 9,999 other Sith cannot? Logically, I would think that 10,000 Sith would put the Force even MORE out of balance than just two. Just the sheer numbers of Sith would give them a huge advantage.

 

I wouldn't see too much into it, GL's concept of Balance isn't exactly right


I prefer the real concept of Balacne, "You must have light and dark"

 

Read my post again. Palpatine and his apprentices didn't throw the Force out of whack, they were just the key to restoring balance.

 

Actually, it seems that Sidious and his apprentice were the ones who threw the Force out of balance, Matt.

In The Phantom Menace one of the Jedi Council already knows the balance of The Force is starting to slip, and will slip further. It is obvious to this person that The Sith are going to destroy this balance. On the other hand a prediction which is referred to states someone will replace the balance in the future.

- CUT Magazine article

"I think it is obvious that [Qui-Gon] was wrong in Episode 1 and made a dangerous decision, but ultimately this decision may be correct. The Phantom Menace refers to the force of the dark side of the Universe. Anakin will be taken over by dark forces which in turn destroy the balance of the Galaxy, but the individual who kills the Emperor is Darth Vader - also Anakin. The tale meanders and both the prediction, and Qui-Gonn are correct - Anakin is the chosen one, and he did bring peace at last with his own sacrfice. Luke couldn't kill the Emperor himself, but he could make Anakin reflect on his life and kill the Emperor.

- Lucas (9/7/99

 

Right before your bolded quote, Lucas said that the Force was already going out of balance, and the Sith just pushed it over the edge.

 

Yeah, but how do you know that it wasn't already slipping BECAUSE of the Sith?