“There’s good in him. I know… I know there’s still…” “There is still good in him.” “I’ve got to save you.”
It’s not a stretch to say that redemption is a main theme of the Star Wars films and neither is it a stretch to say that the same theme continued through the Expanded Universe. The story of someone’s fall to the dark and eventual redemption to the light has been repeated countless times throughout. This is, afterall, a franchise built upon the story of the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker.
So why, in recent years, have we seen stories go against this?
I’m talking, of course, about Jacen Solo and also Vestara Khai. How did we get to a point in the Star Wars universe where Luke Skywalker, Dark Side Redeemer Extraordinaire, isn’t consistently giving it his all to try and bring back his nephew or a young girl from the dark side? But before we get there, let’s look back at redemption throughout the rest of the Star Wars Saga.
From the very start of the Expanded Universe with the Bantam Era, we saw a strong emphasis on redemption. After all, Luke Skywalker had just successfully redeemed his father. This was a man who could see the good or even just the potential for good in everyone and for the next fifteen years in canon, he essentially sets out to bring everyone he possibly can back to the light side. Sometimes he succeeds and sometimes he doesn’t. From Dev in Truce at Bakura to the Witches and Nightsisters of Dathomir to Mara in the Thrawn books to a large chunk of the inaugural Jedi Academy class, we’d be here for ages if we named everyone. Frequently, these turned out to be characters who went on to make a lasting impact on the Star Wars universe. Just think about how different things would be if Mara had continued to side with the Empire or if Kyp Durron had stayed a pupil of Exar Kun. The point is that Luke was always willing to at least try.
The theme of redemption continued on with the next generation. When Zekk was lured to the Second Imperium and the dark side in the Young Jedi Knights books, Jaina and Jacen never gave up on the belief that they could save their friend. And hey surprise! Zekk did end up coming back from the dark side, taking some time to work through his personal issues, and then going on to become a contributing member of the Jedi Order. Several years down the line, Jaina has a brush with the dark side herself. Instead of just leaving her to it, Kyp draws from his own experiences and helps nudge her back towards the light. While it’s not quite the same dramatic redemption that many other characters have gone through, she’s nonetheless not left to her own dark side devices at the end of the day. She pulls back from the dark side and becomes stronger for it.
Redemption continues to be a theme throughout all of Star Wars history and is hardly limited to the post-Return of the Jedi timeline even if that’s where it is most prevalent. The Knights of the Old Republic video game is built upon the idea of redemption and choices. The game is, as I’ve noted before, incredibly true to all of the themes and the very nature of the Star Wars films. Redemption from the dark side is key during gameplay. For example, you hardly receive any XP for killing Juhani on Dantooine as opposed to all the bonuses you receive for talking her back to the light side and you even get another traveling companion. When you’re playing as a light sider which is the canon ending, you also have to redeem the fallen Bastila Shan at the end. (Again, you can kill her instead but it’s less rewarding.) To top all of this off, the theme of redemption becomes blatantly obvious when you look at your own character. Revan fell to the dark side, was memory wiped by the Jedi Council, and then essentially received a tabula rasa. From there, Revan’s choices result in her not only staying on the light side but also saving the galaxy. Much like the films, it’s all about the redemption of the fallen hero. Revan’s story just has a much happier ending than Anakin’s. (For the game at least. We’re not touching what happens after KOTOR 1 ends.)
The Prequel Trilogy novels also saw their fair share of redemption. The best example would be Yoda: Dark Rendezvous which works as a character study for not only Yoda but Count Dooku. Yoda knows that Dooku’s message of wishing to come back to the light is insincere. He knows this and yet he takes a chance and risks his life on a mission to go meet his former pupil and try and bring him back to the light side because he thinks that Dooku actually might subconsciously want to return. “When you fall, be there to catch you, I will.” It’s a promise to a student to always be there and not a promise to reject him simply because he falls.
