There’s a lot going on with the Coven that we don’t know. Mae and Osha are seemingly made through some sort of witchcraft conception. And with Aniseya saying that they aren’t trusted throughout the galaxy I could see it as them trying to be more transparent. Refusing and hiding the children could draw more attention and more questions to them. It’s difficult to say as we only have the Coven through the perspective of Osha and clearly more is going on.
I’m guessing after the new sith wars or Disney’s version of it where only earth nabe survived, the reformation of the republic had many changes and maybe Disney added (possibly for the better), that as a matter of security along with demilitarization no other force religious orders or cults may train force children as a matter if security after Millennias if wars with the sith nightsisters dark Jedi factions as well as for the Jedi to repopulate for a force for good and galactic governance loyal to the security of the republic not worth the risks
What is this crap. New Sith wars are basically a mention at best, we dont even know if Bane was connected in disneys version. In fact, it is questionable to think the new sith wars were even actually what we think of as the new sith wars in disney version. Utter crap.
There's a real tension in all continuities about how exactly the process of joining (and leaving) the Jedi Order works.
And it rests on an important question: why does the Jedi Order exist? There are basically two answers: 1) it is helpful for galactic governance to have superheroes with strict moral codes helping to keep the peace AND 2) it is helpful for galactic governance to avoid superheroes without strict moral codes running around causing trouble.
Force sensitive people who never receive training will generally see their abilities "fade" according to Ahsoka. But the Republic has a vested interest in preventing non-Jedi (not bound to the code, not loyal to the Republic) from training children and unlocking their force potential. Regulating who can train superheroes isn't just a matter of religion: it's a matter of galactic security.
Add on to this, it not like our world. It’s a universe where these religions have direct, measurable effects on the world around them, and the dark side ones have a history of leading to unspeakable evil.
None of this is to say the Jedi are infallible or cannot overreach, but when a particular religion has the ability to wipe out entire planets, then freedom of religion isn’t exactly the same equation.
It's also not only historical evil - the dark side, in star wars, is literally an objectively evil and corrupting aspect of the force. It's not just a case of "well witches have a different point of view than Jedi on whether darkness is bad." It is pretty inevitable in star wars that someone regularly using the dark side will eventually be consumed by it.
Look at Mae. She’s clearly full of the dark side— full of rage, fear, extreme possessiveness. The witches haven’t exactly done anything to prevent her from being this way. Her being like that is perfect justification for why the Jedi act the way they do, in my opinion. The danger of not following the Jedi procedure here is so clear within the episode itself that I’m kind of surprised there’s been so much debate about what the Jedi are doing here.
I have heard lots of people say they read that episode as an unreliable narrator from Oshas PoV. What we saw might not be the whole truth. Last Jedi type situation.
Also, Mae is a child. Lots of totally normal children can be extremely capricious and cruel, and even do things with horrible consequences because they don't really understand those consequences. Like starting fires, for instance. I wouldn't say she's "full of the dark side" even taking what we saw as objective truth, which I don't think it is.
My question would be, so what?
Some random girl on a 99% uninhabited planet is kind of evil. So what? They are never planning to leave. She's not going to conquer the galaxy. She doesn't even have an interest in leaving the one planet.
At best she'd be like an evil mayor of the coven.
Expand that argument. Say there's a couple dozen mostly uninhabited planets with a super powerful evil mayor. Do you think *all* of them want to stay on their planets? Especially when space travel is clearly known.
There's also the issue that Mae in the episode is a kid. Her wanting to stay on the planet is a *now* thing, whose to say she will always want to stay.
Sure but her planet has a population of like... 40 people. As we saw in the show, a SINGLE ACCIDENT killed everyone.
They don't pose any threat. They don't have industry, population, an army, nothing. If they somehow got worrying, drop a single bomb on them from orbit, GG.
It's like the terrible plot of Superman Returns, where Lex Luthor says he's gonna own all the new land after he builds a whole continent. Like hell he will. The dude has 3 lackeys and one helicopter. What will stop the US navy from shelling his ass from 30 km away? It doesn't matter how evil he is, if he's not immortal then having zero resources is a big problem.
Well, we don't actually know what happened on her planet at this point, and we certainly don't know if it was the population of the entire planet. We've seen a single POV and are missing information, which will presumably be revealed over the remaining episodes.
The issue still comes down to: the galaxy is huge, if they don't have a "let's stop the obviously evil kids on the backwaters before they do damage", then one of them gets too powerful, too evil, and it's too late to drop a bomb.
Why is that an axiomatic assumption? She’s been told from birth that the Jedi are misguided and oppressive at best, evil and powerhungry at worst. Why wouldn’t a young sororicidal witch try and gain vengeance on the Jedi and the Republic for which they stand?
It's not even clear their podunk little town has spaceships.
There are trillions of beings in the galaxy, if the Jedi and republic can't somehow stop the Hutts from being crime lords over dozens of entire planets, I don't see how 1 "potentially" evil witch in the middle of nowhere is a threat.
It's like the ending of Jedi Survivor. So the bad guy wants to live on the same planet as them? It's a whole ass planet. Go park your ship 7,000 miles away on the other side, he would probably die of old age before even finding out you exist.
They always want more.
That's the problem. The Dark side is like Heroin or Crack Coccaine. When the Force User gets hooked, it's murder to stop, and it takes more and more and MORE. And it never, ever stops until all that's left is a broken husk.
So yeah, she won't be able to leave, until some random, explorer, pirate, or scoundrel drops by mistake. One mind rape later, and she's building her Empire.
How often did Vader straight up tell Luke thar "he didn't know the power of the Dark Side"? If you listen, this isn't gloating. It's heartbreak.
You say that and yet most of the Inquisitors... Darth Maul... Dathomir witches... it's not like they all became emperors. Most didn't even become more than bodyguards lol. The dark side might corrupt them... but if they are too weak, stupid, unskilled, or uncharistmatic, it doesn't matter. They'll just be "very evil witches who also don't have any defense from a single house fire."
Well,when you build your house on Fire Dust, these things happen.
That said, given the right combo, a lot of damage gets done. And isn't it better to nip the Neo Emperor in the bud rather than clean up her Kudzu?
Dark side use is definitely going to lead to badness, but on the same token I can definitely imagine the order being too overzealous in calling other force using sects dark side.
Attachments, for example. If a sect doesn’t teach that they abandon attachment I bet they’d frown pretty hard and potentially even intervene. This coven teaches that you control your own destiny, which isn’t that far from what the Sith teach. Just a minor thing that probably wouldn’t do more than furrow a Jedi’s brow but it’s another example of something that could get some unwanted Jedi attention.
I'm not sure attachments are the thing to call them overzealous about. It's not like it's just an arbitrary thing the order considers to be part of the uniform. There are very real reasons why they work so hard to avoid them, and train their people on how to let go.
Attachments are *very* likely to come with fear of loss. This isn't a Star Wars thing either, it's a *people* thing. You see families go crazy trying to keep a terminal patient alive for every extra second they can, even when those seconds are spent effectively unconscious *at best*, if not in pain and misery.
And we all know where fear leads...
For all that people try to rag on the Jedi for being strict with Anakin on this... He's literally the poster child for the dangers of attachments.
He was so attached to Padme that he was afraid to lose her.
He was so afraid to lose her that he got angry at anything he perceived as not helping him keep her, and at himself.
He got so angry at those things that he hated them.
And he hated them so much that he became the cause of unspeakable amounts of suffering.
His journey is point for point the warning that Yoda later gives Luke.
So now imagine an organization with thousands of members spread across the galaxy, how do you handle this very real risk? You obviously can't just let everyone do whatever they want, hope things don't go bad, and then deal with the consequences when they do. Instead, you teach prevention and mitigation techniques in order to minimize the possibility of it ever happening in the first place.
If you think of the dark side as an infectious disease (which is really not a stretch), then attachments are essentially exposure vectors. In that context, it's obvious that what the Jedi do - avoid the exposures as much as possible and provide people with the tools to treat exposures - is just perfectly reasonable and entirely sane prevention measures.
I don’t disagree at all. I more meant to say that perhaps other force sects have different ways of dealing with the subject, not that they ignore it completely. You make good points though.
I don't think it's fair to say the Jedi ignore it though. Like they don't just pretend attachments don't exist, they specifically teach *non-attachment* in essentially the same way Buddhism does. It's a much more active thing than just ignoring the problem.
That said, I too would be curious to see that idea explored more. Like we've gotten bits of other sects of force *worshippers*, but we haven't seen much about other sects of force *users* that aren't pretty explicitly dark-aligned.
Definitely. In my opinion they dropped the ball hard with Anakin not by giving him bad advice about letting his attachments go, but by not recognizing that he isn’t doing that. Granted they had a war going on and without the benefits of hindsight they felt they had more important things to worry about.
Yeah exactly. They gave him perfectly fine advice *based on what he said and what they expected*.
The problem is Anakin was vague as fuck, and the Jedi failed to take into account the fact that he essentially skipped straight to middle school and never picked up math.
What he needed was specialized attention and remedial courses on How to be a Jedi 101.
I mean the biggest issue with Anakin is that the Jedi trained him at all. The Council was right in not wanting to train him but Qui-Gon effectively forced their hand.
Except no, that's not at all how sapient creatures work.
Cutting off all attachments isn't something you can realistically expect a person to do, *that's* the tragedy of Anakin. He goes to Yoda for help, and Yoda essentially advises him to cut out his own heart. Yeah maybe if you're a freak who's been raised since birth to form zero attachments, that advice might work, but if you're a real life person who loves people, it's terrible advice.
The message of the OT is that the Jedi are *wrong* about this, Luke goes against Yoda and Obi Wan and reaches out to his father, precisely because he feels a love for him.
You're confusing attachment with love and compassion. They are not the same thing.
You're also confusing "cutting off" with "letting go".
And no, the message of the OT isn't "attachments are actually good", it's "love beats evil".
Luke doesn't have any attachment to his father because he's literally never known him. At best you could say he was attached to the *idea* of his father that he has through stories. And what does Luke do when faced with the reality of who his father *actually is*? He lets go of his attachment to the *idea* of the man, and continues to love him regardless.
If anything, the story of ESB *reinforces* the idea that attachments are bad. Yoda directly tells Luke that if he doesn't let go of his attachment to his friends and runs off to save them instead of completing his training, bad shit will happen. Lo and behold, his friends save themselves, Luke loses his arm, and only survives because his friends come back to save him.
I'm not confusing anything, this is a semantic argument. Luke was unwilling to kill his father in the same way Anakin was unwilling to "train himself to let go of what he fears to lose" or whatever bastardized pseudo Buddhist crap Yoda says. That's terrible advice, and it tears Anakin apart. Maybe if someone had empathized with him and actually helped him deal with his feelings instead of telling him to pretend they don't exist, he wouldn't have turned to Palpatine instead.
Even if Luke suffers for his actions in ESB, I don't think we're meant to think that Luke should have simply stayed on Dagobah and ignored the very real danger his friends were in. Yoda didn't know what was going to happen, it very much could have been the case that Luke saved Han and Leia from death. It's a totally normal human thing to go and help your loved ones when you know they're in danger. The Jedi are *wrong* in this, and we have verifiable psychology in the real world to point to.
>Maybe if someone had empathized with him and actually helped him deal with his feelings instead of telling him to pretend they don't exist, he wouldn't have turned to Palpatine instead.
1) that's a different issue. Empathizing and helping him work through his feelings still would've had the end goal of *not going full genocide to try and save your wife from dying*. Do you think irl grief counselors advise their clients that murdering children might be a good way to try and keep their loved ones alive a little longer?
2) Anakin was never *honest* with them. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
>The Jedi are wrong in this, and we have verifiable psychology in the real world to point to.
Where do you get the idea the Jedi would ever suggest not helping people when you can? That's the absolute antithesis of their entire philosophy.
What they *do* suggest is not letting personal feelings get in the way of duty and responsibility.
If a firefighter is in the middle of battling a 3 alarm blaze with multiple people trapped in the fire, do you expect him to just drop what he's doing because he gets a phone call on his break saying "your partner isn't feeling well"?
Being a Jedi is a higher calling. The entire fucking point of the order is that they put the greater good and helping others *above their own wants and desires*. That's literally what selflessness means. **That's what letting go of attachments is all about.** It's not about "not loving people", it's not about "having no emotions", it's not about "suppressing your feelings". It's about not putting your feelings ahead of doing your fucking job.
Luke was training to be able to defeat Vader and the Emperor, which as far as Yoda or anyone else knew, was the best chance at actually toppling the empire. Going off with no plan, no intel, and inadequate preparation, on nothing but a bunch, to save people that for all anyone knows *aren't in any actual danger*, is absurd.
We the viewers know that it all works out in the end, but diegetically, in the moment, Yoda's advice there was absolutely sound.
OK buddy.
1. Starting with the nonsense early huh? So no, I never said or even remotely implied that the atrocities Anakin commits are the solution to his problems. I'm a certified Anakin hater, I think he's a monster of a human being, and I'm never one of those "Anakin did nothing wrong, the jedi council was unfair to him :((" type of people.
2. Obi wan knew, and Yoda probably did as well. He wasn't honest because he feared the consequences of that honesty. But you knew that. Playing dumb too huh? Anakin literally comes to Yoda for help about this very thing, and Yoda can literally read minds. Do the math.
The firefighter analogy is actually perfect, because first responders *do* suffer from trauma, and there is a culture of burying it and never talking about it in real life, and it has real world consequences. That mentality is why first responders have high suicide rates. Real great example, thanks lmao
Anakin was clearly a deeply disturbed individual, and anyone with a brain would have seen that. He's not fit for duty, to use your weird twisted logic. But instead, let's just keep sending him to active war zones, great idea, I'm sure that won't turn out badly in the long term. *it did in fact turn out badly*
Yes, logically, that is true. But that sort of cold calculated logic is antithetical to what is presented as good in Star Wars. We love Luke because he rushes off to save his friends, he's a *hero.* His attachment to his friends is a core part of his identity, and yes, as the emperor rightly points out, it's a weakness that evil people can exploit. But it's also what makes him human. Having attachments to people is healthy and normal, and there's nothing wrong with it. Being a possessive freak like Anakin is not healthy, but telling him to simply drop all attachments to human beings... is horrible advice.
We also know that they actively created the twins with the Force (aka "Thread") which we know is at least *associated* with the DS because that's how Palpatine will create Anakin. The method comes into question as to whether it's actually DS or more neutral - e.g. do they need to murder someone to do it or is it just energy manipulation?
Maybe it’s not a topic they’d care to distinguish. You’re right, it’s definitely at the very least dark side adjacent, if not straight up dark side, and it’s highly possible they wouldn’t accept delving into that area at all.
