ST Time Travel in Episode IX

Do you want to tick off the whole fanbase? Because that's what you are asking for?

 

I mean, why would they show such a thing in Rebels. What was the purpose why they inserted such a huge thing into the new canon by the story group if they were not thinking that perhaps they could use it in the future (or the past?)?

Time travel can very well be a thing in this episode, so along the many different ways they could use time travel, it could be like in GoT three eye raven. And then we learn that Rey created Anakin, saved the Rebellion, maybe even turned Ben to the dark side to begin with. Anything's possible really when you have Time Travel.

 

Rey will use time travel to kill Schmi while she's pregnant.

 

If they do use time travel as a major plot point in the same year that Endgame used it, that looks pretty bad. I'm sure it's a coincidence, but still.

 

Yeah, it was bad enough in Endgame. Shouldn't be anywhere near a Star Wars movie.

 

Please JJ don't inflict this to us!

 

Perhaps one of the reasons they wanted RJ in TLJ was his work in Looper which is erhm a time travel movie.

Perhaps that's why he was getting or is getting a trilogy of his own.

 

Makes perfect sense.

 

I understand you feel you have demonstrated something.
You have demonstrated that Filoni talks to Lucas, yes.
You have demonstrated that a phenomenon in the Star Wars universe that self-describes or has been referred to as "mystical" has been introduced in a show where conversations between Filoni and Lucas occur. My observation that this show post-dates the Disney buy-out is orthogonal to the following.

What you have not demonstrated is that a non-mystical, mystical-free, man-made, in a word, secular technology of time travel has been introduced into Star Wars.

If this is not ringing any bell, in the context of what Abrams is capable of -altering core values- on a franchise he had no hand in creating, do you have any reactions at all to the Red Matter idea he foisted upon the Star Trek universe to legitimize his copy paste? Exhibit A, most egregious, Star Trek Into Darkness with Spock, Kirk and glass wall.

The sum of all fears with how Abrams can further destroy this franchise is to introduce by fiat man-made secular time travel that most commonly belongs in hard science fiction.

IPs with secular time travel.
Terminator
Looper
HG Wells The Time Machine
12 Monkeys
Source Code
Back to the Future (not a fan of this - I don't know if it's 'hard' sci-fi)
Primer
Star Trek IV (space fantasy with occasional hard sci-fi elements, harder in sum than Star Wars)
Harry Potter III (certainly not hard science fiction, but the time travel is utilized as technology)

Can you demonstrate that Lucas has approved man-made secular time travel of the kind that most commonly belongs in hard science fiction? (Can you demonstrate that Lucas is altering the core values of the Star Wars experience.)

 

Uhm, whaaaa?

All I said was Filoni consults with Lucas on the lore stuff on Rebels, post-Disney, same as he did on Clone Wars pre-Disney. That's it. Anything big & lore-related in either show (the World Between Worlds stuff is pretty obviously big in a concept/lore sense) has been given the nod by the big man.

No more, no less.

 

When I hear Lucas himself authorizes secular time travel, then it's time for me to gnash my teeth. This World between World stuff (now that I have read the wiki entry) is not out of place with the mystical Dagobah cave. So the mention that Lucas approves of World Between Worlds does not in any way inoculate someone against what Abrams is capable of.

The difference between a mystical and a secular context is the degree of personal responsibility. In a mystical framework, personal responsibility is paramount and the gods do not hand out do-overs. (Find me a franchise where the gods of that story hand out do-overs.) Time is linear in mystical frameworks.

In a secular framework, where there is no personal responsibility to a particular deity, set of deities, or necessarily even to society, time can be as flexible as the writer wishes it to be so as to facilitate the pursuit of their own fantasy. Every human alive has the fantasy of getting to have a do-over, and so do-over time travel, or time travel as a general sub genre, is plenty popular. It is the possibly most difficult form of hard science fiction because of the causality riddles.

If Abrams wants to turn Star Wars into any other of the IPs that have already dealt with causality riddles, when Star Wars is based in greek legend, arthurian fantasy, and an overarching framework of personal responsibility over linear time, no free do-overs handed out by lightning gods, numinous forces that bind the galaxy together or watery tarts handing out scimitars, it's a nightmare. I have not seen the Marvel stuff after that purple guys kills half of stuff, and I hear it's got time travel. Marvel is by no means hard science fiction -it is fantasy even more than Star Wars is- but it operates inside a godless, secular framework. What Star Wars does not need is yet more of Abrams pulling it down from where it was, and breaking lore out of a poverty of ideas but sure market asset of consummate apery. Inevitably, defenders will leap up and say that he is broadening Star Wars' appeal. He is broadening the ground level surface area, all right, over which its formerly vertical volume used to tower...

