So the Messiah in Star Wars is supposed “to bring balance to The Force,” but I never understood what it meant.
Star Wars is extremely dualistic–there is a good side and an evil side, a light side and a dark side, the Jedi and the Sith. Every plotline is based around a manichean struggle where only one side can win by annihilating the other.
The “good side”, the Jedi, are explicitly looking a savior to provide “balance” while at the same time imposing all sorts of restrictions on which force powers are allowed and which aren’t. For an order whose messiah is based on Taoist equilibrium, they are positively Christian in their obsession with purity.
I think there is an implicit subtextual critique of the Jedi Order in the prequels that they incompetent, as you might expect from the leaders of a theocracy, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I think the closest we get to ANY real discussion of balance is Luke’s vision on Degobah, where he must see himself as potentially Darth Vader, which can be interpreted as an attempt towards wholeness OR as a warning to not stray into evil.
Can anyone square this circle?
Edit: It’s funny to me that there are more comments than upvotes. People want to share. I love it.
The “balance to the force” was misread by the Jedi council as meaning a complete Jedi victory over the Sith. Even in the first and second movies, Yoda and Windu both express doubts about the accuracy of the prophecy.
What a more pragmatic view would be is that a the force wanted a new type of force wielder philosophy where emotions don’t rule over you(what the Sith ended as) but also one where emotion and connection are allowed to exist(what the Jedi outlawed.)
To that end, pre-Disney Luke and his academy were that new force wielder academy. One could argue that prequels Anakin struggled to meet that balance and his rebuff by the Jedi masters led to him being manipulated by Palpatine.