Discussion Daisy Ridley (Rey Skywalker) in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Star Wars film

There is a statement that the issues of the film will be "What is the purpose of the jedi without a clear threat?"
So there might not be an enemy or maybe a hidden one.

 

That's why I added "antagonist."

Stories need an antagonist, or key narrative tension, but they don't necessarily need a threat.

Although I doubt there won't be some kind of threat for the Jedi. There has to be lightsaber fights.

Maybe the threat won't be Sith level, but there will be something. Stories don't exist without conflict.

 

Perhaps the threat arises from the fact that there's no imminent threat? Maybe the conflict comes from within the new group of Jedi, resulting in a fractured group and one of them actually becomes the enemy.

 

So practically the sith.

 

Maybe the threat is the friends we met along the way.

 

I'm deeply terrified that we'll get another Jedi student becomes dark sider main villain story because LFL can only envision that type of villain at the moment.

 

Who knows, but Ahsoka, The Mandalorian and Andor, at least, suggest otherwise.

Having said that, I think a dark sider / fallen Jedi can work if handled in an interesting way (i.e. make them distinctive from the Sith in motivation).

 

It all depends on what kind of Order (per KK in disarray) do we get

A: There's already a group of full fledged 'knights' and students. (Possibly including Finn) None have fallen to the dark side as of yet.
B: Rey trained a group in between movies but one student fell to the dark side and destroyed it all. Now she's starting over.
C: There's nothing yet, and Rey is still searching for her first student (Who will be the protagonist)

I suppose if Disney LFL still desires a 'force is democratic' theme, where there are many Broom Boys out there yearning to be trained, then showing off a school where there's a bunch of diverse Jedi all learning the ways of the Force could happen. And that could be interesting. If that were to happen, maybe they could do the same with a dark sider school/group. Instead of just one Fallen Jedi/Dark Side Apprentice and One Dark Side Master we'd get a group of them. I suppose something like X-men vs Brotherhood of Mutants type of thing.

It all really depends on how creative they get, or if they're stuck in the holding pattern.

 

Doesn't have to be sith, but when you consider that the most formidable antagonists to Jedi are Force users, having someone turn to or use the dark side makes the most sense.

 

I mean, there definitely have to be dark siders. I'm just hoping that the story isn't one of Rey's students falls to the dark side, finds some other dark sider master who was always around and ... whatever.

 

I don't know how the dark sider cult will be called but the new Jedis should be called Reydis

 

What about a Jedi of the old Order who has their own ideas on how it should be rebuilt? Maybe they aren’t exactly a villain but their goals conflict with Rey’s.

 

If they go with the Lost Jedi route, I could see this play out. I think I even mentioned that this could be the reason why things are in disarray. Rey finds the lost students of Luke's academy, and they don't think she's the rightful one to lead. She's hardly been trained, she's books smarts, etc. And maybe they're waiting for Ghost Luke to show up or something.

And then one of them steps up to start their own Order or something. Hell, it doesn't even necessarily need to be a dark sider Order, just a different force group.

 

I hope they don’t bring in any full Jedi Knights who survived and who now want to restore the Order. It’s already pushing it with Ahsoka and Ezra out there.

 

Dozen midichlorian-enhanced clones of Moff Gideon, each with a different colored lightsaber

 

True, that's repetitive.

I am thinking more of a philosophical disagreement on how to fight another baddie, leading to a split in the group. Some want to use the Force for peaceful purposes, while others want to be more aggressive in pre-emptively taking out threats to maintain safety. And Rey searches for answers in the texts, on Ach-To, other planets, etc to find out how splits were handled in the past.

I would LOVE for them to have a Jedi ghost "council".

 

I still think it would be kind of cool if there were like troubled kids who were kind of on the dark side and being reformed as part of the academy. Maybe a little like House Slytherin in HP. Bring them into the fold, teach them how to find balance. And if the dark side is a part of the natural scheme of things, maybe there's even a way to use it in a healthy manner, instead of forbidding it outright, and allowing it to foster into something even worse. (Like the Sith). That could be interesting and novel from a SW perspective.

And then the villain can just be a real bad***.

 

I meant more someone from the PT era not Luke’s academy. Someone who could legitimately challenge Rey’s views without seeming like another Kylo Ren.

 

I think I remember an old Snoke theory that he was the Prime Jedi and the message was that the original Jedi, or whatever Snoke belonged to, were far more evil and rotten than what they eventually evolved into, in the Old Republic and PT-OT era.

 

This is a lot like the Superman problem. How do you find a worthy adversary for someone who is invulnerable and invincible? I think the original Superman movie found a good answer by having Lex Luthor devise a cunning plan that put Superman into a no-win situation. If the writers are clever and creative enough, that kind of evil genius master of Xanatos chess could be an interesting opponent. Thrawn might fit the bill, but he's likely to get taken out in the Ahsoka story.

 

Invaders? Rey then aligns with the Mandos, for help, thus healing their long grudge against one another.

But I do think there is something of value in one of the Old Jedi still being around to contest Rey's place as leader of the Order. They're very old, broken and ill, and so they couldn't fight in the last few decades of war or something. Who knows what. There's a bit of misogynist/break the patriarchy theme there. Like Rey is going up against the old guard, the way things have always been done, and finding a new path forward as leader. It would need just the right finesse to work though.

 

Dracula is in the public domain, so he’s an option too.

In all seriousness though, I think it will be Sith, or some errant Jedi who wants to resurrect them. Or some “Dark Jedi” who are essentially indistinguishable from Sith but whom super-fans will perform excruciating mental gymnastics for in order to argue they are not, in fact Sith.

 

“When gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be”

There’s a thematic resonance with the last Jedi of the old Order, Master Yoda, handing it over to the first Jedi of the new, in that scene. It starts to lose its impact if you discover that actually there were a few more practising Jedi Knights, let along ones who happen to have not revealed themselves for 40 odd years after those events. It starts to take away the tension of the Jedi riding on Luke and Rey.

 

I used to be very strict with that idea and narrative lol. But it seems as though that horse has left the stable at this point.

I suppose the technicality is that that person is no longer a 'real' Jedi. But I agree with you.

 

Not quite, I would say.

We’ve never seen a practicing Jedi Knight outlive Yoda, as far as I’m aware. We’ve only got Ezra and Ashoka, neither of who are Jedi Knights (although I suspect we’re going to have Ahsoka knighted by Force Ghost Yoda at some point after ROTJ).