 

Still no idea what you're trying to get at here. But all good, to each their own and all that.

Fact remains George advises Dave more than he does other modern SW stuff, we know he told Dave not to use his original idea on Clone Wars and to use the darksaber thing George came up with instead. Dave says he continued his habit of consulting with George on Rebels too, logic dictates if George took issue with the idea of "time travel", "a universe beneath/in-between/other-than the universe", whatever, Dave would have both been told as much and would have gone another way.

 

Time travel just makes a mess of things.

 

As far as I understand how the "new canon" works. There's this "story group" made up of some LFL peeps and they are the keepers of the SW lore. They say what goes and what doesn't go. Can someone that knows more about the inner workings of the "story group" share?

So based on that understanding and the fact that Rebels IS part of the NEW canon. We even hear of Rebels and see the Rebels ship in RO for example. Then it must be truth that, among other things:

- Darth Maul survived and was killed finally by OB1 just before ANH.
- Ashoka Tano is alive and living some time in the Future possibly at the same time as the ST is taking place.
- Time travel can happen if you enter a Jedi temple with the Force wolves AND, you can alter things in the timeline by interacting through these "time windows" things like we saw Ezra doing in the battle between Ashoka and Anakin/Vader

So, Time Travel and changing timelines or at least a circular time loop or whatever it's called, is a CANON thing and may very well be used in some form in ROS.

 

Do you mean the Force 'wills it'?
Or is there an actual thing called 'Force wolves'?

It occurred to me while driving, regarding a distinction between mystical and secular abilities, that Abrams secular time travel would be a sith technology. Find a way to avoid consequences and cheat the system. If Lucas signed off on mystical space-time phenomena that people are going to call time travel, then the uses of that mystical-based power better be for choices of moral excellence. This bends backwards what I said about providence not handing out do-overs. That being said, George is permitted to be the Providence of his own creation. George is permitted to break free from any molds or tendencies I pointed out above, given the scale. Abrams is not. Not his creation.

 

Yes, it's canon.

 

But if you do the time travel, you have to introduce Mortis to the general audiences. Mortis is key to time travel in star wars. Maybe an old jedi temple with mortis art on it could work.

 

Yes, but it looks like only the closed loop kind so far (and made possible only in a very specific, mystical context that may be nearly impossible to replicate). Ezra affected the Ahsoka/ Anakin battle, but that action already happened in the past. So thus far, the kind of time travel where events can be reversed/ changed after they happen is not canon. And I really hope it doesn’t become canon.

 

But it is Canon, he who controls it controls the Universe.

 

I don't believe "secular time-travel" is going to be a thing in Star Wars. Why would Abrams create a time machine when he can simply explain it via force-magic? That seems far more likely to me, some sort of force ritual that opens a portal through time just like in Rebels or the new Darth Vader comic series.

I just hope it is used very sparringly if it is used at all. It shouldn't be something that EU-authors are allowed to use willy-nilly because then canon will become as chaotic as it was in the olden days with resurrected clone characters running around and stuff.

Filoni's stuff is already pretty iffy, especially what he has done with Maul. Very hard to reconcile the established lore from the Prequels with what he has done there.

 

A story with explicit god-like beings (the Powers that Be) handing out a mystical do-over sounds like... Angel: the Series. Specifically, I Will Remember You. Angel is turned human for an episode, but is told that Buffy will die if he remains human, so the Oracles offer him the choice to turn back the day and prevent ever being turned human by the Mohra demon. Only Angel keeps the memory so he can reverse the event of the day that never happened. The Powers that Be explicitly have the power to fold back time.



The After the Fall comics again repeated Angel being turned human in Hell-A (while jumping off a building, of course), only for him to massively screw-up Wolfram & Hart's investment when he allowed vamp!Gunn to kill him after his son Connor was killed. This reset the entire story back to Not Fade Away, except the entirety of L.A. remembered a lot of horrible months-long events of death and mayhem. The city being sucked into a hell dimension is reversed, but the consequences remain because of everyone's memories being kept.

