Only one has achieved immortality

i was wondering about this when I watched ROTS on dvd the other day

we know that only 1 person has become immortal.......and that becoming a force ghost is kind of immortality......so does it not make sense that the 1 is Qui-Gon Jin ?

by the time palpatine says it, Jin is the only force Ghost. It wuld also add irony to the end of Jedi, when we see Anakin has achieved immortality and Palpatine has not




im sorry if this has been asked before

 

At the time, I assumed Palp was talking about his master, and immortality as a means to stay "alive". Your point is valid, but in the movies or EU, we never hear anything about a ghost Emporer, only a feeling of the dark side as Luke comes back to Endor one day and flies through the coordinates of the DS.

There is a possiblity that he was flat out lying to Anakin, manipulating him!!

Maybe, but you could also be right?

 

Palpatine didn't say one has achieved immortality, he said "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved" - it could mean immortality to oneself, but the whole thing is about saving Padmé, i.e. prevent another person's death, not oneself's.


and unless you're referring to a different source, it was Leia who fainted when flying through the place where the Emperor died.


Why would Palpatine know about Qui-Gon? He knew nothing and the whole "cheating death" business is completely bogus anyway, he just lured Anakin to where he wanted him with what Anakin wanted.

 

Palpatine was talking about Darth Plagueis when he said "The power to cheat death is an ability only one has achieved," not Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon was the one who retained his identity and became ?immortal?. There's a difference between cheating death and retaining ones identity/becoming immortal. When you cheat death you're still alive, when you retain you're identity you're dead, but you can commune to the living by using the Force.

 

I dont believe Plagueis learned THIS technique. Sidious may have wanted to learn it, as any Sith would, but he was lying when he said that line to Anakin.

i think Sidious may truely see Anakin as a chance to get this power, but he was merely sticking with his original Plagueis story to ensure Anakins turn and loyalty.

 

Or maybe Plaugeis did learn this trick and used it, which convinced Sidious that it was possible. But the drawback was that it could only be done for others and not for themselves. With that, Sidious chose to kill Plaugeis since there was nothing more to gain from him.

 

Or he hoped with Anakin's help he could discover how to do it for himself.

 

I honestly believe that Plaguies could keep people from dying.
But I dont think he taught it to Sidious before he (Sidious) killed him.

Sidious just said that to get Anakin on side.

Incidentally, moments afters Mace Windu's death, Sidious practically admits that he was lying "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved but together, I know WE can discover it".

If I was Anakin, alarm bells would be going off in my head.

Already his "Mentor" had lied to him big style.

 

Anakin doesnt know its a lie. Sidious said Plagueis apprentice learned the truth. He didnt tell Anakin he was that apprentice.

He merely tells Anakin that he is a sith and only a sith can learn the ability. Thus Anakin needs Sidious to teach him about the ways of the sith.

I dont think Plagueis would have learned to save others - sith dont care about others. I doubt he just stumbled over such a thing.

For me its too convenient. Sidious just made it up to go along with Anakins dreams. But it was something he was after -he wanted immortality for himself. Therefore if he and Anakin worked together he believed they could find it:

Thus it gave him an excuse to get Anakin to turn and have Anakin help him find immortality.

EDIT: swapped 'I do think' with 'I dont think'!

 

He did know how to do it in theory and he could do it to some degree in practice, IMO. We actually saw him doing it on Mustafar, at least according to Stovers novel.

"The Sith Lord [...] laid his hand across the cracked and blackened mess that once had been his brow, and he set his will upon him.
Live, Lord Vader. Live, my apprentice. Live." Stover Novel, p. 440.

 

It was that, and what's been recently revealed in The New Essential Chronology:

Sidious realized almost too late that, since Plagueis had mastered the art of life-creating midichlorian-massage, his days would soon be numbered...Sidious knew that his master planned to create his own replacement. In other words, Anakin Skywalker.

No, Plagueis's discovery was entirely legit, per Luceno's Dark Lord and other sources, but you're correct in that Plagueis would not have used his newfound powers to help others -- if anything, he was even worse than Sidious.

All he was interested in was grooming Sidious's replacement, and creating an even more powerful Sith in the process than either of them.

 

I always took this to mean the one who achieved immortality was Qui-Gon Jinn. The Jedi weren't aware until too late that Palpatine was Force-aware. All along, Palpatine was more than likley able to pick up on Communications from the nether regions of the Force from Qui-Gon to Yoda. If Yoda was the only Jedi strong enough in the Force to detect the communication, it stands to reason that Yoda's Dark Side counterpart could also detect Qui-Gon.

