Mini Series Aniseya and her coven of witches

She has all the bling but her followers have none. Obviously your typical cult leader, leading the gullible and getting rich from it, scared the Jedi will expose her fraudulent behaviour.

 

I hope that’s the angle their going for and not oh look the Jedi are cracking down on the innocent force cult

 

Aniseya Bene Gesserit is a name that just rolls off the tongue.

 

I agree. She is probably portrayed as a victim here and jedi are trying to limit her power. Would be interesting if her power talk would be actually attempt to justify something sick and depraved and she would be very gray character. Seems unlikely though.

It could be that jedi actually went hard on other force cults in the Republic and forced them to the Outer Rim hiding where jedi had little influence. When order 66 came they flooded back only to be put down by the Empire instead. That would make sense.

I think jedi thought Dathomiri existed mostly just on Dathomir during late republic era and left them alone for that reason seeing them as no threat to larger galaxy. They did have influence elsewhere too as seen in that TCW duology with Jar Jar and Mace, but it seems other planets like Arcana were abandoned long ago and wiches in Peridia didn't have much contact with GFFA either.

 

Little spoiler from production and interviews.

Spoiler

Mother Aniseya is Mae and osha's mother and is a lesbian witch.

 

The trickle of info coming out helps inform my theory that

Spoiler: Highly (un)Likely Plot Of The Entire Series

The Jedi come for baby Osha and her mother doesn’t want to give her up. Possibly hides Mae. Or maybe the Jedi force her to make a choice: give us Mae or Osha, we’ll allow you to keep one. Fight breaks out. Mistakes were made. People die, village burns. Osha washes out of the Jedi anyway - perhaps because of the way she was recruited. So it was all for nothing. Mae holds a grudge, is recruited by the Sith both for her power and hatred of the Jedi. She seeks revenge by killing all the Jedi involved in kidnapping her sister and killing her coven, starting with Indara. Sol and Osha investigate to clear her name since everyone thinks she did it because the ‘evil twin’ fooled the eyewitnesses.

I guess I’ll still watch the show even though I’ve figured it out already.

 

Considering the Jedi were part of the Convocation of The Force it seems weird they would be against other Force traditions unless we are to assume the witches are as bad as Sith.

 

I hope that the Jedi forcing parents to give up their force sensitive children is not a part of the narrative. That should remain a choice. Otherwise, we’re talking about the Jedi as straight villains.

 

Forcing to give up is a strong word that is inaccurate in hindsight. Perhaps, surprised that someone wouldn't eagerly want to give the child up to be trained as a Jedi, and then presenting arguments to persuade.
I'm having trouble imagining what the conflict between the coven and the Jedi could be if not a disagreement on whether or not a child should be surrendered to the Jedi, especially since it seems one is indeed surrendered to be trained. I suppose the conflict could be more about the Jedi disapproving of the coven and wishing to enforce their Order's monopoly on the Force.

Though that might makde them seem like villains too, from a certain point of view. I believe the Jedi are intended to be presented in a less flattering light in this series than we are used to. The story was pitched as being told from the POV of the Sith.

 

Spoiler

So Aniseya is Mae and Osha’s mother? That makes me even more convinced that she’s the Sith Master. What’s more Sith-like than planting your own child in the Jedi Order and keeping the other one as a potential acolyte? Maybe Osha kept in contact with her mother not knowing who she really is. Giving her information without realizing the implications. Maybe that’s why she’s out of the Jedi Order because she couldn’t give up her attachments. That would setup a conflict between not just the sisters but also mother and daughters. Star Wars is ultimately about family after all.

 

I’m with you on this.

 

I doubt that Aniseya herself is Sith, but seems possible that she contacted them, maybe they even exchanged knowledge, Talzin/Palpatine-style.

 

When responding to something in spoiler tags, it’s best to also use spoiler tags.

 

Spoiler

more evidence: Mae has a similar white tattoo under her bangs that Indara sees during their fight.

