The Only Way to Fix the Star Wars Saga

Getting Star Wars right

If Star Wars was going to have a nine-movie story arc, then they simply never got it right. They only had a cursory examination of what the entire allegorical story was supposed to be.

Be honest. Creator George Lucas started with episode IV because there was no real meat to the first three. We are just supposed to know that some basic stuff happened. Palpatine, apparently a Sith Lord, maneuvers himself to become Emperor.  Anakin becomes Darth Vader. There are some Clone Wars. The Empire is bad. That’s why you start with episode IV. We really do not need the back story. If he actually had the idea to start with The Phantom Menace, we would not be here today. It would have been a one-time movie that we would forget, like so many other 1960s and 1970s science fiction movies. Lucas was smart enough to know you don’t need all of the background of The Iliad to enjoy The Odyssey. Episode IV tells us you can pick up at any point, like the Flash Gordon serials he clearly loved.

So how do you get it right? You have to understand what the basic allegory is all about. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. When watching an allegory, we have to see how the main characters and events subscribe to all of our own lives. Dante’s Inferno teaches us all that if we are bad, these things he sees will happen to us—he needs to be redeemed so that we can all be redeemed. Stories like that. That’s why I’m such a big fan of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. I don’t have to be a secret agent to see how we are all prisoners of our own lives.

The Star Wars series, at its heart, bases itself around the basic concept of good versus evil. If you need any more evidence of this, watch the Force Cave scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Absolutely perfect as the midpoint of the entire nine-episode idea. Luke needs to fight the dark within. Yin and yang. Will good survive?

So now look at the three sets of movies in a different way. They all have to focus around that basic premise of good defeating evil. 

The first trilogy focuses around the rising dark. Palpatine should be much more obvious to an audience, admittedly not the characters. The idea of the clones is the idea of the Dark Side...immortality at a price. These evil Force-users cannot be redeemed in their own lifetime so they need clone bodies for their life force. The problem with that is that the more they use the clones, the deeper they become evil, like a vampire. Think of real life people that say they want to give up bad stuff but never do; they go to their deathbeds without ever truly repenting. That’s the power of the Dark Side. 

So to beat Palpatine’s grasp at power, Anakin Skywalker comes along. He’s got the potential for being the most powerful Force-user ever, and the ultimate battle is his own battle. But in order to beat Palpatine, he knows he needs the power of BOTH sides. He must encompass both sides to defeat the ultimate evil bad guy that is incarnate in Palpatine. But Anakin Skywalker fails and becomes Darth Vader. I would even accept a revelation here that Palpatine is Anakin’s father.

We are still good at this point.

The original trilogy, now known as episodes IV, V, and VI, focus on Luke Skywalker and the exact same battle that his father once had. Luke must encompass both sides to beat Palpatine. Luke realizes that he can’t do it alone, that to encompass both sides takes two people, like sides of the same coin. So he figures out that he needs to redeem his other half...and he thought it was his father. That’s why he wants to redeem his father. He almost does it, but it didn’t work well enough. They only destroyed Palpatine’s physical body. Palpatine’s Force-essence seeks out another host body. Luke realizes that it should’ve been his sister (or should now be) as his other half to vanquish the evil. There’s even room here for more tries with the Skywalker twins to take on Palpatine in his new bodies. If you haven’t realized by now, I’m getting to the fact that Snoke is Palpatine in a new body. 

Now we come to the sequel trilogy, known right now by many fans as the Disney trilogy because they are vehemently opposed to it so far. But it can be fixed. 

Luke and Leia couldn’t do it. But their progeny can. Whether Rey and Kylo are siblings or cousins, the same effect is there. They are each other’s half. Kylo tried to defeat Palpatine by doing exactly what his grandfather Darth Vader did, by himself. This could be why Kylo killed his own father, Han Solo, because he is trying to go down this evil path like Darth Vader did. This didn’t work and is why Kylo is evil now. Rey was hidden for this purpose. If Kylo had known she existed, they could team up and defeat evil. Rey resurfaces and Kylo’s ulterior motive is to team up with Rey to defeat the evil. They come close once, like in The Last Jedi, but just kill another Palpatine body. 

So the last movie should be Rey and Kylo, good and bad together, teamed up to defeat Palpatine in a final battle. Yin and yang of cosmic good and evil together against the great Dark Side. Somehow they have to destroy Palpatine’s Force-essence, or at least contain it somehow, before it gets to a new body. Kylo could even perish or be contained with it, knowing that in order to defeat the evil, you have to kill all the evil. Kind of like Arnold offing himself at the end of Terminator 2. 

That’s the balance. Now the universe can move on, out from under the thumb of the great evil that ensnared a galaxy. That’s why Luke meets his dark self in the Force cave on Dagobah. That’s why there’s twins with Luke and Leia and whatever pairing up is going on with Rey and Kylo. That could be why there are always two Sith Lords, if you go into extended canon material—I think it would be because the main baddie has always been there, just resurrected into new bodies. He needed to take over the Galaxy to have the resources to create a clone army, for himself, really. A good writer  could show how good and evil work together to defeat greater evils, like in a religious allegory sense. An audience should realize that we all have the potential for great good and evil, that we must conquer both within ourselves. That’s the allegory that Star Wars is supposed to show us as a physical space opera. The opera is within ourselves.

Episode IX could be that. Palpatine is coming back. Fans are upset that there’s been no build up for this. But the revelation could be that Palpatine has been around for thousands of years, as those early Sith Lords. It is up to this generation to defeat the evil by coming together. You could even make some kind of political appeal, like if the democrats and republicans could actually work together, they might finally accomplish something worthy. 

And then there’s always the idea that you can only contain the evil, not destroy it. One could say it simply must be freed, like a whole cycle of the universe type of thing, like Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. So this may not be be the ever-loving end to a cycle of life that is destined to be repeated over and over again.

It can work. Unfortunately, I don’t know if you can fix it now. It probably should have been planned out better, at least this new trilogy. I’m hoping this is why they brought in Palpatine at the last minute, because they finally realized that this is what has to happen to bring closure to the entire saga.