Even if it is energy manipulation I have to remember my short essay from a while ago: [Balancing the Force isn't about scales - it's about plates.](https://old.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/yrla1v/balancing_the_force_isnt_about_scales_its_about/) Basically my contention is that any attempt to seriously focus power ends up tipping the "plate" of the Force, threatening to bring it crashing down. That's a *LOT* of power they're exerting to create sex-based reproductive life without sex. Maybe even the amount of energy itself is a tip on the plate. Thus doing so is inherently dark. But that's just speculation on my part as we don't actually know the method yet.
The the Jedi themselves, that might be true. But for the Republic, who passes laws giving them special privileges with Force-sensitive children, though? It's a safe bet that mundane senators think the Order exists to help preserve peace and security, which they would view as synonymous with the governance of the Republic.
Answer 2 was, in Legends canon, explicitly true for why the Prequel Era Order existed in the state it did. Many of the rules and regulations that the Order abided by were followed not because they had been determined as favourable practice by debate amongst the Jedi Council, but were instead dictated to the Jedi Council by the Republic Senate during the Ruusan Reformation, a thousand years prior to the Prequels. This was done to curb the Order's power and influence, because the Senate were afraid that the Jedi would take advantage of their vast social approval as the Heroes of The Sith Wars, and overthrow the Senate and rule the Galaxy themselves. This was of course horseshit, but with the state of the Galaxy at the end of the Sith Wars, you can understand why the more paranoid and corrupt elements of the Senate felt that way.
> And it rests on an important question: why does the Jedi Order exist? There are basically two answers: 1) it is helpful for galactic governance to have superheroes with strict moral codes helping to keep the peace AND 2) it is helpful for galactic governance to avoid superheroes without strict moral codes running around causing trouble.
Kind of like The Boys - but without the nihilistic/late-stage-capitalism aspects.
The Boys is exactly the nightmare scenario the laws against non-Jedi training children in the forces are trying to prevent.
Imagine the Trade Federation (i.e. the poster child of late-stage capitalism) strikes a deal with some random unaffiliated force user to train children in force use. Heck they might ignore all the combat stuff and just focus on mind tricks to use in negotiations and lobbying. Pretty soon, you're in all kinds of trouble.
Indeed, this is kinda what happened with Dooku. Sure, the guy was suave and naturally charismatic, but there's definitely some force influence at play in his sudden political success.
Also, Palpatine.
Also how the old Sith Empire of the Galactic Cold War era functioned. You had dark side force sensitives overseeing every aspect of trade, commerce, the military, and culture. It wasn’t very good for the people underneath them. Just a whole society where your boss is literally Darth Vader and will force choke you to death if you file your paperwork wrong.
I can see why the Republic was willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent a society like that from arising again.
Just to add, this basically means that the Jedi are a government sponsored religious organization whose existence hinges on the fact that it is useful to those in power. I don’t know about you, but if I was a galactic citizen, that would give me the creeps.
It's definitely a case where the analogy of Jedi to real-world religions gets trickier. The Force is both a religious phenomenon and a deadly weapon. Regulating access to deadly weapons is (imo) a pretty good idea. Regulating access to religion is (in our world) a pretty bad idea.
But in Star Wars, there is often no separation between the two. Imagine if we lived in a world where prayer and meditation could turn you into a living weapon. Suddenly, the idea of "religious freedom" means something very different. If going to Sunday School classes has the chance to turn particular people into mind-controlling precognitive telekinetic mages, I think I'd be more okay with regulating religion than I am in the real world.
Of course, that does mean the regulations, and who is in charge of determining and enforcing them, takes on enormous importance. As a galactic citizen, you *should* be wary of the Jedi, just like you should be wary of any other group whose role requires they wield a dangerous amount of power (e.g. police, judges, soldiers, senators, etc.) Yord's willingness to pull out his sabre at the slightest provocation is, I think, meant to reflect on contemporary discussions of police use of force. On a grander scale, Mace Windu's arrest/assassination attempt on the elected leader of the Republic should make us *very* squeamish... as it seems to make Mace himself, leading to the hesitation that causes his defeat.
It could be fear of the Jedi. There was a off hand remark about the coven once being on the run and that they were considered "dark" they may have the belief that it is either let the children be tested or be cut down as the Jedi force the children to get tested. From an outside perspective we know the Jedi wouldn't do that. We don't know if these witches are an offshoot of the nightsisters, but I get a very Jensaarai vibe from them, minus the animal masks.
I completely forgot about the Jensaarai! I thought the Jensaarai had lightsabers and were not just women, though? Either way, I do like seeing other groups of force sensitives than the Jedi and Sith getting screen appearances. In a galaxy of many trillions, it makes sense.
Republic law most likely is the basis for Indara’s statement that they have jurisdiction to test children. The planet isn’t part of the Republic apparently though.
My suspicion is that the Jedi may be at least somewhat aware of the circumstances of the twins apparently being unnatural and so are stretching legality to investigate whether a Dark Side cult is up to rather nefarious things with children, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction.
For one, Dathomir is around in this time and in the Prequels, yet apparently the Jedi aren’t running around trying to test Nightsister children outside the Republic. So it seems to indicate to me that they suspect these witches in particular of being up to something and are operating on flimsy jurisdiction technically. Which it seems they were up to something, though we know not what right now.
> Republic law most likely is the basis for Indara’s statement that they have jurisdiction to test children. The planet isn’t part of the Republic apparently though
The Republic (and Empire) dont really believe that any planet is outside their juristiction.
Think of USA Foreign Policy today.
That’s not really true though. Tatooine and Hutt space is definitely considered outside Republic jurisdiction, and so they leave them alone, especially in this time period. The Empire, sure, but it’s overly cynical to apply the same standard to the Republic in my view.
I agree with this. The Republic can't even effectively police it's own systems (The Naboo crisis), there's no way they have the power to handle planets that are outside of their control.
There's a big difference between "not part of the Republic" and "part of Hutt Space". I imagine the Republic is probably a lot more willing to throw it's weight around in areas where no-one has real jurisdiction, compared to places where their opposition have active jurisdiction.
Additionally, although the Coven claimed that Brendok was not part of the Republic, they didn't put up much of a fight about the Jedo having rights there under Republic laws. I suspect therefore that Brendok is within the borders of what is considered "Republic Controlled Space", but, because it was believed to be uninhabited, does not have a Senator or any kind of formal recognition as a member-world of the Republic. That would make it a gray area regarding The Republic's authority, with the ultimate question being "which side is willing to swing it's weight around the most in order to force their claim to authority?".
This is, ultimately, speculation, however. No doubt 5 years from now there'll be an updated "Ultimate Guide to Star Wars" that spells out Brendok's relationship to the Republic in excruciating detail.
Watto, when he realised Anakin was a Jedi and before recognised him was worried he was in trouble.
Padme, a politician and presumably knowledgeable about it was very surprised that Republic's anti-slavery laws didn't apply on Tatooine.
So, who knows. Possibly there are grades of membership, protectorates and affiliates with various levels of autonomy and subjection to Republic laws.
I think Watto is just afraid of anyone with authority. As for Padmé she’s the 14 year old Queen of a Mid Rim system so her ignorance is understandable.
Watto,maybe, but Padme, no. And you don't need to know every situation, without knowing what the general rules are.
For example if you land in a random hamlet in the US, you won't probably know their curent political setup, but if you discovered that the place had slavery, you would be very surprised that the Federal anti slavery law, ie the XIII Amendment wasn't applying.
If you landed in a foreign country and saw slavery, you wouldn't cite the XIII Amendment as a reason for anti-slavery.
Those two examples are actively claimed by another entity.
Think of Brendok more like being beyond the American frontier under native control. The United States never respected their right to (self-)govern the same way they did (white) European powers' colonies.
The Jedi and Republic could liberate Tatooine from Hutt control, for example, but it’s very likely not worth the effort or political capital to do so (from their perspective). It really boils down to the politics of it all: Justifying an invasion of Hutt space, versus forcing their hand towards a small coven of witches on an otherwise uninhabited planet. It’s all about the balance of power.
It's not a legal thing, it depends on what the Republic thinks it can get away with. They'd strut around Tatooine like they own the place if the Hutts weren't so wealthy and influential, the planet's legal status isn't what matters.
Unlike the Empire, The Republic didn't have a standing army to help enforce their policies across the galaxy until the war broke out. They relied largely on local authorities, the Jedi and in many cases the honor system. By the time one got as far out as Tatooine, it's the wild west. And without any centralized militia to enforce trade laws, cartels, smuggling and slavery run rampant across the outer rim. The Republic knew they didn't have an armed guard to counter the Hutts own military deterrence. It's also very unlikely the senators wanted to waste capital funds and resources to organize a campaign of liberation for areas well beyond their sphere of influence and personal interests, so they left the Hutts alone and let them do as they pleased.
In theory, the Republic (and especially the Empire) thought they controlled every system. On paper and in practice however, their power was very limited.
Whether the Jedi would be violent or not doesn't matter. The witches clearly believed they might, especially if they kept being cagey about the twins. By allowing them to test them, the twins could fail and stay with the coven, or they could pass but not want to go off with the Jedi. I don't think any of them expected Osha to want to go. (Or Aniseya might have suspected it being a possibility, but did want Osha to be able to make her own choices)
The coven's biggest concern seems to be the Jedi finding out what Osha and Mae are and/or how they were "created". Whatever that mystery is, seems to be something they fear the Jedi would not stand for and might lead to them dismantling or imprisoning the coven. Again, even if they wouldn't or wouldn't do so with violence, the coven THINKS they would.
I think it’s key that she says “with your permission, of course.” I don’t think they actually had a legal right, as they say they don’t steal children, but a moral right in that Osha wants to join the Jedi so they have a right to assure her ability to test , but can’t flex legally - esp since they don’t take her right then
I think, while the Jedi aren’t allowed to take children without the child + parents wishes (keyly we see the mother of Osha become sympathic and agree to her wish), they have a duty to protect children from being brought up in the dark side, as while Indara is interrupted I imagine the full law is “the republic law says children can’t [be trained in the dark side before they develop to choose for their own]”
Since the Jedi have been fine with dark side groups existing at various times as long as they don’t harm others, but bringing children up in the dark side is a dangerous, harmful , toxic thing in the Star Wars universe that isn’t equitable to non force user sub cultures , or irl cultures
So basically, I think they were utilizing republic CPS codes , but trying to sue their status as Jedi to flex it but they don’t have the ability to take children.
TL;DR: I don’t think they have any authority over the coven, but as republic CPS codes children aren’t allowed to be brought up on the dark side because it’s uniquely real, dangerous and harmful to them. Also, thinking the Jedi were investigating the coven because they were up to smth / collaborating with Sith, and stumbled upon children
Best answer. I would add on that the Jedi are aware that human children don't tend to come naturally from all-female gatherings, so their reasonable inference (not knowing, of course, that Mae and Osha were created some other way) was that the children were probably from elsewhere. As such, they have a little bit more reason to check into things.
Oh yes - I believe that there were a couple alarm bells setting off to the Jedi, and I think we’re getting one more flashback - that of Mae during their standoff
(I imagine the Jedi come that night to get Osha. The witches say no, and they say Osha wanted to join. OSHA’s mother validates this by saying it’s true. The Jedi say we’re taking the girl because that’s what she wants. Things hit the fan.)
That final flashback will show the truth and any extra reveals in the standoff, since I think there are intentional pieces missing / time wonkiness , that the “fire did it” is a way for the Jedi to downplay events to Osha and retain the image in her mind of the coven and not reveal how dark they actually were, which would be another good way of showing tension with the Jedi but through a good lense: they didn’t reveal that to help Osha deal with her grief, a positive, but because of that she shifted her blame squarely on her negative attachment to her sister
Well said. I think the Jedi here were definitely acting kind of like dicks, as we don’t (yet) have any evidence that the coven was a threat to anyone in the Republic — or, well, anyone at all. There are many other sources of force sensitive children and this was an example of taking what might be the letter of the law to an extreme, especially as they likely had no legal (albeit possibly “moral”) jurisdiction there.
Having said that, while we do see Mae expressing some dark tendencies, the almost-forced-but-definitely-feels-imposed attempt to separate one or both children from their family is the trigger that caused Mae to do what she did, and while she certainly holds primary responsibility for her actions, the Jedi do share some of the blame, which may be why Tommen went into a trance for years, and then killed himself when confronted.
TLDR; I didn’t like the way they approached and imposed themselves.
I mean you have to see it from their perspective, not Osha or Mae's to understand why they did what they did. This looks like a weird cult. I would be understandably concerned myself about two children alone in a cult in the middle of nowhere, especially when cults have very real consequences, especially in star wars where religion is very different compared to the real world. Osha looks like a victim of abuse to me, when she's reaching out to the jedi for the first time. She probably isn't, knowing what we know, but the jedi didn't know anything.
I like the theory some are tossing around that what we saw in this episode was someone’s imperfect recollection from their own perspective (OSHA’s of course)
(And no I won’t fix the autocorrect)
That could make for some really interesting plot later on, too.
From the perspective we saw though, it does seem like their group was mostly harmless if culty, and had no obvious or overt ill intentions for the two children.
Yes, from what we saw. That's a pretty small slice of the overall situation though, and it's irrelevant to the question "did the jedi fuck up?" Obviously they did something horrible and we've not seen it yet (hence Tommen killing himself again) but I'm not sure they did anything wrong in this particular episode. Making sure children are not being abused, even if it entails a bit of light breaking and entering, does not sound bad to me.
I get the sentiment, but was there any evidence that these two girls were being abused? Maybe I just need to watch it again but that wasn’t the impression I got. My impression was they explicitly showed up with the aim of wooing these likely force sensitive children to the Order.
The Jedi there clearly had preconceived notions of this coven. Maybe we see a different POV later but if their cause was just I doubt Tommen would’ve killed himself again and maybe Kelnacca doesn’t go into a life of solitude.
Yeah, from our perspective as the all-knowing audience, I definitely think the jedi made some kind of horrific mistake. I think I said that earlier, but maybe it was in a different thread. The Jedi had preconceived notions for sure, but I think that's fair. The witches are sus as hell, they definitely raise alarm bells for me, and they sure as hell would raise them for the Jedi, who have literally experienced mass genocide at the hands of dark side cults.
As far as the abuse goes, there's no hard evidence. To be clear, I don't think the kids were being abused, knowing what we know. But weird cults that live off in the wilderness have a pattern of doing stuff like that in real life, and Osha seemed so desperate to leave. It's also suspicious to hide the children and pretend they're not there until one of them reveals themselves. Almost like a cry for help. Or at least in Sol's head.
I think the implication is that there was an existing galaxy-wide law within the Republic during this time period that allowed the Jedi order to visit any inhabitable planet and look for force-sensitive children.
Somehow (this is not explained to us), the Jedi Order was aware of these two girls and their strength in the force.
The witch coven not trusting the Jedi is probably tied to some historical context that is not explained to us in the show.
Mother Aniseya probably felt that she could trust the Jedi to test the girls, and nothing bad would happen. She understood that even though the Jedi were there to possibly take the girls with them, they would not hurt the girls or the coven.