 

I feel that this concept might ruin this show for me if it's done wrong. Well let's see. I haven't much liked how Filoni has used witches in his stories. Dathomiri are part of EU mythos already though but there is potential to go very wrong with this magic stuff. But anyway too early to judge haven't seen her yet. I just hope she isn't too perfect "good witch" killed by evil jedi kind of thing. I hope she is very grey as character. Not evil, not good. But rather evil than good.

 

I definitely don't think she will be portrayed as completely good or right -

Spoiler

there is a preview clip where she tells Osha that she only thinks that she wants a life outside of the coven because she is too young to know what she really wants, which reads as very controlling at best

- though whatever happened did leave the jedi involved very guilty which I don't think would be the case if they were straightforward evil either.

All things considered, I wouldn't be surprised if some minor disagreement escalated into violence because of mutual distrust.

 

"Mother knows best -situation" then? We'll see how that plays out. I hope they are not going to too revisionist route regarding jedi.

 

I loved Mother Aniseya and Jodie Turner-Smith's performance in Destiny. As advertised, one of the instant great maternal figures in Star Wars.

 

Seems like the right thread. Do we have a name for this character, and is she an older female Barada(?)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Barada/Legends

 

Spoiler: Episode 3 - Destiny

What with all of the recent allusions to the opera scene in Revenge of the Sith, it certainly seems to me that Aniseya may have made some sort of deal with the Sith in the creation of Mae and Osha. Unless, that is, she is meant to be the sole origin of this "unnatural" power. Though being in league with the Sith would explain Koril's fears of what would happen should the Jedi find out how the twins were created.

I'm picturing a scene following the fire, where Aniseya's body is approached by a cloaked figure, and we get a scene similar to Kreia and Hanharr in KotOR II. Where it is dictated by the Dark Lord that Mae will become an acolyte as part of the revenge against the Jedi.

 

It makes no sense now, but for a mili-second I almost thought this character was going to be Maz. But then she came into full view and was like ... man, that could have been interesting lol".


That all said. The events in this series - where the Coven and the Sith are working to create life - could be the event that tips the scales and Force becomes unbalanced. This kind of power is just not allowed. And once achieved, the Force responds with their own Force-created being. A generation or so later, comes the Chosen One. By that time, perhaps Mae and Osha, Plagueis, the Witches, are all long dead. But Palpatine, the current Sith Master, the cancerous power, is still around, and still trying to harness these powers, has taken over the galaxy itself, and needs to be wiped out.

 

If this was CGI, it was some of the best "organic" CGI I've seen in a long time. Who here was saying it was terrible? Can't remember. But they are wrong.

 

I’ll double down on whoever said it looks terrible.

I loved the performance of the actor who portrayed Mother Aniseya. I loved everything about her.
I hope we get to see more of her in another flashback

 

I like the design of the old woman, but the execution seemed a bit cheap to me.

I'm trying to understand the Coven better and their motives.

We are told that they were pretty much pushed out of the Republic, and that they were on the verge of dying out until they learned how to create life.

I assume this means that they could no longer recruit members because they are forced to live in secret outside of the Republic worlds. Obviously, there are no men in the Coven, so they had to rely on recruitment to fill their ranks.

Without the ability to recruit openly, they had to develop this new method of what appears to be creating life via the darkside.

So, what I take from this is that the Republic, and presumably the Jedi, pushed this group to the point of extinction, a point which led them to go further into the darkside.

Therefore, in a way, the Jedi appear to have caused some of these problems themselves. But again, it's too difficult to form moral evaluations here without knowing the Coven's history and practices with the darkside.

The writers seem to want to put the audience in this position of limited knowledge in order to make our moral evaluations more difficult. But the moment we learn more about the Coven, that ambiguity should be washed away.

 

This was rather bad CGI... Don't know who said this but they were right...
Maz looked better than this. It doesn't look that bad in still image but animation was just fake. Like prequel-style CGI.