The character Illyria, an Old One with god-like powers was previously seen with time-travel capabilities before the Mutari generator sucked away powers that Fred's body couldn't hold without blowing a crater in the continental shelf. Illyria spent an episode blowing Angel around in time, including seeing Illyria killing his entire team in one scene, and with knowledge he gets from the future, he stops it from happening. In Hell-A, Illyria (with its powers back and going wonky) is even shown randomly blasting Angel through time again, including reducing him to both a human baby and then him in the far distant future (Fray's time with flying cars is very Blade Runner). Full-powered Illyria has the power to reduce people to infants, which explains why the demon was god-worshipped.

So, yes. Gods and god-like beings handing characters do-overs has been done. The Powers that Be are equally as mystical as the Force. There's even the concepts of this mystical power or powers selecting champions they've selected to carry out their will, prophesied immaculate conception and prophetic visions of the future in the mix.

...And none other than George Lucas visited the set.

I could see a future Star Wars film revisit the plane outside of time again or time-travel. The concept of prophetic visions of the future, but with the warning that you might cause something to happen trying to prevent it, has already been established twice in both The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi. The next step is from seeing possible futures before they happen would be possibly stopping something from happening that has already happened, or indeed, going full I Will Remember You with a godly do-over. There's also the fact that Anakin's whole thing when he turned was trying to stop the deaths of his loved ones (perhaps reversing the past), which ties into Palpatine's death-cheating return.

The City on the Edge of Forever from OT Star Trek also dealt with the concept of time-travel where one has to undo something they've already done in the past. In that case, the lesson was that something had to happen so a certain future happens no matter how badly you want your feelings to get in the way (letting someone you love die). Doctor Who's The Waters of Mars is the same concept and is the peak of the Doctor as the Lonely God/Time Lord Victorious who is pretty much unstoppably god-like over life and death, even in fixed points in time where he would be changing major historical events, if he wants to be. That's a rare story where the being acting as God with time-travel is the main protagonist (and antagonist of that story all in one).

 

*Oops. Meant Star Trek: TOS. And I should add that there was an explicit do-over by the protagonists in that episode. Kirk saves a woman from the past from being hit by a car, only to have a do-over where he has to let her die because her living meant that the future the crew knows would no longer happen. This is not far removed from the Angel example, which also bears similarities to Superman II where Clark chooses to reverse being a regular human because he's needed as a superhero.

The Revenge of the Sith (which I haven't seen in over a decade) had the same concept as The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi with seeing the future, but your actions making it happen. That means that this concept has already appeared three times. The only thing missing is the ability to change something that has already happened.

But yes, there are definite examples of an unseen power handing a do-over. There's usually a cost, however. In Angel's case, being human with Buffy was the thing he wanted most and he's literally sacrificing his own life (given that he's a vampire and dead) in the do-over. In Kirk's case, he's giving up a woman he's in love with, as well. In the Doctor's case, he gets a lesson that he has no right to play God with people's lives and his hubris is his downfall. Adelaide Brooke lectures him on playing with people's lives when he explains how he changed a fixed point in time to save her important life (not just one of the random "little people" he often saves) and then shoots herself. This is after the Doctor had actually found a way to let Rose save her dead father by letting himself be eaten (because he's such a complex temporal event all by himself that him never having existed would be a universe-ending paradox), only for Pete Tyler to take that sacrifice out of his hands by getting out in front of the car that killed him. Saving Pete was a paradox on Rose's whole life.

Both Star Wars and Angel, however, deal with quite an existential crisis where characters' destinies are decidedly not under their own free will. Ben Solo and Anakin Skywalker, like Angel, Buffy and Connor, are victims of destiny where their fates have been chosen for them without their consent and their lives are constantly manipulated by higher powers or external forces. Free will to control one's own destiny and make choices that are fully one's own is thus a sore point. Personal responsibility is not the only factor in play when you have higher powers with their own agendas (which don't necessarily agree with their chosen tools they use as their free will-zapped meatpuppet playthings). Ben Solo is certainly a character where his story could easily become about him rebelling against a predetermined fate chosen before he ever decided or acted upon it. The books certainly hint at this with the backstory of him being stalked by external forces (Snoke? Palpatine?) even when he was still in the womb.

 

Not a fan of time travel in SW, but there will have to be some kind of explanation outside of previous canon as we know it for him to be alive (or a force ghost). I wish time travel had never came about in Rebels.

Unless, as we have discussed, somehow in the GFFA, falling down shafts doesn't kill you

Also, as described in the OP, using Kylo's grandad's stuff to go back in time would necessitate a visit from force ghost Anakin played by Hayden.