The idea of redemption isn’t limited to just Force users. (Stop reading here if you have yet to finish reading Kenobi.) In John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi, we have the juxtaposition of Orrin Gault and Jabe Calwell. The Gault family is involved in the unsavory practice of faking Sand People attacks in order to scare people into joining the Settler’s Fund which was a bit of a scam as Orrin used much of those funds to try and pay off his own debt to Jabba the Hutt. Like most teenagers rebelling against their mothers would, Jabe ends up getting drawn into the fake attack scheme and starts heading down the path of not being a good person. When Obi-Wan Kenobi learns of what’s going on, his reaction is not to wipe out the “evil” with his lightsaber. Instead, he takes another approach. Both men are presented with a choice: turn back now. Jabe takes it and Orrin doesn’t. As a result, Jabe gets to start on the path of a good life and Orrin gets to experience his own personal hell.
Of course, there are always those who simply cannot be redeemed or else who choose not to. Harking back to the Bantam Era again, you have characters like Gantoris whose arrogance combined with Exan Kun’s influence burns away any chance he had to come back to the lightside. There are also characters like Brakiss, one of Luke’s failed students, and some of the Nightsisters of Dathomir who simply refuse to look at things any other way. There are also plenty of dark side and Sith characters who our heroes end up having to kill when there is no choice left. Emperor Palpatine easily jumps to mind as a good example here. On another died-a-Sith note, we have Count Dooku. He was a former Jedi who left the Order not with the intent to fall to the dark side but rather because he was disgruntled with the decisions made by the Council. Dooku is an excellent example of a character who ended up on the dark side because of a series of choices and as an example of a character who was never truly given the option of redemption towards the end because that was never an option when the Sith Master is manipulating another into disarming and then killing you.
No one is born good or evil. That’s something that holds true even in our universe. Instead, people are shaped by both their upbringing and the choices that they make. It is because of all this that some of the recent writing decisions in regards to redemption are questionable and, in my opinion, not fitting with the overarching themes of Star Wars. This means we’ve gotten to the Jacen and Vestara portion of our programming.
When you look back at Jacen Solo throughout the Expanded Universe, it’s hard to believe that the Solo-grinning, bad joke cracking teenager could ever possibly grow up to call himself Darth Caedus. It’s been almost five years since Invincible was published and I still can’t believe that it ended with Jaina killing her twin brother. It felt like everyone just gave up on Jacen and that’s not the Skywalker/Solo family we’ve all come to know and love over the years. While Jacen clearly made some terrible life decisions that lead to his complete and utter fall to the dark side, those decisions didn’t mean he was suddenly unworthy of redemption. After all, this is the Jedi Order that was keeping Raynar Thul locked in their basement as they de-bugified him or whatever you’d like to call it. Caedus might have been incredibly powerful but a team of Jedi could’ve beaten and captured him. There could’ve been a slow process of redemption as the B-plot in the following novels. Instead, he’s dead and our Solo trio’s down to twoone. To put it simply, Jacen Solo didn’t need to die for the plotline to be resolved and the Skywalker/Solo clan should have almost immediately dismissed the idea of killing him regardless of what he had done and never gone through with it.
In the case of Vestara, she’s a teenage girl who was raised in an isolated society where there was no other option than being a Sith. She was born into it and it is what she was consistently taught throughout her life. The first time she was really shown another viable option was when she was 16 and begrudgingly traveling with Luke and Ben Skywalker. To say that time sent Vestara mixed signals about the possibility of redemption would be an understatement. For a while, she definitely resists against the idea of coming to the light side and understandably so. Turning against your upbringing is difficult to say the least. But when she starts to come around to the idea, Luke goes back and forth between ‘the path to redemption will be difficult but is possible’ to ‘she’s a Sith and can never be a Jedi!’. It’s enough to give anyone some emotional whiplash so while it’s disappointing, it’s really not surprising when she decides to reject the light side at the end of Ascension. You could potentially argue that Luke had become jaded against the dark side after the events of Legacy of the Force but that’s still an incredibly jarring change in characterization.
