Full Series The Mortis Thread

It was prior to the new canon, as well. Only Lucas and Filoni know the true meaning behind this arc.

 

I am definitely hazy on the details at the moment -- but int he old Tales of the Jedi comics and in the Knights of the Old Republic games -- Sith spirits were plentiful and often tied to their crypt or to some other relic -- but not able to pop up and flow around the gffa in general.

 

Totally. I think the Sith ghosts in Tales of the Jedi and even the extra Wii levels of The Force Unleashed (never played those, just read about them) also seemed to hang out in a single location. Probably just inspired by the idea of ghosts haunting a house/castle/forest/etc.

I'm pretty sure Filoni said they cut Bane & Revan from Mortis because "for the Sith there's nothing beyond the physical," which I guess leaves the possibility of tying spirits (or a piece of a soul, or an elaborate & interactive illusion) to objects or places, maybe sort of like the Harry Potter horcruxes.

 

I've heard the analogy to the Horcruxes before -- seems a good comparison.

I think Filoni may live to alter his stance on that front -- at least enough in the overall mythos to alleviate the mess we are in nowadays. I mean -- if you're a Jedi -- and at some point in history your Order knows of a means of retaining your Spirit like Obi-Wan and Yoda do --- saying it's "lost knowledge" is hard to fathom. Not something you forget all that easily.

Now -- if where we are headed is that The Jedi are just one sect of Force Users in a long line of iterations -- and the Whills / the Ones / the Priestesses / the Nightsisters / etc know of it in one form or another -- I could understand that with the right explanation Qui-Gon is the first to be taught how where the Jedi are concerned.

But the story of it all -- if ever told -- better be good.

 

Jinn was chosen primarily for his wisdom and his committent to the living Force, the Jedi were more focused on the cosmic Force. Jinn's training was apparently incomplete by the time he was killed on Naboo. Yoda seemed to have completed his training pretty quickly, and it seems Yoda would teach Kenobi how to commune to Jinn. Jinn first appeared to Kenobi and Skywalker, but they had their memories erased by The Father. But the exact reasoning the Priestesses would eventually come to choose Yoda over say Kenobi, or Jinn over Yoda was not adequately explained. Nor why would Jinn be allowed to pass this onto to say, Anakin as evidently he did. Force Ghosts and even the Priestesses and Jinn's voice ghost seems only able to have limited appearances. Jinn's voice in the films only appeared during moments of great suffering and pain. Did not seem like he was able to have chats with whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted unlike Kenobi did with Luke but even those were sporadic.

He revealed himself on Mortis due to it being a conduit of the Force, it greatly amplified his energy or whatever.

The Mortis family were physically immortal, until penetrated by the magic dagger. The killing of The Father by the Mortis dagger would enable a ligtsaber or whatever weapon to kill the others as it was done to The Son. The Father seemed the source of their immortality.

 

DanielUK- Man, I think you are right. I wonder if Snoke may have something related to the Mortis family. I would love to see the Mortis family either in a novel or comic book.

 

I remember first watching the Mortis eps when they aired... Still some of my fav eps from the show!!

 

The short answer: No.

Mortis was mentioned in Fate of the Jedi EU novel. But, it never was canon.

 

Ok, but how the death of the Daughter can be explained?
Another thing, Mortis places are different as how the the dark side of the Force is stronger or as the light side of the Force is stronger, or as both sides are stronger.
When Anakin makes both son and daughter to kneel, he is in the father temple.
Also, in "Ghosts of Mortis",when the father and Anakin are talking, at daughter's graveyard, father is saying:
"this place is strong with the Force; darkness have no hold in here".
Later, Qui Gon is appearing as Force Ghost and tells to Anakin:
"Not far from here there is a place which is strong in the dark side of the force. You must go there."
Also, have watched the ending of last Mortis episode, when Anakin stabs the son with his lightsword, it also stabs the father.
You can see on the back of the father, the whole let by the lightsaber.

 

The Son stabbed his sister with the magic dagger, as she was dying so did life on the planet(I think weather changed and vegetation died - a Force tree?) and apparently thus the Light side. The Son took her death badly and freaked out. The Daughter used the rest of her lifeforce to bring Ahsoka back from the dead.

