"But for Anakin..."

The prophecy of bringing balance to the force, and what it ultimately means, has been the subject of much debate, despite Lucas weighing in and saying that it refers to destroying the Sith. I think the arguments about it referring to something else, such as the destruction of the Jedi, and/or the rise of Sith rule, forget to put two and two together. Whatever the prophecy means, Anakin is the Chosen One, and no one else. That means that balance cannot be achieved by someone other than Anakin. Balance must be something that could not be achieved without Anakin's involvement towards that end. Hence the title of this thread. To define anything as balance, you have to able to say that without Anakin's involvement, it would not have taken place.

One argument for the meaning of balance maintains that balance means wiping out the Jedi and letting the Sith rule, or creating a situation wherein there are exactly as many Jedi as Sith. Unfortunately for these arguments, Anakin is not as central to that process as people may like to think; nor can we even be entirely sure that it is accurate.

Let's say for a minute that the prophecy does refer to Sith dominance. First of all, the Sith mastermind truly responsible for this is Darth Sidious. It was he who arranged for Naboo to be invaded so that he would receive the sympathy vote. It was he who gained enough control over the senate that he knew how to manipulate them. It was he who turned Count Dooku to the Dark Side. It was Dooku who arranged the logistics of having the Clone Army ready and provoked the Clone Wars, which propelled Palpatine to greater power. He did all of this with no help from Anakin. Palpatine is the one who engineered the rise of the Sith to take over the galaxy. First question: If this is truly what balance means, shouldn't he be the Chosen One, instead of Anakin? Yet such a possibility is never put forth by the films. Whatever the prophecy means, Anakin is the only Chosen One. Second question: If this is balance, why would the Force choose Anakin not to be the Sith in control, but merely to be the attack dog of the real Sith in control?

Secondly, let's look at what Anakin/Vader did and didn't do. He did not single-handedly wipe out the Jedi. Coruscant was left vulnerable at the beginning of that movie because the Jedi were spread out across the galaxy, and were therefore unable to protect it from invasion. I'd be surprised if even half the Jedi in the Republic were home for that battle.

The execution of the Jedi was Order 66--a command programmed into the Stormtroopers with no help from Anakin. The only Jedi Anakin was involved in killing were those still on Coruscant, at the Jedi Temple.

We cannot even be sure how many of them he killed--many of them were killed by the Stormtroopers. Elsewhere in the galaxy, it was exclusively the Stormtroopers who carried out Order 66. Sorry, Anakin doesn't get enough points to take credit for wiping out the Jedi.

Plus, let's not forget that a trap was laid for any and all possible surviving Jedi. Obi-Wan and Yoda are the only ones we meet, but the possibility is left open that others survived, and sent out the signal telling other Jedi to flee. Of course, those other Jedi are non-entities, since the only major Jedi characters in the prequels have been Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Dooku, Yoda, Anakin, and Mace Windu. But that doesn't mean others haven't survived, so the 2:2 ratio cannot be assumed. Even if, for argument's sake, we say that only Obi-Wan and Yoda survived, one cannot give Anakin all the credit. One cannot say it would not have happened if Anakin had not done it. Order 66 was much broader than that, and was carried out by Stormtroopers.

So if you want to believe that balance means the rise of the Sith, then one must consider who really brought the Sith to power: Sidious, not Vader. And considering how little of the process Vader was involved in, you might as well factor him out as the Chosen One.

 

Interesting theory, but this is how I interpret balance being brought to the Force:

Anakin is the Chosen One without a doubt. Qui Gon had an unusually strong attunement (maybe relationship is a better word) to the Force, which the rest of the Jedi Council was either blind to or simply too arrogant to understand. His gut instinct told him that Anakin was something special and would go out of his way, to defy the Jedi Council if he must, to have this boy trained as a Jedi to fulfill his destiny. The Jedi were too cynical, dismissed Qui Gon as a heretic, and refused him, or any other Master, to train Anakin.

Palpatine sensed how unusually strong the Force was with Anakin, and coveted him as a potential apprentice for many years. Maul and Dooku were simply pawns, just to eat up the time until Anakin was ripe for the plucking. Palpy/Sid kept complimenting how powerful and gifted Anakin was in comparison to the rest of the Jedi, and he should know as he is the most powerful being in the Galaxy, both in terms of the Force an politics.

Anyhoo, to get back to the topic of "bringing balance to the Force", it's a complete purge of the Jedi and Sith - the Jedi have become arrogant, cynical, almost corrupt, and the Sith, well, we know their stance. All the ills of both Orders must be wiped out and started anew, with the Son of the Chosen One being put in charge to ensure that all is right with the galaxy.

Or something like that.

 

Anyhoo, to get back to the topic of "bringing balance to the Force", it's a complete purge of the Jedi and Sith - the Jedi have become arrogant, cynical, almost corrupt, and the Sith, well, we know their stance. All the ills of both Orders must be wiped out and started anew, with the Son of the Chosen One being put in charge to ensure that all is right with the galaxy.

Obi-Wan and Yoda teach Luke in the same way that past Jedi are taught, and any alleged changes of his take place outside the view of the films. They are apocryphal Expanded Universe stories. Many speculated that the prequels would end with Obi-Wan and Yoda realizing how oppressive the Jedi Order was, and how they should have allowed Anakin to get married openly. None of this has happened. The Jedi philosophy has not changed. The Jedi have nothing to corrupt. They serve the Senate. They have no power over the galaxy. And if they were meant to be wiped out, it would have been Anakin alone who did it. He wasn't necessary, and was little more than an ancillary tool in its execution. It was the stormtroopers doing.