None of this is to say that dark side characters can’t be killed or that every single character must go through a redemption arc. Again, everyone makes their own choices. Instead, the problem comes from the writing in the 40+ ABY timeframe. This isn’t a Luke Skywalker that I recognize as the great redeemer anymore. This isn’t the Jedi whose wife continued to affectionately call him Farmboy up until her death. And yes, life events shape our choices and our thoughts and people do change over time but for Luke to go through such a drastic personality change is incredulous to say the least. It’s not a problem restricted only to Luke. At the beginning of Crucible, a young Jedi in training is arrogant because he’s done so well with his training. He’s not the first youngster (Jedi or otherwise) with a big head and neither will he be the last. But instead of first trying to think of a way to help him tone down his arrogance and become more humble, almost all of the Masters agree that tossing him out of the Order is safest because there’s a chance he might fall to the dark side. Corran Horn of all people is the one to speak up and suggest otherwise. (As it is, the apprentice is told to start his basic Jedi training all over again. Or leave the Jedi Order.) This isn’t how the new Jedi Order is supposed to be.
Somewhere along the line, something clearly changed with how characters (and authors) view redemption. It hasn’t been a change for the better and characters like Jacen and Vestara have subsequently been made to suffer for it. Twins shouldn’t be made to kill each other in a galaxy that defeated the Yuuzhan Vong and teenage girls should be given the chance to become better people instead of rejected as hopeless causes. Luke Skywalker should get to be the sort of person who can see the good in everyone again. Those who use the dark side shouldn’t be forever condemned because after all, isn’t it supposed to be only the Sith who deal in absolutes?
It’s time to get back to the root theme of Star Wars. Let’s give redemption another chance.
You just made me realize why I have such a problem with the newer EU stuff! Thank you for writing this. Now we just need to get it on the desk of certain people…
Great article and all true. I just hope Sword of the Jedi comes out soon (if at all) and is able to set the EU straight after FotJ
And this is why I’m hoping that the Sequel Trilogy will wipe the post-RotJ timeline clean and start it over. I’ll always have the Thrawn and X-Wing books – they’re not going anywhere – but I will be oh so happy to toss the NJO, DN and especially LotF and FotJ on the virtual bonfire. I agree that the lack of redemption is part of what the later series got horribly wrong (but not the only thing).
I agree with most of your post, especially about Vestara and that strange Jedi Temple scene in “Crucible”. But I’m uneasy with the way the Jedi used to redeem people in the past, and I think that there was indeed a need for change (tough not as it was done). To me, the first sin in the EU was the destruction of Carida. Until then, the destruction of a planet was an unthinkable act of cruelty, something that could only be done by the Empire. Now it is done by a Jedi, and said Jedi doesn’t even suffer any consequences because Luke says that he was possessed by the ghost of a Sith Lord and will not do it again. And Kyp (who I like, btw) is not even acting as if he has learned anything until “Dark Journey”. And while the Jedi did not try to redeem Jacen in LotF, they did redeem Tahiri. But when she is nevertheless put on trial by Daala, it is presented in a way to suggest that she is treated unfairly, when in fact there is no doubt that she did murder Pelleaon. I actually liked the solution to make her atone by guarding the next Imperial Head of State, but unfortunately that idea was quickly ended when they took Jag out of that position.
I agree that there is a disruption in Luke’s character, and that it was just cruel to have Jaina kill her own brother (and not even listening to him), but to have Jacen redeemed in the “old way” (everything is forgiven and _forgotten_) would have been an affront to his victims, just as it has been before (not to make him Sith would have been best imo *sigh*). Not that I would like to see everyone killed instead (that would not make things undone, either), but there have to be consequences, not the Jedi or a Jedi alone to decide that everything is well again, when the actions before did make many normal peple suffer.
