Lit From Endor to Exegol - The State of the Galaxy Discussion Thread (Tagged Victory's Price Spoilers)

I hate to say it but that basically is a movie's worth of development we wouldn't see.

 

There's nothing that they can do vis a via Leia at this point that would be ideal. It's simply an unfortunate consequence of Carrie passing away unexpectedly. I mean ideally she would either have played a major role in IX (as was the original plan apparently) or she'd have gotten some kind of fitting sendoff in TLJ (which they might have done had she passed earlier on in the process).

But now, there's nothing that's going to feel 100% satisfying, and it's not really their fault in this case. Personally, I think that respectfully writing her out (as either having died or retired or whatever) in-between films would be the least bad of a bunch if not great options.

 

Yeah, having Leia pass away in between films is probably the most respectful way they can handle this bad situation, and it's how Hollywood has handled this sort of thing in the past. Having the characters insist that Leia is still alive and doing stuff off screen is a bad idea IMO. One, in-character if Leia was alive she'd want to be with her friends/allies in their darkest hour. Two, it just draws attention to her absence. Three, it comes across like the old "Telling kids their puppy is living on a farm" thing, which seems pretty disrespectful to all involved.

I really liked that scene because it's SO common in fiction for the "Good Guys" to say "Look at this evil piece of human trash, you know what he does? He sells WEAPONS. What a scumbag. Now, on a completely unrelated note, let's go use some weapons to kill our enemies. I'm sure this won't come across as hypocritical to the audience at all."

 

I remember the Vulture pointing out Iron Man's hypocrisy on this very topic in the recent Spider-Man film.

 

A quote from Rian Johnson in a recent interview with Empire Magazine that is very relevant to this thread:



I suspect IX will show alot of folks rising up, be they Leia's Outer Rim allies, surviving NR units, independent factions, etc.

--Adm. Nick

 

I really liked DJ, what he said seemed like the cynical parrelel to what Maz says in TFA about "the only fight.".

Exept, jaded cynic that he is DJ doesn't see light vs dark or good vs evil, just one big never ending racket. You win some they win some, nothing really changes except people die and other people get rich.

 

wrong thread, ignore

 

.....like finding a sinister influence behind the scenes that wants the galaxy in a constant state of war?

 

Well, considering the state of demilitarization in the New Republic, the Resistance was probably forced to acquire ships from shadier sources than they'd like. They can't just place an order with Corellian Engineering Corporation or the Mon Calamari Shipyards, as that would upset the First Order. Plus the New Republic government wouldn't want to appear that supportive publicly, hence why Leia has to work behind the scenes to acquire capital ships and starfighters secondhand from New Republic senators and member worlds.

--Adm. Nick

 

I think the First Order will find a galaxy experienced with and favorable towards the idea of rebellion much harder to govern than they planned. Maybe this will also be Mon Mothma's last laugh. The Republic she designed was a paper tiger, but the rebellion she led and the localized nature of military might she advocated ensured that ruling by force alone will be completely impossible for anyone stupid enough to try it.

 

One of the main questions I have is how much thought has the First Order put into governing the Galaxy. They have no formal capital (save the now severed in two Supremacy), no ruling body of Moffs, nothing that resembles a governmental structure. I have a hunch that ole' Snoke didn't think this out much beyond "we must destroy the Republic and prevent the Jedi from rising again". The Galaxy is vast and nearly impossible to govern with an iron fist. Hell, the only reason that the Empire was able to do so was because it inherited a massive Republic bureaucracy and didn't have to create organizations from scratch. The New Republic was able to govern because it took a lighter hand on local affairs and didn't try to control every aspect of it's membership.

--Adm. Nick

 

Weary, beleaguered Supreme Leader Kylo who doesn't want any of this responsibility at all is a good place to start Episode IX, I think.

 

If I had to guess, they thought that the weeks/months/years of terrorized panic caused by Starkiller and their subsequent blitzkrieg would by them the time to figure this out. But then the Resistance blew up Starkiller, killed Snoke, trashed the Supremacy, and summoned an apparently divine entity who can appear anywhere and at any time to humiliate Kylo Ren while the rest of them made a daring getaway on a legendary ship. The First Order went from a terrifying threat to a joke inside of a week.

 

Ep9 opens up with Kylo in some obscure trade meeting, completely dead inside as various people drone on about nothing for about 10 minutes.

We cut to his shuttle arriving back at the Supremacy, Kylo rushes to his throne room and sits down with an audible sigh of relief, only for Hux to burst in with a mountain of paperwork the supreme leader has to sign.

Kylo does his best to keep a straight face until Hux leaves the throne room, at which point he pulls out his lightsaber and starts absolutely going to town on the paperwork. Once all the paperwork is completely destroyed he slumps back into his throne and starts crying softly to himself as the ashes of the trashed paper falls softly around him.

This is why Palpatine kept Mas Amedda around.

 

The problem with this is we know Force ghosts aren't at people's beck and call. We know this from ESB when Luke pleaded for Ben to appear at the bottom of Cloud City.

The morale boost from Luke's sacrifice is going to go down real quick when Resistance fighters in a losing battle beg for Luke to show up and scare the FO and he doesn't appear.

It's sort of the flip version of Kylo praying to Vader in 7. Once it's clear Vader won't answer, Vader's no longer a motivating morale boost in Kylo's life. And once it's clear Luke won't just come when called on, the element of morale boosting from his fight on Crait will go down real quick.