The finished episodes largely make it more like The Son is the personification of the Dark Side, but most if not all the dialogue is the reverse, more like he was converted by it - The Father and The Daughter's all make it out like The Son was neutral or more Light Side attuned like The Daughter & The Father, but was corrupted by evil. The Father kills himself and thus his son, precisely not to allow The Son as a Dark Side super-villain to leave Mortis. Right before The Son also does not appear inherently evil by nature, but rather corrupted like a typical Sith or other Dark Jedi characters, and reverts back towards the light at the end, or was capable beforehand to turn back, in either case redemption typical of SW.

After Anakin's trials, Anakin never again has the same power of the Daughter or The Son, it seemed limited to The Father's orchestration and trials and the time & place where they took place I suppose. Its not really clear how that all worked. We have to largely assume The Son spent a large amount of time in the "Well of the Dark Side", and such areas act as corruption junctions.

The Father claimed The Son was tied to him, including his strength.

 

The weather changes, because in Overlords it's established that at day the Daughter creates the life, the plants, everything. At night, the Son destroys all. Once the Daughter dies, it's permanently night, as there's no-one to recreate the life.

 

Well, that is a possibility.
The father is seeing towards which direction Anakin is heading, that he will become Darth Vader and tries to trick him to remain on the planet.

 

The Father became annoyed and sped things along once The Son became victorious, because The Son according to him "broke the laws of time" by showing Anakin his future and to gain his apprentice or whatever he was supposed to be as the would go onto to destroy both the Jedi and the Sith and rule the galaxy. The Father destroyed The Son, switched Anakin around back to the Light, and erased their memories of being on Mortis to whatever extent ect.

 

The father is the one that attracted the ship with Anakin on Mortis.
The son tells, in Ghosts of Mortis:
"My father still has hold over this realm. But I will be able to draw any ship here,soon".
The father has foreseen the future actions of Anakin and Darth Sidious and tried to keep Anakin on Mortis.
So, the part where Anakin make both sister and son to kneel, is an orchestration of the father.
When the father is at the graveyard of his daughter,he tells:
"Forgive me, daughter. I am an old fool, who believed he could control the future".
So, father has attracted the ship with Anakin on Mortis and tried to trick Anakin to keep him on Mortis.

 

I really enjoyed this story arc, and I actually like that it’s a bit abstract and open to interpretation.

I’m curious what people think of how the episodes approach the concept of balance in the Force. I interpret balance as the suppression of the dark side/destruction of the Sith. This tracks with what Obi-Wan (and George Lucas) say about the matter. In other words, the light side is balance, the dark side is imbalance/corruption.

However in these episodes, the Father seems to think that the Force must be balanced between light and dark. That one side must not overpower the other. As far as I know, Lucas was involved in production of this episode, so it’s interesting that this concept shows up. It’s possible that the Father is simply wrong, despite being a powerful being akin to a god. It’s possible that this is merely his interpretation of the Force. As he says, he is no Jedi, which could explain why his view of balance of the a Force differs from Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi.

I just read the DOTF scripts, and I’m kinda bummed that we never got to see Mortis in the ST.

 

The script version of Mortis wasnt much like the cartoon's version from what I recall. Was like a weird name drop with little bearing on the actual plot or characters past and present.

 

yeah, pretty much. Like many things in that script, it felt kind of underdeveloped and “first drafty.” It does continue the idea of there needing to be a balance between light and dark in the force, so that seems like a connection to the Mortis episodes. I am glad that concept didn’t make it into TROS, as I feel like it contradicts Lucas’s views on the Force.

 

I do hope we get more of the mortis family because boy in Rebels they became much more important with that episode. World between Worlds. It's literally amazing and bigger than what was introduced in the clone war arc.

 

I believe for most of the galaxy they were thought of as gods and over 2000 years something bad happenned that made them leave, wether is was sith, jedi or some other un for seen force

 

They were interesting but suffered from the lack being well written and thought out. The later EU didnt help either, since they were used in strange ways and connected with Abeloth. They never really made sense to me as it was left. I never really liked the use of both Sith and Jedi symbolism being used by them, just was a mess.

Only The Son communing with Revan and Bane made the symbols make some sense to me, but they deleted it for stupid reasoning imo.

Rebels just made them weirder, and The Son speaking and claiming that "the future, by its nature, can be changed." made me think some multiverse was or is planned or the timeline and events have been altered by Ezra's actions in a more profound manner than simply snatching Ahsoka out've death's door.