And I have to admit that I feel uneasy even about the ultimate example of redemption in Star Wars, Anakin Skywalker, since I watched the PT and especially the scene in which he slaughters the children at the temple. Not about the act of redemption itself, but the “now we are three happy Jedi ghosts again” at the end.
I can see where you’re coming from here and I totally respect your opinion here even if I don’t agree with all of it. I do agree that Jacen shouldn’t have just been forgiven and his actions forgotten. I was all for him having to really seriously work at becoming redeemed and doing his time in jail etc etc. Killing him and then never really giving Vestara a proper chance just felt so damn wrong to me.
(Also, I was totally onboard with Tahiri working with/for Jag. So disappointed that they dropped that potential story. However, I think her character got completely screwed over post-NJO in more ways than one.)
Well said. although, i think we are overlooking the fact that the Jedi order tried time and again to redeem Jacen. Kyle Katarn led a mission intent on capturing Cadeus, which failed, (and i think someone died in the attempt) time and again, Luke gives his nephew the change to surrender (after he has demonstrated that he could kill him,) and Jacen says no, and still Luke lets him live, so that he can try again. At first, the Jedi order doesn’t even want to belive that Jacen had turned to the darkside, it was only after he had consolidated power and openly called himself Cadeus that people saw him for what he was. Nor was Cadeus’s decent into the darkside, (and madness in my opinion) a sudden thing caused by one or two bad heat of the moment choices. No, Jacen dabbled with the dark side for a long time before committing to that road, because he believed that the darkside did not exist. (I think he followed the potentium theory of the force) and thought that because everything he did out of love, it was not only justified, but right and good as well.
As far as Luke’s change of attitude, I think it all begins with the death of his wife, and how he killed Lumiya out of vengeance, which tainted him with the darkside (I think this was discussed in invincible) This taint altered him. And I think it forced him to view the darkside differently. combine that with his nephew whom he decided was nonredeemable, (after many attempts at redemption) and you have a very different Skywalker. One who Bria quite accurately states, is not the great redeemer. He cannot afford to always look for the best in someone, too much is at stake. I think this is wisdom for Skywalker. when he was young, he could be the great redeemer, but now his responsibility is much greater, Jacen was a hard lesson for him, regarding the consequences of trying too hard, wanting too much, to redeem someone.
I just reread my comment and I fear it is pretty confusing. What I meant to say: I fully agree that the Jedi should not give up on their own when they fall to the dark side, but should try to redeem them. Because without friends who would take you back the fall to the dark side is almost impossible to stop. But I do not think that the Jedi should stand above the law, that they should be allowed to protect the fallen Jedi from the consequences of their actions. The Jedi Order is a moral institution that can forgive and take the formerly fallen Jedi back, but since the fall usually affected not just the Jedi Order, but large parts of the galaxy and its population, the Jedi in question should still be held legally accountable.
I don’t think you can ignore the fact that the last two major series/story arcs were written by multiple authors. That has to have an effect on how these things turn out and surely accounts for some of the discrepancy in Luke’s character. These are, after all, fictional characters who are written by different authors, I wouldn’t really expect them to always be written the same. (Unfortunately).
Sure, there are always characterization differences between authors, but no matter who’s writing you have to get the Big Details right. Luke trying to redeem people is one of those Big Details.
No one expects Luke to be written exactly the same way from author to author, but you’ve got to at least be in the same zip code.
But then you look at the Bantam Era books which were written by a heck of a lot more than 4 different authors and they are much more consistent with Luke and Redemption.
Exactly the reason to be okay with a continuity reboot with the Sequels. Great article.
If you think about it – even the Vong get redeemed… but Jacen, eh.
I hadn’t thought about it in terms of a lack of redemption… it seemed more like a… bloodlust. That things got more violent and bloody – I think about the Killik wars and shudder. Sort of almost like the point was to rack up body counts and then kill the bad guy like some lousy summer blockbuster. But maybe redemption is the better angle to consider this by.