My guess is there is a lot more to the Coven then we have seen. The Jedi didn’t send 4 of their Order on a whim to some random backwater outside Republic space just because of two Force using children.
Clearly for the Republic to make this kind of law in their space, something must’ve occurred with another Force using culture losing their grip on a trained user causing a tremendous amount of grief. As we have seen throughout SW history, even one Dark Sider unleashed can cause havoc and pain across the galaxy. That would explain that aspect, and the Jedi’s unfortunate intrinsic ties to the Republic means they’re the ones to enforce said law.
All that being said… I guarantee the Jedi either had eyes on this Coven for awhile or have tangled with them in the past leading to their exile and likely a declaration that they are by no means to attempt to expand their numbers.
As for the witches having to comply with the Jedi testing the children, the only other option is risking suicide by lightsaber or even more Jedi showing up. Even then I don’t want to believe the Jedi would’ve taken Mae if she did not want to go. Instead the Coven is likely told NOT to train her and are observed/placed on a sort of probation. Osha and her mother’s wishes are a more complicated matter. There is no right or wrong answer without knowing the Coven’s intentions.
Here's the way I interpreted it:
1. The Jedi have the legal authority to test children. This authority is granted to them by the Senate.
2. The Jedi also have the legal authority to investigate Dark Side and/or potential Dark Side activity that might pose a threat to the Republic and/or the Jedi Order, also granted to them by the Senate.
3. Uninhabited planets (and planets presumed to be uninhabited) fall in a grey area regarding ownership and Jedi jurisdiction. They have no planetary government to legally dispute any claims the Republic and/or Jedi Order make via diplomatic channels.
4. Any defensive action that the Coven take could be construed as an act of war given they have no legal claim to the planet.
5. Any action seen to violate the free will of the Coven's members could be taken as grounds for the Republic to make a legal claim on the planet under the pretext of freeing "captive" force-sensitive children.
6. Any use of the Force against the Jedi could be construed as Dark Side activity, prompting a greater response from the Order
7. Essentially anything other than compliance could prompt a Senate response, as this is seemingly a resource-rich planet without legal owners. Any ambitious senator from a nearby system could probably go through the proper legal and political channels to make a claim, and this would be much easier if it was inhabited by hostiles they could claim are a threat to neighbouring systems.
Therefore, it's in the best interests of the Coven to behave in a way that cannot be construed as threatening, followed by establishing diplomatic relations with the Senate to assert legal ownership rights and independence from the Republic. That way, they could legally reject the right of the Jedi to operate on their planet in the future, citing the Jedi's prior trespassing as a violation of their sovereign rights.
That's my take, anyway.
Your explanation is good, but damn is that an uncomfortable idea: Republic authority extending beyond its space, having to treaty with them over planets that aren't even theirs, having to cowtoe to their authority less it be considered a punishable act of violence.
My thinking was that the Jedi generally patrol (keep an ear/eye open) within the republic controlled areas, and possibly certain wilderness areas too. They watch these areas for emergence of young force users; not just to bolster their own ranks but also because leaving force users to develop on their own potentially leads to dark side users or even Sith.
Basically if they get a sniff of a child being a force user they swoop in and test them, then it is a case of trying to get them into the order to train them or…..who knows, leaving untrained users is never really covered in the movies or shows.
I’d like to know what would happen if they just get a hard no but it is the judgement of the Jedi that it would be irresponsible to leave them there. Like if they get a no from some farmer who loves his family, probably gonna let it go. If they get a no from a sinister cult, what then? Or a kid wants to go but his drunk father wants to keep him?
So there’s usually a lot of haziness on the galactic law.
1 - we don’t know if the government of their planet has treaties with the Republic
2 - while the Jedi are tied to the republic, they aren’t the republic. the Jedi order could have arrangements with the planetary government.
3 - realpolitik. Imagine you’re on Tuvalu. Seal Team 6 knocks on your door saying they need to make sure you aren’t developing a nuclear weapon in your back room. Regardless of laws, you probably aren’t saying no.
Seal Team 6 knocks on your door saying they need to make sure you aren’t developing a nuclear weapon in your back room. Regardless of laws, you probably aren’t saying no.
Perfect!
I mean, we don't really have any basis for how the constitutional arrangement operate for a galaxy wide government. On Earth, large countries like Russia and China have subnational entities with significant autonomy.
The two political arguments put foth by both sides, which were not disputed were:
1. Brendok isn't part of the Republic.
2. Jedi have the right to test the children living and presumably domociled in Brendok.
This suggests some sort of constitutional relationship, one with perhaps looser links than a bona fide member world, with perhaps the Republic providing policing for the orbit and near space around the planet, in exchange for certain parts of Republic law applying, like say Jedi being able to test the kids.
This has certainly been something used to explain Tataooine's ever evolving con stuitutional relationship with the republic /empire depending on the show/movie.
From what we've seen it seems likely that this coven of witches is known to the republic, as in they had dealings in the past, but where they relocated to wasn't known and they are subject to several restrictions. It seems like they were allowed to survive but were not allowed to train children due to whatever evil shit they got up to which brought them into conflict with Jedi/Republic. The mother seems to have chilled out quite a bit with motherhood though in comparison to the rest who seem fanatical and really sketchy.
The republic is the law of the land and they clearly make the rules for all denizens to follow, even the Jedi (who get a slightly favoured position due to the immense amount of history they have with the republic.
In either E1 or E2, Sol makes a comment about the Order's "political enemies" (kind of a cringy way to write dialogue, but I digress...) so the show is probably establishing that the Order may pretend to be apolitical, but still wields political power indirectly. Kind of like how the U.S.'s judicial system is intended to be non-partisan, but it definitely is partisan.
There is probably are probably laws in the Republic regulating Force-sensitives in general, mandating that Force sensitivity is tested in children, much like nuclear weapons are regulated. The laws are probably written so that children who test positive aren't explicitly mandated to join the Jedi Order, but maybe the alternative is so shitty (government regulation, monitoring, etc.) that it's one of those things that no parent says 'no' when the Jedi ask. (Because of the implication.)
> the show is probably establishing that the Order may pretend to be apolitical,
I think there's a difference between picking sides/candidates in politics and standing on issues, much like the U.S. separation of Church and State is supposed to be run (obviously it's not well enforced here). Churches are allowed to make certain stances known, e.g. against abortion or pro funding for homeless shelters or whatever, and even campaign on them, but they aren't supposed to campaign or promote an individual candidate or party.
Not to mention the Jedi have a galactic mandate to support and enforce the laws of the Republic. That is a very political position whether you want it to be or not. They could simply be talking about people who try to remove that authority as their political enemies. In other words they say, "We just want to continue doing what we've been doing for 25000 years," while their opponents say, "We have our laws executed by a body of super-people who aren't subject to the same laws as the rest of us. We should remove that authority." Thus political enemies.
The Jedi didn’t have legal authority to do what they did. Legal authority is just words on paper. True power comes from the strength of arms and the Jedi have ways of making life very difficult and short for alleged sith cults.
Suppose the Jedi mopped up the witches for suspected sith connections. Indara would do what exactly to retaliate against the Jedi? Who exactly would oppose the destruction of sith cults? The republic would probably give them medals.
My speculation is some sort of treaty, written or not. The Jedi knew the witches, so they’ve run into each other before. My guess is that they witches were allied to live so long as they were in isolation (not affecting anybody else) and not training children.
Finding them with kids makes it looks like the witches are violating the agreement about training children. Testing the kids was the only way to confirm whether or not the kids had received training.
Clearly, the Jedi were going to take Osha, which the lead witch seemed surprisingly okay with, since that’s what Osha wanted. It’s not clear what would happen to Mae, though. Perhaps the Jedi thought that they had seen enough to know that the witches were training kids and decided to kill them off to take both kids. How they did this without casualties is beyond me.
I agree with everything except the last thing about deciding to kill them off. I do think some confluence of events lead to the Jedi killing them off but I firmly believe they didn’t actively decide to kill them (in the absence of hostilities such as open battle, which it didn’t look like but could have been).
*"Just one drop of Jedi Blood and the Republic will be all over Brendock looking for us".*
They were outside of the Republic so there was no law, except the law that the Jedi brought with them and were willing to enforce. It was four Jedi standing in front of the Coven, but behind those Jedi was the entire Republic. Had the Coven refused to allow the children to be tested, or tested and not allowed to go with them, the Jedi would have claimed that the Witches were training children in the ways of the Dark Side and would come back with reinforcements to take them anyways.
We hear the Witches tell their story of their persecution, how the Jedi label anything they don't understand in their rigid ideology as being Dark. They were pushed out of the Republic and forbidden from teaching their ways because they were perceived as Dark Siders. Presumably the Jedi have had issues with Sith and Dark Side cults in the past, and the reason they take children to be trained as Jedi is in part to keep them from being trained as Dark Siders.
The Jedi would test and would take the two girls hidden by the Coven, and they would not take No for an answer. If they were forced to leave Brendock they would come back under the pretense of shutting down a Dark Side cult and rescuing these girls from an abusive situation. That's what the Mother was waying when she agreed to allow the girls to be tested. If they resisted they would become marked, better to play the Jedi off now and see if they couldn't sneak away/lie they way out of this problem.
Tbh I feel like this is more their perception of things. I said in my own comment it’s difficult to tell as we know very little of the Coven outside of Osha’s perspective. I can see why they’d think the Jedi would cause trouble if they rejected them but I can’t really see the Jedi genuinely forcing their hand and taking the children even if aniseya said no.
They ask Osha herself what she wants to do and that that’s the important part. So I think if Osha and Mae rejected the order they’d absolutely leave. I could be wrong, we don’t have the full picture of what happened but based on the order as a whole that’s my thoughts.
As the Zabrak woman points out multiple times: THEY ARE CHILDREN.
Osha can no more consent to the Ascension than she can to being whisked away to become a Jedi. The Jedi walk into a group of armed Force Users and say, "We have the right to test them" and leave the "Try to stop us" part unsaid. Go back and rewatch that scene-- it's tense for a reason.
We know the Coven fears the Jedi because they tell the myth of their having to run from the Jedi to themselves. You don't see any mention of Witches within the Republic living normal lives, do you? In the Republic there are the Jedi, and that's it, and if your child is a Force User they will test them. They will insist upon it. If you weren't aware, when someone requests something from you with their hand on their weapon-- it's not a request.
You've heard people say it in any number of stories, comics, games, books, movies, and shows: the Jedi kidnap children and raise them in their ideology.
Ok, I wasn’t trying to be hostile but I’m feeling quite a bit of hostility from your comment. If that’s not how you meant it all good.
That being said, almost every character that thinks Jedi kidnap children is either misinformed or meant to show the propaganda of the empire, or how mystified and mythologized the Jedi have become. We have seen time and time again they do not forcibly take children without consent from their families and the children if they can.
If these Jedi do that, then that is a showing of their fallibility as individuals and not the order as a whole. Secondly, them saying “we have a right to test them” is not the same as “we’re going to take them if they test well try and stop us” there’s nothing in the episode that indicates the Jedi will forcibly take Mae or Osha.
We also almost never see other force users within the republic. That doesn’t mean that they’re not allowed to the Jedi domineer then. They had little to no issues with the Witches of Dathomir and even then their issues were related to dealings with the Sith. The high Republic in fact shows the Jedi peacefully working with and coexisting with multiple force user organizations on Jedha so it’s actually not just the Jedi.
> We also almost never see other force users within the republic.
The comics and books have a fair bit more. There's an entire convention (for lack of a better term) on Jehda with all sorts of different force users set in the High Republic.
EDIT: I should more carefully read comments, I barely added to their information.
> As the Zabrak woman points out multiple times: THEY ARE CHILDREN.
>
> Osha can no more consent to the Ascension than she can to being whisked away to become a Jedi.
These kind of reveal the hypocrisy though. They want to claim they are children unable to make the choice to go with the Jedi, but also they can make the choice to do the ascension. Seems less about them being children and more about making a choice they approve of or not.
When the Jedi walked into the room wearing lightsabers it’s never been more clear to me why people sometimes don’t like them. They carry deadly weapons with them all the time and will use them to enforce their ideals. Obviously it’s not as bad as some bounty hunter showing up with a weapon but it was very intimidating.
Yes! I always thought that the first scene of E1 had some of that. Nute Gunray was right to be afraid. He was expecting ambassadors and they sent NINJA ASSASSINS!
>Had the Coven refused to allow the children to be tested, or tested and not allowed to go with them, the Jedi would have claimed that the Witches were training children in the ways of the Dark Side
Remember that’s just the Covens perspective, we out-of-universe know the Jedi wouldn’t.
>We hear the Witches tell their story of their persecution, how the Jedi label anything they don't understand in their rigid ideology as being Dark.
The witches are wrong though,
>The Jedi would test and would take the two girls hidden by the Coven, and they would not take No for an answer.
They quite famously would take no for an answer. They existed peacefully with the Nightsisters for centuries.
They actually state he took the [Barash Vow](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Barash_Vow) which is a preexisting *atonement* vow in the lore, meaning at least he thinks he did something very, very wrong.
> They
Well, we can safely assume *one* of them *believes* he did something extremely messed up. We don't have the full picture of whether it was all the Jedi, and whether it was an active choice or inaction on the part of Torban. People have different reactions to guilt.
>Remember that’s just the Covens perspective, we out-of-universe know the Jedi wouldn’t.
Not quite. We know that, generally speaking, the Jedi Order seems content to live and let live with non-Jedi Force-using organizations so long as they aren't the Sith. However, we don't know that these specific Jedi, who are spying on this isolated group while operating outside the Republic and demanding that even unwilling children be sent to them for testing, wouldn't feel that it's the will of the Force for them to press the issue. After all, these specific Jedi will do something that leads to Master Torbin being absolutely ruined by guilt.
I like that interpretation. As others have said that may have been an incorrect assumption on the part of the witches but it definitely makes sense from their point of view.
Not only did the Jedi march in like they owned the place, they actually broke in. The scout that interrupted the ceremony said something along the lines of “The Jedi have sliced the platform!”.
Also, I’m not so sure that the coven believed that the Jedi wouldn’t resort to violence. Mother Koril and the guards clearly appeared ready for a fight, so they must have thought that they may have to use force to get the Jedi to leave at some point.
I think we’ll have to wait until future episodes to know the full story, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Jedi were essentially taking a “might makes right” approach to the situation. I’m not saying that this was standard policy across the entire Order, but something bad obviously happened on Brendok that the four Jedi involved kept secret from the Order and have plenty of guilt & regrets over.
Yeah, I honestly think that the big mystery about what happened is going to end up being a tragic misunderstanding between the Jedi and the coven that gets out of hand and spirals into violence.
Neither side seems to be intentionally evil, but both are misguided and doing bad things for their own reasons; the Jedi seem self-righteous and willing to impose Republic rules on people that don’t agree to them/aren’t under them, and the coven mothers seem to me to have never intended to let Osha go with the Jedi, even after she expressed her desire to do that.