What does Luke's Crait fight in the past matter when Kylo is sacking and burning Coruscant, the Coruscanti are begging Luke to appear and nothing happens?

Even if the Resistance wants to embrace martyrdom like Luke did and don't need a ghost appearance, Kylo will just say "Fine, go ahead and be a martyr" and kill them anyways. He still has the overwhelming firepower.

In the news we see real countries and leaders made a joke of quite a bit. That doesn't magically take away their nuclear weapons. The other countries are still afraid.

 

All of this, but when he goes to rinse his face off in the sink at the end of the day, Luke appears in the mirror to taunt him. Possibly with Han.

We also know from TLJ that Force ghosts can appear at will, and can interact with the material world in surprisingly concrete ways.

While Luke is not going to appear EVERYWHERE - the trick wouldn't work if he did - I do expect him to be the most active Force ghost we've ever seen. This could even include training other Jedi besides Rey, compounding the chaos the First Order has to deal with.

The war against the FO will likely be long and bloody, but there really isn't a scenario where the FO wins. Like Vietnam or Iraq, it will largely be a matter of how long the occupying force wants to stay there getting batting around, rather than them having a real plan for victory.

 

If this is the case, it's going to be hard to explain why Force ghosts never directly intervened before. Yoda can call down lightning--why did he not do so before? If Luke is going to be appearing calling down Force lightning on the FO, and he says it's the Will of the Force that it happens... Yes, technically there won't be a contradiction, but it feels now that new powers and abilities are written for "rule of cool" and any attempt to reconcile it with past material will be written as "Will of the Force."

This may be the way SW goes forward, but it's just a fiction style I'm not used to. It's like watching a game of tennis or basketball that has clearly defined rules, as opposed to watching Calvinball (a game featured in the old American comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) where the only rule is that you make it up as you go along.

 

The problems of the living ultimately belong to the living. Yoda didn't give Luke anything he didn't already have. Rather, he reminded him of things he had forgotten and clarified lessons he had already learned.

Luke, I think, is a different case. He DIDN'T accomplish what he was supposed to in life due to some of his choices, so he's got a busy afterlife ahead of him.

 

I'm still wondering if Leia's "allies in the Outer Rim" are actually worlds. The Outer Rim is loaded with key supporters of the old Rebel Alliance. Could these allies be Mon Cala, Sullust, Virgillia, Lothal, Garel, Dornea, etc? Hopefully we'll learn more.

--Adm. Nick

 

I think the galaxy is a bit "worn out" on rebelling now. Let's start with the Clone Wars. Dooku gleefully tells his CIS partners that "thousands" of star systems are signing up with the Confederacy. That sure is a lot.

Bear with me, I'm mixing EU and canon now. EU lore indicates that only 3 star systems signed up for the Rebel Alliance in the Corellian Treaty: Corellia, Alderaan, and Chandrila. This is also seen in the Force Unleashed. Canon bizarrely doesn't say how many because strangely the formal founding of the Alliance isn't shown even on a series titled 'Rebels'. The impression we get is that it might even be less than 3 star systems--just fighting groups not aligned with any particular government like the Ghost crew, Massassi group, etc.

So even in the Galactic Civil War we are already waay down from the thousands of eager rebelling planets of the clone wars. I was hoping Thrawn would pull a Star Trek Battle of Wolf 359 on thousands of rebelling systems to explain why it got reduced to 3 rebelling systems, but this never happened on the Rebels cartoon...

Now, we are down to 0 planets responding to the Resistance in 8. I have a feeling they just don't care anymore. They've already been burned so many times. Even if they defeat the FO and rebuild the Republic, it will all get blown apart again by someone they never heard of again.

 

This was before Luke's sacrifice. The whole theme, as Rian Johnson just stated in an interview with Empire Magazine, was that Luke's sacrifice was the spark that would inspire the war weary Galaxy to stand up once more and fight for their freedom. Things are just getting started!

--Adm. Nick

 

How does the galaxy even learn about Luke's sacrifice, or believe in it, when it was only before the dozen Resistance members and some FO military, and no one but Rey/Leia know that Luke actually died?

 

And how long will this last? The Dark Knight Rises did the same thing too, with Harvey Dent's memory inspiring Gotham to be a law abiding society. Then Kylo--I mean Bane--told everyone the truth about their martyr...

Do you know where Luke was when Hosnian Prime was destroyed? Do you know what he did to his own nephew? How an untrained girl ran away from him because he wouldn't even bother to leave hiding?

Kylo will probably announce every orbital bombardment with "I challenge you to pray to Luke and see if he will help you."

 

You're... not watching the same movies, are you?

But hey, if you wanna be cynical, more power to ya!

--Adm. Nick

 

I'm going to quote the Female Changeling in the last episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine because in my mind it probably exactly articulates what is going on in Kylo's mind right now--

FOUNDER: Isn't it obvious? You may win this war, Commander, but I promise you, when it is over, you will have lost so many ships, so many lives, that your victory will taste as bitter as defeat.

If more people want to be martyrs like their hero Luke, Kylo will kill them. Even if he loses, he'll have killed so many people and destroyed so many planets that on Rey's "victory", she'll just break down and cry her heart out (assuming she's still alive by then). And, from what we see in 7 and 8, Kylo has the military and the desire to make this happen. Like he told Luke, he'll kill him, and her, and all of it.

I guess I just want 9 not to play it safe any more. I want them to go all out.