 

Thanks for that information. That's very close to the version of the Sith Creation Theory I advocated here a few weeks ago.

 

Qui-Gon was not the first. He maybe was the first Jedi, but not the first. Exar Kun was the first. If you read the Kyp Durron series of after episode 6 books you'll see that Exar Kun returns as a force ghost and he died 4000 years before the battle of Endor( I believe)

 

Retaining conciousness after death and immortality is not the same thing. Palpatine was clearly taking about Darth Plagueis. Palpatine said that Plagueis kept the ones he cared about from dying so the one who achieved it was obviously someone he cared about.

 

How about this? Let's see if I can be clear when connecting my dots here.

There's been a lot of debate as to how old Sidious actually is. We're all pretty certain Sidious is Plagius' apprentice. Sidious also tells Anakin that "Plagius was so powerful, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying."

To me, that's not quite the same thing as saying prevent them from dying. There's a difference between not dying and not being killed.

What if Plagius used the technique on Sidious, allowing Sidious to be effectively immortal UNLESS KILLED, and then Sidious killed Plagius, thus keeping the "secret" to himself?

Sidious knows the secret. He's just not going to tell Anakin about it for fear that Anakin will kill him as he killed his master.

Just a theory.

 

There have been other Jedi ghosts throughout history -- as well as Sith revenants, but these (including Exar Kun's) differed highly from the Jedi methodology of preserving one's identity. In nearly every instance, the Sith spirits could bind themselves only to an actual, physical object, location, or other temporal artifact; the dark side techniques being predicated entirely upon retaining one's ties to the physical world, and/or hatred and ennui.

The Jedi could roam the universe at will, and in relative spiritual peace; the Sith apparitions were highly confined, and could never find any such peace.

Some of the more ancient Jedi apparently learnt the Whill techniques, as well as a number of other prequel-era knights: Ulic Qel-Droma, Master Arca Jeth, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan, the "Dark Woman," Qu Rahn, and one or two others.

Although Palpatine was indeed referring to Plagueis's abilities (per Lucas), James Luceno made some very intriguing comments a couple of SW Insider issues ago -- that he'd love to one day tell the parallel story of Qui-Gon and Darth Plagueis's dual quests for immortality, prior to Episode I.

Apparently Qui-Gon was putting the pieces together right up until his death, as was Plagueis, with the key difference being Qui-Gon's "proper" approach to the mystery through selfless release of the consciousness.

 

I tend to agree with Sapient on this seeing how he explained it. I do have to think there is no coincidence in that we have Anakin seeking how to keep someone from dying, and Palpatine tells him of Darth Plaguis who was said to have been able to do this, and then Yoda hears from Qui-Gon, who has been able to achieve the ability retain life after death.

As was said before, I do not think Palps/Sidious knew how to achieve what Plaguis had learned, especially after telling Anakin that together they could discover the secret. However he did tell Anakin that Plaguis taught him everything he knew, Palpatine just left out the fact that he was his apprentice. So with that, even if Sidious knew how to keep people from dying, he was not going to share this information with Anakin, his apprentice.

Obviously, if Sidious learned how, then he felt that is all that his master could teach him, so then he had to eliminate him. Likewise, once Anakin learned the secret, he would have felt the same way and eliminated Sidious.

Again, I support Sapient on his thoughts about Qui-Gon. Man, I wish Lucas had shown Qui-Gon in ROTS!!!

Darth Sin!

 

I absolutely believe that the 'one' who achieved the power was Qui-Gon, and that somehow Sidious was able to sense this through the Force. He probably did not know who it was, or anything specific, just that someone had become one with the Force. And I think when he told Anakin that together they could learn how, he actually meant it. Not to help Padme, but for his own selfish reasons.

I don't buy any of the EU stuff about ghosts or whatever. I'd like to think Qui-Gon is the first. It would have been nice to hear only his voice in the movie, no ghost. That way we see that Obi-Wan has truly mastered it in TESB.

 

Folks, for pete's sake, it's not Qui-Gon Sidious was talking about.

Palpatine was discussing Darth Plagueis's unholy life-creation skills to Anakin not twenty minutes before the duel-scene, added to which we already know that Plagueis *HAD* such skills.

Why would Sidious bring up some *other* vague allusion to some other completely different person logically and dramatically unrelated to what the audiences just saw fifteen minutes ago, and complicate things more than they should be? Nowhere in the film is it even *suggested* that Sidious had some type of paranormal mind-meld with Liam Neeson, which makes the reason why this "theory" keeps rearing its ugly head so groffulatingly stupid.