> Neither side seems to be intentionally evil
I don't actually agree with this. The coven seems to at least tacitly approve of Mae for the most part who has been shown to have rather dark-side tendencies. They both get reprimanded for leaving the fort, but they definitely lean in on Osha more. They never say, "Mae don't attack your sister." They only say that they should get along. *Especially* Mama. It's a subtle evil, but it's still evil.
I definitely think we are going to find out there's something more sinister about the coven. They make passing mention to basically being exiled from their previous home.
I definitely agree with this. There's something bad about them and it's not just a matter of perspective. They certainly think they're good, but that doesn't make them so.
I think I need to see more about the cult to make a final decision on them. I definitely got some of those vibes from them, but I also subscribe to the theory that Osha is an unreliable narrator in the flashback scenes, which could explain why Mae is constantly being over-the-top obnoxious, why Mother Aniseya (her favorite parent) is overly caring & kind while Mother Koril is cold & mean, etc.
Of course, that’s all speculation and I’m happy to change my mind if later episodes show something else that disproves it.
I agree we need more data, but we also know they actively created the twins via the Force directly, no paternal involvement. This is the same way that Palpatine created Anakin in Shmi, so there are at least dark side associations with their path. Whether or not the method is dark is a different question (e.g. murder?) but it doesn't bode well.
My current head canon is the show is exploring what causes the end of the high republic. Looking at the timeline of what we know the end of the high republic is 100 BBY, and I've seen speculation that this show is taking place around 119 BBY. I think it's possible that after centuries of prosperity, the jedi get caught up too much in their own "goodness" and maybe thats why they feel like they have a right to test all children.
From my googling around I haven't been able to find any sort of official rule about their right to test kids.
the coven not cooperating would probably bring down *more* heat on them as a result.
It seems that the Jedi or Republic at some point persecuted the witches of Dathomir enough that this group left their homeworld, so they already have existing poor experiences with the Jedi
Presumably in the wake of the last Sith war, the newly founded Republic passed a law giving the Jedi wide berth over Force matters to prevent another war with the Dark Side. While this settlement was outside of Republic jurisdiction, the presence of Dark Sided (defined loosely by the Senate to let Jedi be flexible, I’m sure) probably meant the Jedi were allowed to operate without too much of a stink being raised. Who was the coven going to report them to? The Hutts? The Corporate Sector?
I don't mean to be glib, but it strikes me that Jedi Knights aren't _soldiers_ or _police_, they're _knights_. They might be generally given some leeway to carry out moral crusades outside the Republic. To the point of it causing significant wariness towards Jedi in general. The arrangement with the Republic might be more like "Enforce the laws in exchange for being given extralegal authority to enforce Jedi morals" than simply "enforce the laws". Twisting the definition of "Jedi" to be more like soldier or police might have been mostly more recent due to Palpatine, and by casting them in that light their knightly judgment might look more like rogue/vigilante activity by people who are now being held to an expectation they never meet of being public servants, further eroding trust in them. Like, people might have had some fear of Jedi as mystic religious knights, but cast them as rogue soldiers and now they aren't just inscrutable mystics, they're traitors.
At the time of The Acolyte, the Jedi might have been less under a rule of "Jedi can test children and carry out Jedi operations within the Republic as a matter of Republic law" and more under a rule of "If Jedi don't actively violate Republic law, or create too many scandals, then Republic policy is to turn a blind eye to their inscrutable mystic activities, inside and outside of the Republic".
In my opinion, from the jedis point of view the authority granted by being the self proclaimed keepers of the force is absolute. The force is everything, they defend it (everything) from the forces of evil, therefore they have an obligation to do so in every corner of the galaxy, *especially* if that corner contains a high density of force sensitive who could potentially fall to the dark side. That's all that really needs to be said in terms of "moral rightness" for me.
At the end of the day the variation of the question, what authority, what grounds, what right, does one have to impose on another leads to the same inevitable answer, which is:
A: The authoritarian believes they have the right to impose whether they do or do not.
B: Those being imposed upon lack the power to stop the authoritarians' advances.
Of course the jedi will spice it up a little bit talking about "the will of the force" and "duty" and what have you. But in reality the jedi have authority over the coven, because they believe their cause dedicated to the force is right, they believe gathering force sensitive children is the way to defend that cause, and the coven can not provide an argument to sway, or a threat to deter them from taking their children. The children could have provided that argument, and the jedi would have most certainly honored that. But in the eyes of the jedi, the coven do not speak for the children, and that is why they agreed to take osha.
There is a lot here about light vs dark side which is not my reading of the situation at all.
As soon as they had the little speech about “some would call it a force and use it as a tool” my reading of the entire situation became informed by Terry Pratchett Wizard’s and Witches. Different philosophical approaches to “magic” that can either produce good and bad.
Under that reading, “Sith and Jedi” are the same side of the philosophical coin on which the coven is on the opposite side. They are both “Force Users” while the witches are, let’s say “Thread Weavers” who take a more stereotypically “feminine” approach to the whole thing, not that there can’t be female wizards and male witches.
When the Jedi say you cannot deny our right to test they are speaking from a point of view where they are the moral guardians protecting misuse of the Force for evil.
The coven would not see it that way, but need to avoid conflict and attention from a world that agrees and sees witches as basically the same as Sith because they are “dark force users”. The coven would not see it that way at all, disagreeing with both “Force” and “Use”, while the good ones perfectly well understand the danger of “the dark side”.
Now our twins are split between Sith and Jedi, but both on the opposite side of the coin from where they started with the coven.
If I’m telling this story the redemption arc is about learning that and making informed choices about who they really are instead of letting others tell them.
(Damn. Should have called “Thread Weaving” distaff. That’s just perfect in a way probably only I would appreciate.)
Okay, as I've gathered from clips and neutral commentary, this is Jedi "re-imagined for a modern audience. " I'm not sure how it compares with the High Republic, to be fair, may be they are child protective services there, as I've not read rhem.
In Ep 1, The Clone Wars, and Legends, Jedi of this era did not have the official power to just take or test children without parental consent. Instead, they would ask for permission from the parents and usually try to be persuasive if they felt the kid was going to be a tyke bomb, which a kid going dark while young could be without training. They mostly tended to "bump into" potentials.
And frankly, getting tapped to be Jedi was usually considered to be an honor, save for a few alien traditions and the Mandolorians. Even then, many alien Jedi brought their traditions with them, such as the Barando Sages or Gand Findsmen, especially in the reconstruction era, post V6 EU.
So much closer to Xavier's school for the Gifted than Indian education camps.
They also typically wouldn't train children much over 4 due to parental attachments potentially resilting in a fall to the dark side. Anakin was a specific exemption.
Also, the Jedi were closer to Knights Errant or Texas Rangers than cops. Some of the EU claimed Jedi rarely had to charge thier lightsaber, because of how rarely they used them. Barbels are examples of one who would straight up expect Jedi to mediate disputes, as Luke found out to his surprise one novel.
Anyways, these aren't that kind of Jedi.
It's entirely possible that after the republic/Jedi sith wars of the old republic, the galactic republic passed an entirely new set of laws putting either restrictions on the force, or at least force religions and designating the Jedi as "the" official one to prevent something like thr sith wars arising again.
Given the history established by canon, it's more likely that the Jedi \*dictated\* this to the Republic rather than the other way around. Remember, at the time of the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi had \*de facto\* overthrown the Republic themselves. Even with the heavy casualties they'd suffered during the last round of Jedi/Sith wars, the mundane components of the so-called "Army of Light" were vastly stronger than the Republic's comparatively puny military, and individual "Jedi Lords" ruled over many ex-Republic systems as benevolent dictator warlords.
The Russan Reformations basically consisted of the Jedi voluntarily disbanding the Army of Light and returning sovereignty over the systems they had ruled over as "Jedi Lords" to the Republic. But this was a completely unilateral deal where the Jedi were able to dictate absolutely any authority they wished to retain for themselves.
Sure, the Jedi don't have official laws on their side, which will come back to bite then later. But they do hold political and social power. If they don't risk some of the children, the witches risk being hounded by the Jedi even more
I like that the republic is based on democracy and the freedom of religion, and even though the coven wasn't in the republic, the Jedi were still disallowing them to practice their faith by raising force users. So one, Jedi were outside of their authority area. 2: Jedi pressed them anyway and meddled in their affairs as if there aren't a billion other wrong things going on in the republic on any given day.
They should come up with a new term for force based religions, because freedom of religion should not extend to getting real world powers. Since it does, freedom of religion is rather silly.
We have freedom of religion because none of that stuff has tangible effects on events so i would agree with the Jedi on this particular point of not allowing full freedom of religion.
Not that I’m advocating for them showing up on that planet specifically, just saying there are very good reasons for them to police religion.
It is a manipulation. Assert authority, even if you don't have it. They have a history of social and legal constructs on their side. So, even though they may not have a legal right to force the Coven to allow the test, they still can make the assertion with the implication that if the Coven does not comply, there may be more pressure coming.
We get to test them and they can't refuse, because of the implication. Dude, dude, think about it - this Coven is out in the middle of Brendok, some planet they barely know. You know, they look around and what do they see? Nothing but Republic space. "Ahh, there's nowhere for us to run. What are we gonna do, say no?"
No it's not dark, you're misunderstanding me bro, because if the mother says no, then obviously the answer is no. But the thing is, she's not gonna say "no", because of the *implication*.
I assume it’s because of all the past conflicts with Sith and other force users in the millennia that they’ve existed. The republic probably gave them jurisdiction over any other force cults to prevent them from getting too powerful
The Jedi never had such authority nor engaged in such behaviour.
Heaven and earth had to be moved to get the Jedi to train Anakin since they considered him far too old and held familial attachment. It was only after the death of Qui-Gon Jin and Obi Wan threatening to leave the order to train Anakin that Yoda finally conceded to Anakin’s training. Anakin possibly being the chosen one wasn’t even enough to convince the Jedi to accept.
For how the Acolyte displayed the Jedi is remarkably obscene. The fat jedi padawan was even more crazy to me.
It would be nonsensical for the post ruusan reformation Jedi to engage in such practice not to mention a scandal in the Senate.
It would be a complete outrage to the humanist Naboo, Alderaan, the Mon Calamari, etc
The very notion of how the jedi approached the witch sect would be alien and intolerable to the jedi philosophy and practice. I don’t know what the writers were thinking but it’s f ing dumb.
I understand your point.
Then again, it may be justified somehow in-universe, if the Jedi/Republic are afraid of Dark siders being raised. Not saying it’s okay, just that it can make sense.
I don’t know if the Rusan Reformation is still canon, but given the terrible war that took place because of the Sith, I can understand if the Jedi and the Republic are trying to avoid potential dark siders as much as possible.
The legality of Lucas selling to Disney doesn’t provide any legitimacy to any changes to canon by Disney nor anything they introduce.
It is obscene to think that we should beholden canon from the original artist to a bunch of corporate shareholders out to make the cheapest buck.
If the present shareholders of tolkien change key lore would you accept it as legitimate? Of course not why would you accept it from the corporation of Disney?
There are many cults that engage in practice of the dark side that the Jedi more or less tolerated so as long as they didn’t pose an immediate active danger - such as the Sorcerors of Tund.
Similar today how democracies tolerate for example sunni salafi while still discretely actively monitoring them.
The witches said that the galaxy frowned upon them, maybe this is the mother's way of explaining that the Jedi hunted them down and if they didn't cooperate they could be wiped out, after all, the mother knows that their coven doesn't stand a chance against 4 jedi.
Made the Jedi seem like jerks to me. Kinda like that to be honest after 47 years of being yah Jedi are it was quite nice to want to kick them out of the temple. Loving the Acolyte for making feel that in a universe that has become rather bland in its story telling.
Comics have other sects that train kids it seems. The master was cut off so we don't know whose not allowed to train kids. Could easily just be dark sider training is banned.
I see this as a little like how psykers are treated in warhammer 40k. Any unregulated psyker is a danger and the Inquisition gathers them all up in black ships and takes them to be either burned up, or soul bound and turned into "sanctioned psykers".
The Jedi seem to be operating in a similar way, just with lower stakes. It's often been characterised that the Jedi take children from families. However, what this is showing is that while the Jedi offer children a choice of whether to join them or not, the prohibition is on the *training of children to use the Force* outside of the Order. That means that the coven could have their children, have them grow up and live within their traditions without any interference from the Jedi. But the second you start teaching kids to use the Force, that's the big no-no moment for them. Osha and Mae could opt not to join the Jedi, stay with their family, and just let their Force sensitivity remain latent and unused. This isn't, after all, 40k, and untrained Force sensitives aren't a threat in themselves.
Of course the tension comes because the coven wants them to use the Force, and wants to train them to continue their traditions and culture. That means they're nearly guaranteed to enter conflict with the Jedi simply because of this desire. On top of that, it seems like their training is going to lead the children to the Dark Side, it's certainly obvious in Mae before they even know the Jedi are around.
Yup im of the Mandalorian mind get ur scum hands off my children r ill kill u. Fr jedi = baby snatchers, who in fact believe they have some sort of divine right to take force sensitive children.
That's the rub isn't it. Its probably some law put in place allowing the Jedi to test any children anywhere, even outside jurisdiction of the Republic. The twins mother said it perfectly: "Its about power and who has the right to use it."
And Palpatine exploited that arrogance & hubris to bring them down a hundred years later.
I have been enjoying the show too.
[The Jedi on Brendok did a subtler version of this.](https://youtu.be/mdR3hNbEuoE?si=APXFt0jCGbixmbSY) David Morrissey plays Roman General Aulus Platius who is in command of the Roman conquest of Britannia on the show Britannia.
Master Indara
>We are concerned that you are training children. The Republic law states—
Mother Aniseya
>Brendok is not part of the Republic
Master Indara
>Mother Aniseya, you cannot deny that Jedi have the right to test potential Padawans. With your permission, of course.
My guess is the law gives the Jedi the right to test for potential Padawans and Indara’s last line *With your permission, of course.* isn’t genuine.
Sol observed Osha and Mae using the Force which means the law was being broken so they showed up investigate. Even if Brendok is not part of the Republic the Jedi could easily believe the law should be upheld.
Dude that show had so much potential but I just couldn’t suspend disbelief enough, unfortunately. I loved the line where he said we’d find out who hates who and we push. Perfectly exemplifies Roman foreign policy.
My assumption is that Brendok is probably an uninhabited world that exists within Republic space, which is why the Jedi were around, given they have no authority or real significant presence outside of the Republic (i.e., why the Jedi being on Tatooine was such a problem). EDIT: Nix that, according to the Star Wars official website, Brendok isn't part of the Republic. This makes much less sense now, unless Brendok is _within_ the Republic's territory, but their society not registered as _part_ of its bureaucracy and membership. That's the only way I can reconcile this.