 

Mortis will never make sense to me. Like are these powerful beings who use the force (like an ultra powerful Jedi/Sith) or are they manifestations of the force itself? Because it really changes how you interpret anything (such as if they are authoritative figures for defining what "balance of the force" means).

As for the whole "balance to the force", it strikes me as a phrase that is said to sound profound but hasn't been really thought out or neatly and consistently defined in a way that makes sense. Yeah yeah, there's the whole Yin and Yang monomyth thing where good and evil are fundamental aspects of the universe that are always playing off one another. But that's an objective statement of what is and there's no moral ought to be drawn from it. Yet, throughout Star Wars, good characters are always saying one should seek "balance". Mortis (if interpreted as a manifestation of the force itself) seems to say it needs someone to control both the forces of Good and Evil. Good Daughter and Evil Son both are terrifying monsters at one point (griffin and bat) and Anakin has to tame both out-of-control beasts. But the problem I have with this is it seems to say that too much good would be an imbalance. That the griffin is a scary monster just like the bat. If we seek "balance" you have to tap down "good"when it gets too powerful. Which seems to contradict Lucas quotes saying that the dark side is a cancer that overwhelms the host and brings things out of balance. If you wanna say that fine, but an oncologist doesn't seek "balance". An oncologist seeks remission. They don't seek a balance between the cancer and the host like the Father does with his two kids in Mortis. It's like there's a definition of balance which is more like homeostasis and another that means keeping good and evil from overwhelming one another. And the series keeps trying to have it both ways depending on the context.

 

Agree with all this.

Personally I'm quite uncomfortable with the model of balance that's about an equal amount of light and dark. If we can equate 'light' and 'dark' with 'good' and 'evil', then how can it be desirable to have 'just enough' evil or undesirable to have 'too much' good?

The idea maybe becomes slightly more workable if we don't define 'light' and 'dark' as 'good' and 'evil' (as the Jedi evidently believe) and instead associate light and dark with two different sets of positive and negative ideas:

Light
- Compassion
- Calmness (which can become stagnation)
- Life

Dark
- Anger/passionate emotion (which can, some would argue, be good if directed against evil)
- Dynamism (which can be destructive and chaotic)
- Death (a natural part of life in some belief systems)

In this model, the Jedi fail because they equate light with goodness, and deny that passion is important to achieving good. The Sith fail because they psychopathically view compassion, peace, and warmth as barriers to power.

Either way, it desperately needs clearing up. Or maybe it's just too much of a mess and just shouldn't be touched at all for fear of making it worse.

 

Long time ago, I was thinking and pondering about the Mortis Arc.

Just today it struck me, that the Father and the Son are like Palpatine and Anakin/Vader, while Padmé as the peace-loving Daughter was the third, the female element in this relational triumvirate. Anakin wants to become happy, to learn more and in his pursuit, he loses Padmé in the end. Just like the Brother killed the Sister, the only person he loved truly. When Anakin stabs the father and the sone likewise in the end, this is an allusion, that later he will kill Vader and Palpatine, to become Skywalker again. Well, that show was before Ep. IX, sorry. When the Mortis Arc would be retconned in the wake of the ST, perhaps the body of the Father would merely vanish like Yoda's and Obi-Wan's did in the OT.

 

This sums up my feelings on the Mortis trilogy. It broke my brain when it first came out and the lack of sense it made really frustrated me.

I think this quote from Lucas is relevant:

"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, 2002

The problem is the dichotomies of yin and yang and God and the devil are very different concepts. You can't conflate them like that without them losing any coherent meaning. Yin and yang isn't about good and evil and God and the devil aren't equal opposites. It seems like Lucas wrote the two sides of the Force to be both like yin and yang and like God and the devil, leading to a confusing mess imo.

I like to think future stories from Lucas would have smoothed things out once he thought through the ideas more or revealed ideas he already had but didn't show in the Mortis arc, but it also might have made it worse. The saving grace of the Mortis arc is that it's easily ignorable and further Mortis stories might have made ignoring it harder.

 

The writers of Legend of Korra made the same mistake when they introduced a pair of all-powerful light and dark spirits, equated them to yin and yang, and then proceeded to make a story where the light spirit (who is revealed to be the Avatar spirit) needs to destroy the dark spirit every 10,000 years or else darkness will win and destroy humanity. They paid lip service to Eastern concepts but in the end it just became another, very western, good triumphs over evil story.