Some folks spend a good deal of time excoriating Lucas for non-sequitur plotlines, inconsistencies in characterizations and logic, and a blatant disregard for any kind of internal consistency or continuity, but this time it's nowhere near the case.

If Lucas had intended it to be Qui-Gon, he would've *said* so, in interviews or in the DVD commentary. Why are people still even discussing this? It's plain based on the recent minutes of dialogue whom Sidious is talking about.

This isn't rocket-surgery. Swinging "Occam's Razor" every once in a while helps to clear away much of the speculative underbrush.

We're not talking about hundreds or even tens of Jedi, here -- we're looking at two Jedi four thousand years ago who managed the technique, and two or three others long, long millennia thereafter. All but one of whom, interestingly, suffered a secluded exile away from the Order.

Given that the ancient Jedi Order's numbers far eclipsed the prequel-era order by several factors of magnitude, it likewise makes sense that such knowledge would be in greater circulation during that earlier epoch.

It fits with Lucas's precepts with no real contradiction.

 

It is not stated anywhere that is IS Qui-Gon, but it is also not stated that it is NOT Qui-Gon. So any theory is fair game. We know that Sidious is full of lies, thus the story of Plagueis is most likely full of lies. Also, he never said that Plagueis had cheated death, rather he implied that he murdered him in his sleep. So we know that Plagueis is not the One.

As far as true canon goes, in the films only one character had cheated death by the end of the PT, that is Qui-Gon Jinn. It makes absolute sense that with the Dark Side taking over, Sidious' perception of the Force was at its peak during ROTS. Thus he could easily have sensed SOMETHING in the Force. He would not understand it by the name of Qui-Gon, but he could have realized that someone had crossed back over to connect with the living.

For those watching the films in order for the first, they'd think Sidious is talking about Plagueis, then at the end be surprised to realize it is Qui-Gon. It will be a nice surprise for future viewers.

 

Thing is, though, Lucas himself has confirmed that Darth Plagueis mastered the skill of life-force creation -- he gave it to James Luceno for inclusion in his novel Dark Lord.

So we know that the Plagueis-angle was entirely legitimate, since George likewise had it established in the books that Palpatine murdered him to prevent Plagueis from creating his own successor.

I admit that a theory where a peaking Sidious might somehow sense Qui-Gon's presence is intriguing, but dramatically and logically it makes no sense for him to be discussing Qui-Gon, when -- only fifteen minutes before -- he was pitching Anakin, truthfully and earnestly, on Plagueis's own veritably genuine skills.

It is entertaining to consider, but assuming so disrupts the film's narrative intent, nor does it pass logical muster with the storytelling setup of the scenes immediately beforehand.

 

Actually, I don't think it disrupts the narrative. Let's say Sidious has realized at some point (during the film or before) that someone has discovered the secret of how to retain their identity after death. He knows nothing about it, but his lust for power craves the secret knowledge. He senses that his powerful Jedi friend Anakin is tipping towards the edge of the Dark Side. He sees the opportunity to pull him over. He knows that Anakin's deepest fear is losing those he loves. So, he decides to use Anakin's fear, weaving the tale of this Force secret into his lie, in order to bring the young man over. He may even believe that Anakin's natural Force abilities could be the key to unlocking this secret. Once Anakin is converted, he starts to back off his lie by telling Anakin that together they can figure it out. At this point Anakin is too consumed by power to really care about the lie revealed.

Regarding Plageuis, I agree that he discovered how to manipulate life, but I don't think it is ever indicated that he learned how to cheat death, a very different thing indeed.

Sidious says one has cheated death...at the end of the movie we learn from Yoda that one has cheated death...seems like 1+1=2 in my mind. It's a surprise ending, nothing more. Qui-Gon is the one.

Edit: Here's an interesting thought. The movie ends with Padme dying, and with Yoda talking about the power to cheat death. I wonder if those who have not seen the OT might come to the crazy conclusion that somehow this power will be used to bring Padme back in the OT.

 

IMO, Palpatine was talking about himself as I've heard the man is over 1,000 years old which could also explain his face looking so old when it was revealed. I think Palps ment Immortality as in alive not as in force Ghost.

 

Plagueis didn't learn how to cheat death. If he had then he wouldn't be DEAD. Sidious hasn't learnt it either. Palpatine is referring to Qui-Gon. 'To cheat death' means that you continue to exist in a sentient form, not necessarily a physical form. To be a Force Ghost is not to be dead, it just means your being has transcended into an ethereal form.