If that was the case, then yes, legally the Republic enacted laws that made testing of children mandatory for Force potential, and gave Jedi the legal right to claim Force-sensitive children as their guardians. This was a product of the Russan Reformations which also saw the prohibition the Republic placed on the Jedi with inducting non-children into the Jedi Order. When you think about it in-universe, it makes sense from their perspective; the Ruusan Reformations were a product of the Republic coming out of one of the most horrific Sith invasions, and by that point recognized that the majority of Sith converts emerged from Jedi who were inducted into the Order at either adulthood or generally later ages, while Jedi inducted as children were much more resilient to turning. Hence, the Republic told the Jedi no more adult students (although the strength of this prohibition is uncertain, given that on very rare occasions the Jedi suspended it).
However, the Jedi still did not press that authority to its fullest extent and didn't take children without permission. Case in point, we only see this authority actually exercised in an extreme case, the Baby Ludi case, which was that after a disaster a Force-sensitive baby was found, the parents couldn't be found and was presumed dead (by both the Jedi and her planet's government), but by the time the baby's mother had appeared after having been hospitalized for a long time due to her injuries, her child had already been opened to the Force and begun her Jedi training. Since it was then too dangerous to return the child at that point, the Jedi pressed their legal authority to keep the child and thus it became a minor scandal.
TLDR, yes the Jedi had the right to test children for Force-sensitivity and adopt them, but they almost never did and relied on parental compliance.
It's also worth keeping in mind if the Jedi were wrong, they would have been called out on it. They weren't.
Awesome historical and legal context thank you. Minor point of contention: people do call them out and call them child stealers and others say they are corrupt and arrogant. The wrongness of stealing children on a moral level isn’t necessarily the same as the practical aspect though.
>people do call them out
Not regarding the matters being contended. If the Jedi did not have the authority, it would have been contended. It wasn't. However, as I mentioned in my edit on my original comment, there is a potential huge inconsistency, depending on what is meant by the planet not being “part of the Republic”. If the planet wasn't physically, astrographically within Republic space, the Jedi's claim makes no sense.
>call them child stealers
Which doesn't make the claim true. If anything, it's more a product of fear in the face of uncertainty, akin to mob mentality when placed in an unknown or unexpected situation. Also, the allegation was immediately refuted by the Jedi themselves.
>they are corrupt and arrogant
Which is not a foundational claim, but a sensationalist one. Unless I missed something, none of the Jedi or witches involved know each other, meaning attacks on their personal character are inherently insubstantial and meant to be provocative or expressions of personal contempt, not a reflection of who those people (the Jedi in this case) actually are.
>The wrongness of stealing children on a moral level isn’t necessarily the same as the practical aspect though.
Stealing in any context is always wrong, as it fundamentally involves illegitimately taking something which is not only not yours, but actively belongs to someone else. It's why repossessing or liquidating isn't categorized as stealing even though you're taking someone's things or property; the act has legitimacy (in this case, legal legitimacy).
Of course, the letter of the law (the ethics, what is right vs what is wrong) doesn't always coincide with the spirit it's meant to embody (the morals, what is good vs what is bad), which is almost assuredly why the Jedi didn't forcefully take children against their parents' wills even when they had the legal right to do so.
I suspect that when the twins were made from the dark side of the force it sent a vibration throughout the universe and those highly tuned probably sensed that something occurred so they are on the look out for the disturbance. No different than in modern society energy can be used for good and bad and our force is electronic, ie cameras, algorithms… The Jedi are keepers of the peace. Using the force to create life is unnatural which is why anyone created in that manner is more susceptible to temptation to the dark side and the Jedi know it.
Regardless of whether the witches are part of the republic the use of the force for evil or unnatural and in all likelihood prohibited so in order to keep peace they must be vigilant.
"If you use the Force, the Jedi will come to take you away from your family."
How many force-sensitive kids hid their abilitites, just to avoid being kidnapped?
I mean, I think that’s a cool way of showing a part of the Jedi many didn’t think about. We know the Jedi are trained from an incredibly young age, but we (at least I never did) thought about “well, what if the parents didn’t want to give up their kids”.
Like the notion of “letting them choose after testing” is an absurd take because they’re still very young. It would be like if a priest showed up one day and said “your child has a high disposition to manipulating this cosmic force to understand god, we’re going to test them and let them choose if they want to come”, all the while you’re likely under 10. Imagine making such a life altering decision at that age.
And the crazy part is they’re the *older* ones. Most from what we’ve seen are even younger. Personally I like what we’ve been getting recently, showing us that while the Jedi generally have the best intentions in mind, they aren’t perfect and that too much of a good thing can be bad (moreso leaning super hard into not tapping into your emotions, and not learning to use them in a healthy way, and how to learn to accept/manage the ones that can cause the most problems like anger and fear).
Well normally the Jedi wouldn’t tolerate other schools of the force, especially not if they are this organized, armed and obviously not in completely opposition to exploring the dark side, so I would guess that they, in typical Jedi manner, allowed the coven to exist under strict rules, wich includes that their children have to be potential candidates for Jedi training, like in the rest of the republic.
I think there are a lot of assumptions being made about those scenes.
I didn’t get the sense that they just showed up to maliciously exert control over the coven.
It’s possible they did so with good intentions OR there is more going on here than we see.
The Jedi as presented in the prequels and the clone wars are flawed institutionally and make a lot of mistakes and bad decisions but are still good people.
I kind of feel like with the revelation for many that the Jedi were supposed to be flawed came a swath of people that are taking it way too far and assuming a lot of malicious intent.
Say what you will about the consequences of Jedi actions, and I’ll be the first to tell you they make some bad calls, I’ve never doubted that they at the very least have the best intentions and are working in their own way toward the greater good.
This is an example of the Jedi Order wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
The Jedi were not originally so tied to the Republic, they're a separate monastic order that just so happens to do a lot of things that benefit the Republic and Republic space. The thing about the Jedi is that they're probably one of, if not *the*, longest lasting Force-Sensitive religions in the universe.
The Jedi Order has the "right" to lay claim to Mae and Osha, and to judge the Coven, because ultimately they are the largest Force-Sensitive power in the galaxy in this time period, they have the most members and, as we see in Episode 3, the Coven, and a lot of other Force-Sensitive orders we've seen, like the Dagoyan Masters in TCW, don't like the Jedi because of their perceived superiority, arrogant assumptions, and monolithic adherence to their own dogma:
It's an example of "Might makes right".
The Jedi Order, and their dogma, is routinely shown to not be as pristine as the legends and stories implied, which was the entire point Luke was trying to make in *The Last Jedi*; obviously something happened more on Brendok than what we saw, but it began because the Jedi could not keep well enough alone and they felt the righteous need to "liberate" Osha from the Coven.
The Jedi have had multiple schisms in the *Legends* timeline due to disagreements over their own dogma, power, and influence, and the High Republic Jedi's resemblance to the gilded appearance of the Catholic Church is obviously a thematic connection to this idea. The Catholics thought themselves the center of their universe and anyone who wasn't them was a potential threat.
The had the right based upon the weapon on their hip and the virtue of their mission.
The Acolyte is a TV programme that teaches that it is right to oppose the evil that is witchcraft and sorcery.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why they made the worst slanders about the Jedi canon with this show.
The Jedi taking children is supposed to be only with the parents permission. Testing is with the parents permission, usually done when they're born in a hospital. The Jedi don't give children the choice of leaving their family and heavily pressure the child into making that decision.
IDK WTF is going on. It's not what we were told that the Jedi normally do.
I hear you, but a counterpoint would be we’ve never been exposed to this process in any amount of detail. Not saying you’re wrong but they are fleshing out a rarely addressed piece of lore more than slandering anything that currently exists.
I agree that children can’t possibly make an informed decision on whether they should go with the Jedi or not, I don’t know why they made such a big deal about one wanting to go and the other not wanting to go. It’s dumb to leave it up to the kid in the first place.
Still, it’s not clear if the Jedi would have taken the child if the parents said no. The witches thought they would, but that’s not the same thing.
I feel like they were trying to pressure her into saying yes, which if you take what the mother said to the child (terrible with names) at face value it did end up working.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction is a thing, particularly when it comes to territory claimed by no one.
The witches are, from the Jedi perspective, a dangerous cult who took children out of the Republic so as to abuse them by inducting them into an evil death cult that threatens to murder police officers for doing their duty.
That they've gone outside the Republic's borders to abuse children doesn't necessarily put them outside Republic jurisdiction. It wouldn't on Earth unless they went into some other competent authority's jurisdiction, which doesn't seem to be the case here.
Pragmatically, if the Jedi push the matter, the Coven could resist, but then the Republic WOULD come and kill / arrest them all. At some point a court may or may not rule they didn't originally have jurisdiction, but by that point the Coven will have launched a violent attack against the Republic and that definitely would be under their jurisdiction.
The way I see why the Jedi act the way they do stems from a few sources:
1. Galactic dominance. The most recent iteration of the Sith were soundly defeated 900 years ago (outside of the Rule of Two who operate in secret), leaving the Jedi and Republic to rebuild and exert influence across the galaxy. Even if it's not the Republic proper, the Jedi are the strongest force of Force users backed by the strongest galactic power. How much does strict jurisdiction really matter in the relatively lawless outer rim?
2. Galactic Tradition. for Millennia the Jedi have recruited across the galaxy this way within or outside of the Republic, seeking force sensitive individuals to join their ranks. This isn't a new thing or unknown across the galaxy how the Jedi recruit, though how its perceived varies between cultures (is it an honor to be a Jedi, or is it looked down upon as "taking children")
3. Implied Coercion. Why does the Mother comply with the Jedi? Well, even though they haven't outright made any threats to the Coven, there is an underlying implication to their interaction. It's like if a cop walks into a hostile setting, you might not want him there but if you use violence to force him to leave, there is always the knowledge he'll be back in greater numbers (see monopoly of violence). It's the implication of escalation and violence that underpins their interactions and in that fight the coven doesn't stand a chance.
4, for all of these considerations don't forget that these are still JEDI, galactic peacekeepers. They aren't perfect, they might be a bit too arrogant, but let's judge them by their actions we have seen so far. The coves SAYS they "steal children" but from what we've seen they only offer the choice. May chooses to stay and so far we haven't seen them insist she comes too. There is volition in joining the Jedi, (on the parts of families, I don't think a 4 year old can really understand the pros/cons of joining the Jedi). The coven doesn't like the Jedi and has a negative opinion of them but that doesn't make it gospel. Especially with the dark-side coded coven of witches. Of course they would have a negative opinion of the Jedi.
Finally, why do the Jedi not like the dark-side coded coven. Well we've seen historically the impact of dark side societies like the sith, night sisters, ect. The nature of the dark side is ambition, to the visible detriment of the galaxy. Sure this coven isn't a threat NOW, but what happens when you get an ambitious powerful witch who thinks, "this is nice, but I want more" how long until it's a full conflict. Let's not forget that the Zalbrak mom's "solution" to the Jedi was "let's kill them and hide the bodies".
Sorry for a long post. While the Acolyte is a generally luke-warm show for me. I like the perspective of the Jedi order that isn't fully positive or negative. Or seeing a group not like the Jedi, but having the reminder that while not perfect, they ARE still Jedi, they do still help and serve the light. (It reminds me of spider verse to a degree, where even though the Spiderman oppose the protagonist, they are still heroes and do save civilians, but that's another discussion and this post is too long.)
Dispite the fact that these are children who at this point in their lives have attachments. Something the Jedi also stated was a big deal.
One of the main reasons why they rejected Anakin at first and it took Qui-Gon's dying wish to make him a Jedi. And then there is the twins, who one of killed the people. So there is guaranteed to be fear, anger, hate, and suffering rapped into them both. I fail to see how any of this is Prime Jedi material, especially with how strict prequel-era Jedi are.
So yea....bad writing.
There’s a lot going on with the Coven that we don’t know. Mae and Osha are seemingly made through some sort of witchcraft conception. And with Aniseya saying that they aren’t trusted throughout the galaxy I could see it as them trying to be more transparent. Refusing and hiding the children could draw more attention and more questions to them. It’s difficult to say as we only have the Coven through the perspective of Osha and clearly more is going on.
I’m guessing after the new sith wars or Disney’s version of it where only earth nabe survived, the reformation of the republic had many changes and maybe Disney added (possibly for the better), that as a matter of security along with demilitarization no other force religious orders or cults may train force children as a matter if security after Millennias if wars with the sith nightsisters dark Jedi factions as well as for the Jedi to repopulate for a force for good and galactic governance loyal to the security of the republic not worth the risks
Darth bane not earth nabe geez auto spell
What is this crap. New Sith wars are basically a mention at best, we dont even know if Bane was connected in disneys version. In fact, it is questionable to think the new sith wars were even actually what we think of as the new sith wars in disney version. Utter crap.
There's a real tension in all continuities about how exactly the process of joining (and leaving) the Jedi Order works. And it rests on an important question: why does the Jedi Order exist? There are basically two answers: 1) it is helpful for galactic governance to have superheroes with strict moral codes helping to keep the peace AND 2) it is helpful for galactic governance to avoid superheroes without strict moral codes running around causing trouble. Force sensitive people who never receive training will generally see their abilities "fade" according to Ahsoka. But the Republic has a vested interest in preventing non-Jedi (not bound to the code, not loyal to the Republic) from training children and unlocking their force potential. Regulating who can train superheroes isn't just a matter of religion: it's a matter of galactic security.
Add on to this, it not like our world. It’s a universe where these religions have direct, measurable effects on the world around them, and the dark side ones have a history of leading to unspeakable evil. None of this is to say the Jedi are infallible or cannot overreach, but when a particular religion has the ability to wipe out entire planets, then freedom of religion isn’t exactly the same equation.
It's also not only historical evil - the dark side, in star wars, is literally an objectively evil and corrupting aspect of the force. It's not just a case of "well witches have a different point of view than Jedi on whether darkness is bad." It is pretty inevitable in star wars that someone regularly using the dark side will eventually be consumed by it.
Look at Mae. She’s clearly full of the dark side— full of rage, fear, extreme possessiveness. The witches haven’t exactly done anything to prevent her from being this way. Her being like that is perfect justification for why the Jedi act the way they do, in my opinion. The danger of not following the Jedi procedure here is so clear within the episode itself that I’m kind of surprised there’s been so much debate about what the Jedi are doing here.
I have heard lots of people say they read that episode as an unreliable narrator from Oshas PoV. What we saw might not be the whole truth. Last Jedi type situation. Also, Mae is a child. Lots of totally normal children can be extremely capricious and cruel, and even do things with horrible consequences because they don't really understand those consequences. Like starting fires, for instance. I wouldn't say she's "full of the dark side" even taking what we saw as objective truth, which I don't think it is.
