Red Lightsaber

Major Star Wars series spoilers.

Worldwide family!

I am alive! It’s been a tough few weeks, the details of which I’ll fill you in on another time. Lots of amazing things are in the works, but in the meantime, I thought I’d say hi and touch base with my fellow Star Wars fanatics with a review of some of our favorite lines!

(I missed you too.)

A big theme throughout the movies is someone in search of a teacher. An apprentice without a master is a dangerous thing. It’s one thing to have power, it’s another thing to know how to control it. Here are some relevant quotes:

Luke to Yoda: “I’m not too old!” Then he hits his head on the ceiling.

Skywalker to Rey: “You need a teacher. I can’t teach you.” (Master Luke, she replies at some point, you’ve cut yourself off from the Force.”)

You here the line, “Powerful, but untrained” and variations in several movies and in the series The Acolyte.

Then there’s how everyone is always trying to turn everyone else to the Dark Side.

“You need a teacher,” Ren says to Rey as they are fighting, again, red and blue lightsabers clashing in some great fights.

I love Rey and Ren. Cute kids. They would have had adorable Jedi kids had he not, well, died for her.

She’s trying to turn him to the Light, she’s trying to turn him to the Dark. And so it goes. Several times they meet and he says, “Next time, it will be you who turns.” “We’ll see,” she replies.

One of the problems I’ve had with the movies as I get older is that I think they oversimplify good and evil. I see it more these days as people having different solutions to the same problems. Restore order to the galaxy vs. let the pirates overrun the Outer Rim. Casualties on all sides.

Over time, the series take a more complicated view. In Ashoka, Sabine makes the critical decision to blow up the galaxy if necessary to find Ezra. I get that. I respect that. “Your gamble paid off,” her Master Ashoka says, but did it? Ezra gets home but Ashoka and Sabine are stuck in the middle of nowhere without a car or a cell phone.

Their great adversary, Admiral Thrawn, who is one of my favorite characters (who doesn’t like a man who can inspire fear in the entire galaxy while being blue?) says to Ashoka as he flies away, “We never met, and perhaps now we never shall. But I know you because I knew your master. Anakin Skywalker.”

The exchanges between Anakin and Ashoka in that series are fantastic. It shows the complexity of the Master and Apprentice relationship. He turned to the Dark but she never stopped missing him. So maybe it’s not as simple as two sides?

The Acolyte is my favorite Star Wars series. In that, the dynamic shifts. Instead of student chasing teacher, it’s teacher chasing a student.

Qimir has some of the best lines in the entire Star Wars cannon.

“Beneath the surface of human consciousness are strong emotions. Fear. Pain. Desire.” He’s stirring a pot of something that looks like soup.

Osha replies, “That’s the way to the Dark Side.”

Qimir to Osha: “That’s what they told you.”

Qimir’s basic deal is that he’s all alone in the world. Stabbed in the back by his own Jedi master, he learns how to use his powers in ways that are different than the Jedi. But he is not a part of the Order, so he has no Apprentice. He tried with Mae, but as he puts it, “Mae only wanted revenge.”

So he moves on to her sister Osha. Fantastic dialogue as she thinks she’s stuck on his island.

“Saul will find me. He’s powerful in the Force.” (correct me hardcore people if I mess up any lines. I’m doing this from memory.)

“His power? That’s your power, Osha.”

They have some funny exchanges too. During their epic fight after the swimming scene, she says something about being a prisoner. Of course, she’s holding his red lightsaber.

“You’re the one holding the weapon,” he says. Qimir is a master of stating the obvious, and as I have often said, there is nothing more unbecoming than denying the obvious.

Eventually she does turn, and agree to be the Apprentice he’s been looking for. Fabulous red lightsaber scene, one of my favorites in the whole of the Star Wars cannon, when they are looking out over the ocean holding hands and a red lightsaber.

What is the point? (The point? I just learned that you’re supposed to have a point. Hmm. I never received a formal education in how to write, I’m pretty much self taught from reading and listening to people talk, so I didn’t know that having a point was a thing until recently.)

I think the red lightsaber looks best with my hair.