THIS PARALLEL DOES NOT GET ENOUGH CREDIT.Obi-Wan, In Being Unable To Kill Anakin, Because He Could Never

THIS PARALLEL DOES NOT GET ENOUGH CREDIT. Obi-Wan, in being unable to kill Anakin, because he could never do it, he could never force himself to make that last stroke to end Anakin’s life, he just could not do it, feels as though he let the Emperor win because of it. Luke faces exactly the same situation and it isn’t that Obi-Wan is saying that Luke has to kill him (George Lucas was explicitly clear on that he had to be ready to do it, if Vader tried to kill him, not that he absolutely had to, that’s not what Obi-Wan and Yoda were saying), but that he has to be ready for it to be a possibility that will come up. Obi-Wan himself failed at accepting that possibility, even when he went to Mustafar to face down Anakin, to beat him in that fight, even able to cut off his limbs.  But he genuinely could not kill Anakin and because of this Vader lived and went on to hurt, kill, or enslave millions of people in the galaxy, because of this, the Emperor won.  Because Obi-Wan couldn’t set aside his feelings in the moment that was most crucial, even when there was no other way around that Mustafar confrontation.  Yoda was right, he couldn’t have faced Sidious, either. And the reason Luke can succeed where Obi-Wan couldn’t, where Padme couldn’t, where Ahsoka couldn’t, is because Anakin cannot face what he’s done and live with it, he cannot face the look on Obi-Wan’s face, on Padme’s face, on Ahsoka’s face, when they know him, when they knew who he was, when they know what he’d done.  Even if they forgive him, they’ll always see who he had been and how he fell and Anakin can’t make peace with that and live.  But Luke only sees the future, he doesn’t know much of the past, he only knows that there’s still light in Anakin.  And Anakin can let go because he doesn’t have to face how far he’d fallen from the person he once had been, not and still live. This was a miracle and one that nobody was happier about than Obi-Wan, but his advice isn’t wrong either, from his experience.  His inability to face the truth of Anakin’s fall and the consequences of it, his inability to let go of his feelings for Anakin, is what allowed Darth Vader to live.  Darth Vader made his own choices, nobody is responsible for them but him, but Obi-Wan certainly feels the weight of, if he had killed Anakin then, if he had been able to do that when Anakin forced his hand, then they wouldn’t be in as bad of a situation as they are now. And that makes sense from his point of view–and, had Anakin been unwilling to let go of his own hate and rage, had Anakin been unwilling to give up his own life for Luke’s, it’s entirely possible that Sidious would have deep fried Luke and the galaxy would have been in his clutches still yet, the Emperor would have won again.  If Obi-Wan couldn’t stop Anakin, if Padme couldn’t stop Anakin, if Ahsoka couldn’t stop Anakin, it’s entirely reasonable that Obi-Wan would think Luke couldn’t stop Anakin, either. Because Obi-Wan knows who Anakin was, Obi-Wan loved him, and he knows exactly how those feelings can be used against you and evil will triumph.

It took me four episodes of The Bad Batch to put it into words one of the big reasons why I feel so disconnected from the show (other than All The Other Stuff, you know), which is because the show itself is disconnected from its own setting. I’ve talked a lot about how it’s taking the story away from other characters that should be getting their own story set on their own character–most notably what they did to Kanan’s story, but even more so egregiously with the “reg” clones themselves–that by making the regular clones low-key antagonists in the background, stripped of their individuality and how that was one of the major points of The Clone Wars, leaves a bad taste because it’s both disconnected from the show it’s trying so hard to say it’s a continuation of, and because it’s flattening the clones’ story.  All for the sake of these new characters. But it’s more than that, it’s disconnected from its own setting in that this could also have been a story about how the Empire is affecting the galaxy.  The setting is immediately post-Revenge of the Sith, which is an incredibly fertile area to play with, given the immediate rise of the Empire.  But The Bad Batch isn’t really doing much with it.  There are bits and pieces of it, there’s the brief scene of how people are cheering the end of the war, there’s the brief mentions of the new chain code thing, the exchanging your money for Imperial credits, etc. But they’re not part of the story in any foundational way.  This story is set in the dawn of the Empire, but it’s not doing anything major with the galactic upheaval of that, instead it’s about The Bad Batch being on the run for their own reasons, it’s about protecting Omega, and these aren’t bad elements, but they’re not strong enough to get me invested in the story in the way something like TCW or Rebels did. Because those shows were designed around the galactic circumstances that were necessary to the premise, Rebels had to be in the Empire era because it was about the Rebellion and the Empire, The Clone Wars had to be in the final days of the Republic, because it was about that specific war and showing how the galaxy was ground down by it. Smaller, more intimate stories absolutely have their place.  But when you bill yourself as being the successor/continuation of TCW, when you are bringing in all these familiar characters and mentions of worldbuilding, to connect it to the bigger epic stories of Star Wars, unless you’re bringing your A-game, it feels disconnected.  It’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near what it could have been.

𝙑𝙤𝙡𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖: The seat of power and influence over vampire kind for over a millennia.  

anakin skywalker: a summary

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