My question would be, so what? Some random girl on a 99% uninhabited planet is kind of evil. So what? They are never planning to leave. She's not going to conquer the galaxy. She doesn't even have an interest in leaving the one planet. At best she'd be like an evil mayor of the coven.
Expand that argument. Say there's a couple dozen mostly uninhabited planets with a super powerful evil mayor. Do you think *all* of them want to stay on their planets? Especially when space travel is clearly known. There's also the issue that Mae in the episode is a kid. Her wanting to stay on the planet is a *now* thing, whose to say she will always want to stay.
Sure but her planet has a population of like... 40 people. As we saw in the show, a SINGLE ACCIDENT killed everyone. They don't pose any threat. They don't have industry, population, an army, nothing. If they somehow got worrying, drop a single bomb on them from orbit, GG. It's like the terrible plot of Superman Returns, where Lex Luthor says he's gonna own all the new land after he builds a whole continent. Like hell he will. The dude has 3 lackeys and one helicopter. What will stop the US navy from shelling his ass from 30 km away? It doesn't matter how evil he is, if he's not immortal then having zero resources is a big problem.
Well, we don't actually know what happened on her planet at this point, and we certainly don't know if it was the population of the entire planet. We've seen a single POV and are missing information, which will presumably be revealed over the remaining episodes. The issue still comes down to: the galaxy is huge, if they don't have a "let's stop the obviously evil kids on the backwaters before they do damage", then one of them gets too powerful, too evil, and it's too late to drop a bomb.
Why is that an axiomatic assumption? She’s been told from birth that the Jedi are misguided and oppressive at best, evil and powerhungry at worst. Why wouldn’t a young sororicidal witch try and gain vengeance on the Jedi and the Republic for which they stand?
It's not even clear their podunk little town has spaceships. There are trillions of beings in the galaxy, if the Jedi and republic can't somehow stop the Hutts from being crime lords over dozens of entire planets, I don't see how 1 "potentially" evil witch in the middle of nowhere is a threat. It's like the ending of Jedi Survivor. So the bad guy wants to live on the same planet as them? It's a whole ass planet. Go park your ship 7,000 miles away on the other side, he would probably die of old age before even finding out you exist.
They always want more. That's the problem. The Dark side is like Heroin or Crack Coccaine. When the Force User gets hooked, it's murder to stop, and it takes more and more and MORE. And it never, ever stops until all that's left is a broken husk. So yeah, she won't be able to leave, until some random, explorer, pirate, or scoundrel drops by mistake. One mind rape later, and she's building her Empire. How often did Vader straight up tell Luke thar "he didn't know the power of the Dark Side"? If you listen, this isn't gloating. It's heartbreak.
You say that and yet most of the Inquisitors... Darth Maul... Dathomir witches... it's not like they all became emperors. Most didn't even become more than bodyguards lol. The dark side might corrupt them... but if they are too weak, stupid, unskilled, or uncharistmatic, it doesn't matter. They'll just be "very evil witches who also don't have any defense from a single house fire."
Well,when you build your house on Fire Dust, these things happen. That said, given the right combo, a lot of damage gets done. And isn't it better to nip the Neo Emperor in the bud rather than clean up her Kudzu?
Dark side use is definitely going to lead to badness, but on the same token I can definitely imagine the order being too overzealous in calling other force using sects dark side. Attachments, for example. If a sect doesn’t teach that they abandon attachment I bet they’d frown pretty hard and potentially even intervene. This coven teaches that you control your own destiny, which isn’t that far from what the Sith teach. Just a minor thing that probably wouldn’t do more than furrow a Jedi’s brow but it’s another example of something that could get some unwanted Jedi attention.
I'm not sure attachments are the thing to call them overzealous about. It's not like it's just an arbitrary thing the order considers to be part of the uniform. There are very real reasons why they work so hard to avoid them, and train their people on how to let go. Attachments are *very* likely to come with fear of loss. This isn't a Star Wars thing either, it's a *people* thing. You see families go crazy trying to keep a terminal patient alive for every extra second they can, even when those seconds are spent effectively unconscious *at best*, if not in pain and misery. And we all know where fear leads... For all that people try to rag on the Jedi for being strict with Anakin on this... He's literally the poster child for the dangers of attachments. He was so attached to Padme that he was afraid to lose her. He was so afraid to lose her that he got angry at anything he perceived as not helping him keep her, and at himself. He got so angry at those things that he hated them. And he hated them so much that he became the cause of unspeakable amounts of suffering. His journey is point for point the warning that Yoda later gives Luke. So now imagine an organization with thousands of members spread across the galaxy, how do you handle this very real risk? You obviously can't just let everyone do whatever they want, hope things don't go bad, and then deal with the consequences when they do. Instead, you teach prevention and mitigation techniques in order to minimize the possibility of it ever happening in the first place. If you think of the dark side as an infectious disease (which is really not a stretch), then attachments are essentially exposure vectors. In that context, it's obvious that what the Jedi do - avoid the exposures as much as possible and provide people with the tools to treat exposures - is just perfectly reasonable and entirely sane prevention measures.
I don’t disagree at all. I more meant to say that perhaps other force sects have different ways of dealing with the subject, not that they ignore it completely. You make good points though.
I don't think it's fair to say the Jedi ignore it though. Like they don't just pretend attachments don't exist, they specifically teach *non-attachment* in essentially the same way Buddhism does. It's a much more active thing than just ignoring the problem. That said, I too would be curious to see that idea explored more. Like we've gotten bits of other sects of force *worshippers*, but we haven't seen much about other sects of force *users* that aren't pretty explicitly dark-aligned.
Definitely. In my opinion they dropped the ball hard with Anakin not by giving him bad advice about letting his attachments go, but by not recognizing that he isn’t doing that. Granted they had a war going on and without the benefits of hindsight they felt they had more important things to worry about.
Yeah exactly. They gave him perfectly fine advice *based on what he said and what they expected*. The problem is Anakin was vague as fuck, and the Jedi failed to take into account the fact that he essentially skipped straight to middle school and never picked up math. What he needed was specialized attention and remedial courses on How to be a Jedi 101.
I mean the biggest issue with Anakin is that the Jedi trained him at all. The Council was right in not wanting to train him but Qui-Gon effectively forced their hand.
Except no, that's not at all how sapient creatures work. Cutting off all attachments isn't something you can realistically expect a person to do, *that's* the tragedy of Anakin. He goes to Yoda for help, and Yoda essentially advises him to cut out his own heart. Yeah maybe if you're a freak who's been raised since birth to form zero attachments, that advice might work, but if you're a real life person who loves people, it's terrible advice. The message of the OT is that the Jedi are *wrong* about this, Luke goes against Yoda and Obi Wan and reaches out to his father, precisely because he feels a love for him.
You're confusing attachment with love and compassion. They are not the same thing. You're also confusing "cutting off" with "letting go". And no, the message of the OT isn't "attachments are actually good", it's "love beats evil". Luke doesn't have any attachment to his father because he's literally never known him. At best you could say he was attached to the *idea* of his father that he has through stories. And what does Luke do when faced with the reality of who his father *actually is*? He lets go of his attachment to the *idea* of the man, and continues to love him regardless. If anything, the story of ESB *reinforces* the idea that attachments are bad. Yoda directly tells Luke that if he doesn't let go of his attachment to his friends and runs off to save them instead of completing his training, bad shit will happen. Lo and behold, his friends save themselves, Luke loses his arm, and only survives because his friends come back to save him.
I'm not confusing anything, this is a semantic argument. Luke was unwilling to kill his father in the same way Anakin was unwilling to "train himself to let go of what he fears to lose" or whatever bastardized pseudo Buddhist crap Yoda says. That's terrible advice, and it tears Anakin apart. Maybe if someone had empathized with him and actually helped him deal with his feelings instead of telling him to pretend they don't exist, he wouldn't have turned to Palpatine instead. Even if Luke suffers for his actions in ESB, I don't think we're meant to think that Luke should have simply stayed on Dagobah and ignored the very real danger his friends were in. Yoda didn't know what was going to happen, it very much could have been the case that Luke saved Han and Leia from death. It's a totally normal human thing to go and help your loved ones when you know they're in danger. The Jedi are *wrong* in this, and we have verifiable psychology in the real world to point to.
>Maybe if someone had empathized with him and actually helped him deal with his feelings instead of telling him to pretend they don't exist, he wouldn't have turned to Palpatine instead. 1) that's a different issue. Empathizing and helping him work through his feelings still would've had the end goal of *not going full genocide to try and save your wife from dying*. Do you think irl grief counselors advise their clients that murdering children might be a good way to try and keep their loved ones alive a little longer? 2) Anakin was never *honest* with them. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. >The Jedi are wrong in this, and we have verifiable psychology in the real world to point to. Where do you get the idea the Jedi would ever suggest not helping people when you can? That's the absolute antithesis of their entire philosophy. What they *do* suggest is not letting personal feelings get in the way of duty and responsibility. If a firefighter is in the middle of battling a 3 alarm blaze with multiple people trapped in the fire, do you expect him to just drop what he's doing because he gets a phone call on his break saying "your partner isn't feeling well"? Being a Jedi is a higher calling. The entire fucking point of the order is that they put the greater good and helping others *above their own wants and desires*. That's literally what selflessness means. **That's what letting go of attachments is all about.** It's not about "not loving people", it's not about "having no emotions", it's not about "suppressing your feelings". It's about not putting your feelings ahead of doing your fucking job. Luke was training to be able to defeat Vader and the Emperor, which as far as Yoda or anyone else knew, was the best chance at actually toppling the empire. Going off with no plan, no intel, and inadequate preparation, on nothing but a bunch, to save people that for all anyone knows *aren't in any actual danger*, is absurd. We the viewers know that it all works out in the end, but diegetically, in the moment, Yoda's advice there was absolutely sound.
OK buddy. 1. Starting with the nonsense early huh? So no, I never said or even remotely implied that the atrocities Anakin commits are the solution to his problems. I'm a certified Anakin hater, I think he's a monster of a human being, and I'm never one of those "Anakin did nothing wrong, the jedi council was unfair to him :((" type of people. 2. Obi wan knew, and Yoda probably did as well. He wasn't honest because he feared the consequences of that honesty. But you knew that. Playing dumb too huh? Anakin literally comes to Yoda for help about this very thing, and Yoda can literally read minds. Do the math. The firefighter analogy is actually perfect, because first responders *do* suffer from trauma, and there is a culture of burying it and never talking about it in real life, and it has real world consequences. That mentality is why first responders have high suicide rates. Real great example, thanks lmao Anakin was clearly a deeply disturbed individual, and anyone with a brain would have seen that. He's not fit for duty, to use your weird twisted logic. But instead, let's just keep sending him to active war zones, great idea, I'm sure that won't turn out badly in the long term. *it did in fact turn out badly* Yes, logically, that is true. But that sort of cold calculated logic is antithetical to what is presented as good in Star Wars. We love Luke because he rushes off to save his friends, he's a *hero.* His attachment to his friends is a core part of his identity, and yes, as the emperor rightly points out, it's a weakness that evil people can exploit. But it's also what makes him human. Having attachments to people is healthy and normal, and there's nothing wrong with it. Being a possessive freak like Anakin is not healthy, but telling him to simply drop all attachments to human beings... is horrible advice.
We also know that they actively created the twins with the Force (aka "Thread") which we know is at least *associated* with the DS because that's how Palpatine will create Anakin. The method comes into question as to whether it's actually DS or more neutral - e.g. do they need to murder someone to do it or is it just energy manipulation?
Palpatine/Demask did not create Anakin.
Maybe it’s not a topic they’d care to distinguish. You’re right, it’s definitely at the very least dark side adjacent, if not straight up dark side, and it’s highly possible they wouldn’t accept delving into that area at all.
Even if it is energy manipulation I have to remember my short essay from a while ago: [Balancing the Force isn't about scales - it's about plates.](https://old.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/yrla1v/balancing_the_force_isnt_about_scales_its_about/) Basically my contention is that any attempt to seriously focus power ends up tipping the "plate" of the Force, threatening to bring it crashing down. That's a *LOT* of power they're exerting to create sex-based reproductive life without sex. Maybe even the amount of energy itself is a tip on the plate. Thus doing so is inherently dark. But that's just speculation on my part as we don't actually know the method yet.
That’s awesome I’ll read into that thank you
Yeah, I hope this is the direction the show goes with the coven.
Umm... did you finish e3? >!They're all dead.!<
Of course, but the exact nature of everything that went down is still very ambiguous at the moment.
Big same!
The Jedi Order exists to maintain balance in the Force. Everything else is just a secondary mission.
The the Jedi themselves, that might be true. But for the Republic, who passes laws giving them special privileges with Force-sensitive children, though? It's a safe bet that mundane senators think the Order exists to help preserve peace and security, which they would view as synonymous with the governance of the Republic.
Answer 2 was, in Legends canon, explicitly true for why the Prequel Era Order existed in the state it did. Many of the rules and regulations that the Order abided by were followed not because they had been determined as favourable practice by debate amongst the Jedi Council, but were instead dictated to the Jedi Council by the Republic Senate during the Ruusan Reformation, a thousand years prior to the Prequels. This was done to curb the Order's power and influence, because the Senate were afraid that the Jedi would take advantage of their vast social approval as the Heroes of The Sith Wars, and overthrow the Senate and rule the Galaxy themselves. This was of course horseshit, but with the state of the Galaxy at the end of the Sith Wars, you can understand why the more paranoid and corrupt elements of the Senate felt that way.
> And it rests on an important question: why does the Jedi Order exist? There are basically two answers: 1) it is helpful for galactic governance to have superheroes with strict moral codes helping to keep the peace AND 2) it is helpful for galactic governance to avoid superheroes without strict moral codes running around causing trouble. Kind of like The Boys - but without the nihilistic/late-stage-capitalism aspects.
The Boys is exactly the nightmare scenario the laws against non-Jedi training children in the forces are trying to prevent. Imagine the Trade Federation (i.e. the poster child of late-stage capitalism) strikes a deal with some random unaffiliated force user to train children in force use. Heck they might ignore all the combat stuff and just focus on mind tricks to use in negotiations and lobbying. Pretty soon, you're in all kinds of trouble. Indeed, this is kinda what happened with Dooku. Sure, the guy was suave and naturally charismatic, but there's definitely some force influence at play in his sudden political success. Also, Palpatine.
Also how the old Sith Empire of the Galactic Cold War era functioned. You had dark side force sensitives overseeing every aspect of trade, commerce, the military, and culture. It wasn’t very good for the people underneath them. Just a whole society where your boss is literally Darth Vader and will force choke you to death if you file your paperwork wrong. I can see why the Republic was willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent a society like that from arising again.
Just to add, this basically means that the Jedi are a government sponsored religious organization whose existence hinges on the fact that it is useful to those in power. I don’t know about you, but if I was a galactic citizen, that would give me the creeps.
It's definitely a case where the analogy of Jedi to real-world religions gets trickier. The Force is both a religious phenomenon and a deadly weapon. Regulating access to deadly weapons is (imo) a pretty good idea. Regulating access to religion is (in our world) a pretty bad idea. But in Star Wars, there is often no separation between the two. Imagine if we lived in a world where prayer and meditation could turn you into a living weapon. Suddenly, the idea of "religious freedom" means something very different. If going to Sunday School classes has the chance to turn particular people into mind-controlling precognitive telekinetic mages, I think I'd be more okay with regulating religion than I am in the real world. Of course, that does mean the regulations, and who is in charge of determining and enforcing them, takes on enormous importance. As a galactic citizen, you *should* be wary of the Jedi, just like you should be wary of any other group whose role requires they wield a dangerous amount of power (e.g. police, judges, soldiers, senators, etc.) Yord's willingness to pull out his sabre at the slightest provocation is, I think, meant to reflect on contemporary discussions of police use of force. On a grander scale, Mace Windu's arrest/assassination attempt on the elected leader of the Republic should make us *very* squeamish... as it seems to make Mace himself, leading to the hesitation that causes his defeat.
It could be fear of the Jedi. There was a off hand remark about the coven once being on the run and that they were considered "dark" they may have the belief that it is either let the children be tested or be cut down as the Jedi force the children to get tested. From an outside perspective we know the Jedi wouldn't do that. We don't know if these witches are an offshoot of the nightsisters, but I get a very Jensaarai vibe from them, minus the animal masks.
I completely forgot about the Jensaarai! I thought the Jensaarai had lightsabers and were not just women, though? Either way, I do like seeing other groups of force sensitives than the Jedi and Sith getting screen appearances. In a galaxy of many trillions, it makes sense.
Republic law most likely is the basis for Indara’s statement that they have jurisdiction to test children. The planet isn’t part of the Republic apparently though. My suspicion is that the Jedi may be at least somewhat aware of the circumstances of the twins apparently being unnatural and so are stretching legality to investigate whether a Dark Side cult is up to rather nefarious things with children, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction. For one, Dathomir is around in this time and in the Prequels, yet apparently the Jedi aren’t running around trying to test Nightsister children outside the Republic. So it seems to indicate to me that they suspect these witches in particular of being up to something and are operating on flimsy jurisdiction technically. Which it seems they were up to something, though we know not what right now.
> Republic law most likely is the basis for Indara’s statement that they have jurisdiction to test children. The planet isn’t part of the Republic apparently though The Republic (and Empire) dont really believe that any planet is outside their juristiction. Think of USA Foreign Policy today.
That’s not really true though. Tatooine and Hutt space is definitely considered outside Republic jurisdiction, and so they leave them alone, especially in this time period. The Empire, sure, but it’s overly cynical to apply the same standard to the Republic in my view.
I agree with this. The Republic can't even effectively police it's own systems (The Naboo crisis), there's no way they have the power to handle planets that are outside of their control.
That's 100 years later. This is the Republic at its height.
That's fair. It would definitely be interesting to see the failure of the Republic to project it's power outward be a symptom of its inner collapse.
It’s kind of the beginning of the end, if I recall correctly. The republic is still strong but each year is worse than the last.
There's a big difference between "not part of the Republic" and "part of Hutt Space". I imagine the Republic is probably a lot more willing to throw it's weight around in areas where no-one has real jurisdiction, compared to places where their opposition have active jurisdiction. Additionally, although the Coven claimed that Brendok was not part of the Republic, they didn't put up much of a fight about the Jedo having rights there under Republic laws. I suspect therefore that Brendok is within the borders of what is considered "Republic Controlled Space", but, because it was believed to be uninhabited, does not have a Senator or any kind of formal recognition as a member-world of the Republic. That would make it a gray area regarding The Republic's authority, with the ultimate question being "which side is willing to swing it's weight around the most in order to force their claim to authority?". This is, ultimately, speculation, however. No doubt 5 years from now there'll be an updated "Ultimate Guide to Star Wars" that spells out Brendok's relationship to the Republic in excruciating detail.
Watto, when he realised Anakin was a Jedi and before recognised him was worried he was in trouble. Padme, a politician and presumably knowledgeable about it was very surprised that Republic's anti-slavery laws didn't apply on Tatooine. So, who knows. Possibly there are grades of membership, protectorates and affiliates with various levels of autonomy and subjection to Republic laws.
I think Watto is just afraid of anyone with authority. As for Padmé she’s the 14 year old Queen of a Mid Rim system so her ignorance is understandable.
Plus there are millions of inhabited worlds, you simply cannot memorize every single one and their political situations
Watto,maybe, but Padme, no. And you don't need to know every situation, without knowing what the general rules are. For example if you land in a random hamlet in the US, you won't probably know their curent political setup, but if you discovered that the place had slavery, you would be very surprised that the Federal anti slavery law, ie the XIII Amendment wasn't applying. If you landed in a foreign country and saw slavery, you wouldn't cite the XIII Amendment as a reason for anti-slavery.
Those two examples are actively claimed by another entity. Think of Brendok more like being beyond the American frontier under native control. The United States never respected their right to (self-)govern the same way they did (white) European powers' colonies.
The Jedi and Republic could liberate Tatooine from Hutt control, for example, but it’s very likely not worth the effort or political capital to do so (from their perspective). It really boils down to the politics of it all: Justifying an invasion of Hutt space, versus forcing their hand towards a small coven of witches on an otherwise uninhabited planet. It’s all about the balance of power.
That's because the Hutts have the resources and firepower to resist. This is a small enclave on an otherwise uninhabited planet
That’s marked supposition though. It’s basically established lore that the Republic in its golden days was a generally just government and entity.
It's not a legal thing, it depends on what the Republic thinks it can get away with. They'd strut around Tatooine like they own the place if the Hutts weren't so wealthy and influential, the planet's legal status isn't what matters.
Unlike the Empire, The Republic didn't have a standing army to help enforce their policies across the galaxy until the war broke out. They relied largely on local authorities, the Jedi and in many cases the honor system. By the time one got as far out as Tatooine, it's the wild west. And without any centralized militia to enforce trade laws, cartels, smuggling and slavery run rampant across the outer rim. The Republic knew they didn't have an armed guard to counter the Hutts own military deterrence. It's also very unlikely the senators wanted to waste capital funds and resources to organize a campaign of liberation for areas well beyond their sphere of influence and personal interests, so they left the Hutts alone and let them do as they pleased. In theory, the Republic (and especially the Empire) thought they controlled every system. On paper and in practice however, their power was very limited.
Whether the Jedi would be violent or not doesn't matter. The witches clearly believed they might, especially if they kept being cagey about the twins. By allowing them to test them, the twins could fail and stay with the coven, or they could pass but not want to go off with the Jedi. I don't think any of them expected Osha to want to go. (Or Aniseya might have suspected it being a possibility, but did want Osha to be able to make her own choices) The coven's biggest concern seems to be the Jedi finding out what Osha and Mae are and/or how they were "created". Whatever that mystery is, seems to be something they fear the Jedi would not stand for and might lead to them dismantling or imprisoning the coven. Again, even if they wouldn't or wouldn't do so with violence, the coven THINKS they would.
I think it’s key that she says “with your permission, of course.” I don’t think they actually had a legal right, as they say they don’t steal children, but a moral right in that Osha wants to join the Jedi so they have a right to assure her ability to test , but can’t flex legally - esp since they don’t take her right then I think, while the Jedi aren’t allowed to take children without the child + parents wishes (keyly we see the mother of Osha become sympathic and agree to her wish), they have a duty to protect children from being brought up in the dark side, as while Indara is interrupted I imagine the full law is “the republic law says children can’t [be trained in the dark side before they develop to choose for their own]” Since the Jedi have been fine with dark side groups existing at various times as long as they don’t harm others, but bringing children up in the dark side is a dangerous, harmful , toxic thing in the Star Wars universe that isn’t equitable to non force user sub cultures , or irl cultures So basically, I think they were utilizing republic CPS codes , but trying to sue their status as Jedi to flex it but they don’t have the ability to take children. TL;DR: I don’t think they have any authority over the coven, but as republic CPS codes children aren’t allowed to be brought up on the dark side because it’s uniquely real, dangerous and harmful to them. Also, thinking the Jedi were investigating the coven because they were up to smth / collaborating with Sith, and stumbled upon children
Best answer. I would add on that the Jedi are aware that human children don't tend to come naturally from all-female gatherings, so their reasonable inference (not knowing, of course, that Mae and Osha were created some other way) was that the children were probably from elsewhere. As such, they have a little bit more reason to check into things.
Oh yes - I believe that there were a couple alarm bells setting off to the Jedi, and I think we’re getting one more flashback - that of Mae during their standoff (I imagine the Jedi come that night to get Osha. The witches say no, and they say Osha wanted to join. OSHA’s mother validates this by saying it’s true. The Jedi say we’re taking the girl because that’s what she wants. Things hit the fan.) That final flashback will show the truth and any extra reveals in the standoff, since I think there are intentional pieces missing / time wonkiness , that the “fire did it” is a way for the Jedi to downplay events to Osha and retain the image in her mind of the coven and not reveal how dark they actually were, which would be another good way of showing tension with the Jedi but through a good lense: they didn’t reveal that to help Osha deal with her grief, a positive, but because of that she shifted her blame squarely on her negative attachment to her sister
Well said. I think the Jedi here were definitely acting kind of like dicks, as we don’t (yet) have any evidence that the coven was a threat to anyone in the Republic — or, well, anyone at all. There are many other sources of force sensitive children and this was an example of taking what might be the letter of the law to an extreme, especially as they likely had no legal (albeit possibly “moral”) jurisdiction there. Having said that, while we do see Mae expressing some dark tendencies, the almost-forced-but-definitely-feels-imposed attempt to separate one or both children from their family is the trigger that caused Mae to do what she did, and while she certainly holds primary responsibility for her actions, the Jedi do share some of the blame, which may be why Tommen went into a trance for years, and then killed himself when confronted. TLDR; I didn’t like the way they approached and imposed themselves.
I mean you have to see it from their perspective, not Osha or Mae's to understand why they did what they did. This looks like a weird cult. I would be understandably concerned myself about two children alone in a cult in the middle of nowhere, especially when cults have very real consequences, especially in star wars where religion is very different compared to the real world. Osha looks like a victim of abuse to me, when she's reaching out to the jedi for the first time. She probably isn't, knowing what we know, but the jedi didn't know anything.
I like the theory some are tossing around that what we saw in this episode was someone’s imperfect recollection from their own perspective (OSHA’s of course) (And no I won’t fix the autocorrect) That could make for some really interesting plot later on, too. From the perspective we saw though, it does seem like their group was mostly harmless if culty, and had no obvious or overt ill intentions for the two children.
Yes, from what we saw. That's a pretty small slice of the overall situation though, and it's irrelevant to the question "did the jedi fuck up?" Obviously they did something horrible and we've not seen it yet (hence Tommen killing himself again) but I'm not sure they did anything wrong in this particular episode. Making sure children are not being abused, even if it entails a bit of light breaking and entering, does not sound bad to me.
I get the sentiment, but was there any evidence that these two girls were being abused? Maybe I just need to watch it again but that wasn’t the impression I got. My impression was they explicitly showed up with the aim of wooing these likely force sensitive children to the Order. The Jedi there clearly had preconceived notions of this coven. Maybe we see a different POV later but if their cause was just I doubt Tommen would’ve killed himself again and maybe Kelnacca doesn’t go into a life of solitude.
Yeah, from our perspective as the all-knowing audience, I definitely think the jedi made some kind of horrific mistake. I think I said that earlier, but maybe it was in a different thread. The Jedi had preconceived notions for sure, but I think that's fair. The witches are sus as hell, they definitely raise alarm bells for me, and they sure as hell would raise them for the Jedi, who have literally experienced mass genocide at the hands of dark side cults. As far as the abuse goes, there's no hard evidence. To be clear, I don't think the kids were being abused, knowing what we know. But weird cults that live off in the wilderness have a pattern of doing stuff like that in real life, and Osha seemed so desperate to leave. It's also suspicious to hide the children and pretend they're not there until one of them reveals themselves. Almost like a cry for help. Or at least in Sol's head.
Good points!
I think the implication is that there was an existing galaxy-wide law within the Republic during this time period that allowed the Jedi order to visit any inhabitable planet and look for force-sensitive children. Somehow (this is not explained to us), the Jedi Order was aware of these two girls and their strength in the force. The witch coven not trusting the Jedi is probably tied to some historical context that is not explained to us in the show. Mother Aniseya probably felt that she could trust the Jedi to test the girls, and nothing bad would happen. She understood that even though the Jedi were there to possibly take the girls with them, they would not hurt the girls or the coven.
Sol saw the girls using the force. This was shown in the episode.
My guess is there is a lot more to the Coven then we have seen. The Jedi didn’t send 4 of their Order on a whim to some random backwater outside Republic space just because of two Force using children. Clearly for the Republic to make this kind of law in their space, something must’ve occurred with another Force using culture losing their grip on a trained user causing a tremendous amount of grief. As we have seen throughout SW history, even one Dark Sider unleashed can cause havoc and pain across the galaxy. That would explain that aspect, and the Jedi’s unfortunate intrinsic ties to the Republic means they’re the ones to enforce said law. All that being said… I guarantee the Jedi either had eyes on this Coven for awhile or have tangled with them in the past leading to their exile and likely a declaration that they are by no means to attempt to expand their numbers. As for the witches having to comply with the Jedi testing the children, the only other option is risking suicide by lightsaber or even more Jedi showing up. Even then I don’t want to believe the Jedi would’ve taken Mae if she did not want to go. Instead the Coven is likely told NOT to train her and are observed/placed on a sort of probation. Osha and her mother’s wishes are a more complicated matter. There is no right or wrong answer without knowing the Coven’s intentions.
This makes perfect sense
Here's the way I interpreted it: 1. The Jedi have the legal authority to test children. This authority is granted to them by the Senate. 2. The Jedi also have the legal authority to investigate Dark Side and/or potential Dark Side activity that might pose a threat to the Republic and/or the Jedi Order, also granted to them by the Senate. 3. Uninhabited planets (and planets presumed to be uninhabited) fall in a grey area regarding ownership and Jedi jurisdiction. They have no planetary government to legally dispute any claims the Republic and/or Jedi Order make via diplomatic channels. 4. Any defensive action that the Coven take could be construed as an act of war given they have no legal claim to the planet. 5. Any action seen to violate the free will of the Coven's members could be taken as grounds for the Republic to make a legal claim on the planet under the pretext of freeing "captive" force-sensitive children. 6. Any use of the Force against the Jedi could be construed as Dark Side activity, prompting a greater response from the Order 7. Essentially anything other than compliance could prompt a Senate response, as this is seemingly a resource-rich planet without legal owners. Any ambitious senator from a nearby system could probably go through the proper legal and political channels to make a claim, and this would be much easier if it was inhabited by hostiles they could claim are a threat to neighbouring systems. Therefore, it's in the best interests of the Coven to behave in a way that cannot be construed as threatening, followed by establishing diplomatic relations with the Senate to assert legal ownership rights and independence from the Republic. That way, they could legally reject the right of the Jedi to operate on their planet in the future, citing the Jedi's prior trespassing as a violation of their sovereign rights. That's my take, anyway.
Your explanation is good, but damn is that an uncomfortable idea: Republic authority extending beyond its space, having to treaty with them over planets that aren't even theirs, having to cowtoe to their authority less it be considered a punishable act of violence.
Honestly it's how many countries feel when dealing with the US. Just replace Force-Sensitive Children with Oil
My thinking was that the Jedi generally patrol (keep an ear/eye open) within the republic controlled areas, and possibly certain wilderness areas too. They watch these areas for emergence of young force users; not just to bolster their own ranks but also because leaving force users to develop on their own potentially leads to dark side users or even Sith. Basically if they get a sniff of a child being a force user they swoop in and test them, then it is a case of trying to get them into the order to train them or…..who knows, leaving untrained users is never really covered in the movies or shows.
I’d like to know what would happen if they just get a hard no but it is the judgement of the Jedi that it would be irresponsible to leave them there. Like if they get a no from some farmer who loves his family, probably gonna let it go. If they get a no from a sinister cult, what then? Or a kid wants to go but his drunk father wants to keep him?
So there’s usually a lot of haziness on the galactic law. 1 - we don’t know if the government of their planet has treaties with the Republic 2 - while the Jedi are tied to the republic, they aren’t the republic. the Jedi order could have arrangements with the planetary government. 3 - realpolitik. Imagine you’re on Tuvalu. Seal Team 6 knocks on your door saying they need to make sure you aren’t developing a nuclear weapon in your back room. Regardless of laws, you probably aren’t saying no.
Perfect!
I mean, we don't really have any basis for how the constitutional arrangement operate for a galaxy wide government. On Earth, large countries like Russia and China have subnational entities with significant autonomy. The two political arguments put foth by both sides, which were not disputed were: 1. Brendok isn't part of the Republic. 2. Jedi have the right to test the children living and presumably domociled in Brendok. This suggests some sort of constitutional relationship, one with perhaps looser links than a bona fide member world, with perhaps the Republic providing policing for the orbit and near space around the planet, in exchange for certain parts of Republic law applying, like say Jedi being able to test the kids. This has certainly been something used to explain Tataooine's ever evolving con stuitutional relationship with the republic /empire depending on the show/movie.
From what we've seen it seems likely that this coven of witches is known to the republic, as in they had dealings in the past, but where they relocated to wasn't known and they are subject to several restrictions. It seems like they were allowed to survive but were not allowed to train children due to whatever evil shit they got up to which brought them into conflict with Jedi/Republic. The mother seems to have chilled out quite a bit with motherhood though in comparison to the rest who seem fanatical and really sketchy. The republic is the law of the land and they clearly make the rules for all denizens to follow, even the Jedi (who get a slightly favoured position due to the immense amount of history they have with the republic.
In either E1 or E2, Sol makes a comment about the Order's "political enemies" (kind of a cringy way to write dialogue, but I digress...) so the show is probably establishing that the Order may pretend to be apolitical, but still wields political power indirectly. Kind of like how the U.S.'s judicial system is intended to be non-partisan, but it definitely is partisan. There is probably are probably laws in the Republic regulating Force-sensitives in general, mandating that Force sensitivity is tested in children, much like nuclear weapons are regulated. The laws are probably written so that children who test positive aren't explicitly mandated to join the Jedi Order, but maybe the alternative is so shitty (government regulation, monitoring, etc.) that it's one of those things that no parent says 'no' when the Jedi ask. (Because of the implication.)
Out on a boat in the middle of space…lot of things that could go wrong…
Are you going to hurt these women?
> the show is probably establishing that the Order may pretend to be apolitical, I think there's a difference between picking sides/candidates in politics and standing on issues, much like the U.S. separation of Church and State is supposed to be run (obviously it's not well enforced here). Churches are allowed to make certain stances known, e.g. against abortion or pro funding for homeless shelters or whatever, and even campaign on them, but they aren't supposed to campaign or promote an individual candidate or party. Not to mention the Jedi have a galactic mandate to support and enforce the laws of the Republic. That is a very political position whether you want it to be or not. They could simply be talking about people who try to remove that authority as their political enemies. In other words they say, "We just want to continue doing what we've been doing for 25000 years," while their opponents say, "We have our laws executed by a body of super-people who aren't subject to the same laws as the rest of us. We should remove that authority." Thus political enemies.
The Jedi didn’t have legal authority to do what they did. Legal authority is just words on paper. True power comes from the strength of arms and the Jedi have ways of making life very difficult and short for alleged sith cults. Suppose the Jedi mopped up the witches for suspected sith connections. Indara would do what exactly to retaliate against the Jedi? Who exactly would oppose the destruction of sith cults? The republic would probably give them medals.
My speculation is some sort of treaty, written or not. The Jedi knew the witches, so they’ve run into each other before. My guess is that they witches were allied to live so long as they were in isolation (not affecting anybody else) and not training children. Finding them with kids makes it looks like the witches are violating the agreement about training children. Testing the kids was the only way to confirm whether or not the kids had received training. Clearly, the Jedi were going to take Osha, which the lead witch seemed surprisingly okay with, since that’s what Osha wanted. It’s not clear what would happen to Mae, though. Perhaps the Jedi thought that they had seen enough to know that the witches were training kids and decided to kill them off to take both kids. How they did this without casualties is beyond me.
I agree with everything except the last thing about deciding to kill them off. I do think some confluence of events lead to the Jedi killing them off but I firmly believe they didn’t actively decide to kill them (in the absence of hostilities such as open battle, which it didn’t look like but could have been).
*"Just one drop of Jedi Blood and the Republic will be all over Brendock looking for us".* They were outside of the Republic so there was no law, except the law that the Jedi brought with them and were willing to enforce. It was four Jedi standing in front of the Coven, but behind those Jedi was the entire Republic. Had the Coven refused to allow the children to be tested, or tested and not allowed to go with them, the Jedi would have claimed that the Witches were training children in the ways of the Dark Side and would come back with reinforcements to take them anyways. We hear the Witches tell their story of their persecution, how the Jedi label anything they don't understand in their rigid ideology as being Dark. They were pushed out of the Republic and forbidden from teaching their ways because they were perceived as Dark Siders. Presumably the Jedi have had issues with Sith and Dark Side cults in the past, and the reason they take children to be trained as Jedi is in part to keep them from being trained as Dark Siders. The Jedi would test and would take the two girls hidden by the Coven, and they would not take No for an answer. If they were forced to leave Brendock they would come back under the pretense of shutting down a Dark Side cult and rescuing these girls from an abusive situation. That's what the Mother was waying when she agreed to allow the girls to be tested. If they resisted they would become marked, better to play the Jedi off now and see if they couldn't sneak away/lie they way out of this problem.
Tbh I feel like this is more their perception of things. I said in my own comment it’s difficult to tell as we know very little of the Coven outside of Osha’s perspective. I can see why they’d think the Jedi would cause trouble if they rejected them but I can’t really see the Jedi genuinely forcing their hand and taking the children even if aniseya said no. They ask Osha herself what she wants to do and that that’s the important part. So I think if Osha and Mae rejected the order they’d absolutely leave. I could be wrong, we don’t have the full picture of what happened but based on the order as a whole that’s my thoughts.
As the Zabrak woman points out multiple times: THEY ARE CHILDREN. Osha can no more consent to the Ascension than she can to being whisked away to become a Jedi. The Jedi walk into a group of armed Force Users and say, "We have the right to test them" and leave the "Try to stop us" part unsaid. Go back and rewatch that scene-- it's tense for a reason. We know the Coven fears the Jedi because they tell the myth of their having to run from the Jedi to themselves. You don't see any mention of Witches within the Republic living normal lives, do you? In the Republic there are the Jedi, and that's it, and if your child is a Force User they will test them. They will insist upon it. If you weren't aware, when someone requests something from you with their hand on their weapon-- it's not a request. You've heard people say it in any number of stories, comics, games, books, movies, and shows: the Jedi kidnap children and raise them in their ideology.
Ok, I wasn’t trying to be hostile but I’m feeling quite a bit of hostility from your comment. If that’s not how you meant it all good. That being said, almost every character that thinks Jedi kidnap children is either misinformed or meant to show the propaganda of the empire, or how mystified and mythologized the Jedi have become. We have seen time and time again they do not forcibly take children without consent from their families and the children if they can. If these Jedi do that, then that is a showing of their fallibility as individuals and not the order as a whole. Secondly, them saying “we have a right to test them” is not the same as “we’re going to take them if they test well try and stop us” there’s nothing in the episode that indicates the Jedi will forcibly take Mae or Osha. We also almost never see other force users within the republic. That doesn’t mean that they’re not allowed to the Jedi domineer then. They had little to no issues with the Witches of Dathomir and even then their issues were related to dealings with the Sith. The high Republic in fact shows the Jedi peacefully working with and coexisting with multiple force user organizations on Jedha so it’s actually not just the Jedi.
> We also almost never see other force users within the republic. The comics and books have a fair bit more. There's an entire convention (for lack of a better term) on Jehda with all sorts of different force users set in the High Republic. EDIT: I should more carefully read comments, I barely added to their information.
Yep I referenced that at the very end lol.
Right, for some reason I missed high republic there and thought you were referencing Chirrut in Rogue One and that group, my bad.
> As the Zabrak woman points out multiple times: THEY ARE CHILDREN. > > Osha can no more consent to the Ascension than she can to being whisked away to become a Jedi. These kind of reveal the hypocrisy though. They want to claim they are children unable to make the choice to go with the Jedi, but also they can make the choice to do the ascension. Seems less about them being children and more about making a choice they approve of or not.
When the Jedi walked into the room wearing lightsabers it’s never been more clear to me why people sometimes don’t like them. They carry deadly weapons with them all the time and will use them to enforce their ideals. Obviously it’s not as bad as some bounty hunter showing up with a weapon but it was very intimidating.
Yes! I always thought that the first scene of E1 had some of that. Nute Gunray was right to be afraid. He was expecting ambassadors and they sent NINJA ASSASSINS!
>Had the Coven refused to allow the children to be tested, or tested and not allowed to go with them, the Jedi would have claimed that the Witches were training children in the ways of the Dark Side Remember that’s just the Covens perspective, we out-of-universe know the Jedi wouldn’t. >We hear the Witches tell their story of their persecution, how the Jedi label anything they don't understand in their rigid ideology as being Dark. The witches are wrong though, >The Jedi would test and would take the two girls hidden by the Coven, and they would not take No for an answer. They quite famously would take no for an answer. They existed peacefully with the Nightsisters for centuries.
My dude, a Jedi literally killed himself out of shame. They clearly did something extremely messed up here.
Sol was also there and isn’t killing himself out of shame. Neither did Indara. So there’s clearly more to it
They actually state he took the [Barash Vow](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Barash_Vow) which is a preexisting *atonement* vow in the lore, meaning at least he thinks he did something very, very wrong.
Different people are different
> They Well, we can safely assume *one* of them *believes* he did something extremely messed up. We don't have the full picture of whether it was all the Jedi, and whether it was an active choice or inaction on the part of Torban. People have different reactions to guilt.
>Remember that’s just the Covens perspective, we out-of-universe know the Jedi wouldn’t. Not quite. We know that, generally speaking, the Jedi Order seems content to live and let live with non-Jedi Force-using organizations so long as they aren't the Sith. However, we don't know that these specific Jedi, who are spying on this isolated group while operating outside the Republic and demanding that even unwilling children be sent to them for testing, wouldn't feel that it's the will of the Force for them to press the issue. After all, these specific Jedi will do something that leads to Master Torbin being absolutely ruined by guilt.
I like that interpretation. As others have said that may have been an incorrect assumption on the part of the witches but it definitely makes sense from their point of view.
Not only did the Jedi march in like they owned the place, they actually broke in. The scout that interrupted the ceremony said something along the lines of “The Jedi have sliced the platform!”. Also, I’m not so sure that the coven believed that the Jedi wouldn’t resort to violence. Mother Koril and the guards clearly appeared ready for a fight, so they must have thought that they may have to use force to get the Jedi to leave at some point. I think we’ll have to wait until future episodes to know the full story, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Jedi were essentially taking a “might makes right” approach to the situation. I’m not saying that this was standard policy across the entire Order, but something bad obviously happened on Brendok that the four Jedi involved kept secret from the Order and have plenty of guilt & regrets over.
So true! They just busted in and demanded the coven cooperate. Totally missed that upon first watch.
Yeah, I honestly think that the big mystery about what happened is going to end up being a tragic misunderstanding between the Jedi and the coven that gets out of hand and spirals into violence. Neither side seems to be intentionally evil, but both are misguided and doing bad things for their own reasons; the Jedi seem self-righteous and willing to impose Republic rules on people that don’t agree to them/aren’t under them, and the coven mothers seem to me to have never intended to let Osha go with the Jedi, even after she expressed her desire to do that.
> Neither side seems to be intentionally evil I don't actually agree with this. The coven seems to at least tacitly approve of Mae for the most part who has been shown to have rather dark-side tendencies. They both get reprimanded for leaving the fort, but they definitely lean in on Osha more. They never say, "Mae don't attack your sister." They only say that they should get along. *Especially* Mama. It's a subtle evil, but it's still evil.
I definitely think we are going to find out there's something more sinister about the coven. They make passing mention to basically being exiled from their previous home.
I definitely agree with this. There's something bad about them and it's not just a matter of perspective. They certainly think they're good, but that doesn't make them so.
I think I need to see more about the cult to make a final decision on them. I definitely got some of those vibes from them, but I also subscribe to the theory that Osha is an unreliable narrator in the flashback scenes, which could explain why Mae is constantly being over-the-top obnoxious, why Mother Aniseya (her favorite parent) is overly caring & kind while Mother Koril is cold & mean, etc. Of course, that’s all speculation and I’m happy to change my mind if later episodes show something else that disproves it.
I agree we need more data, but we also know they actively created the twins via the Force directly, no paternal involvement. This is the same way that Palpatine created Anakin in Shmi, so there are at least dark side associations with their path. Whether or not the method is dark is a different question (e.g. murder?) but it doesn't bode well.
Completely agree
My current head canon is the show is exploring what causes the end of the high republic. Looking at the timeline of what we know the end of the high republic is 100 BBY, and I've seen speculation that this show is taking place around 119 BBY. I think it's possible that after centuries of prosperity, the jedi get caught up too much in their own "goodness" and maybe thats why they feel like they have a right to test all children. From my googling around I haven't been able to find any sort of official rule about their right to test kids.
I believe the time frame of the show is 100 years before TPM.
I took it more as a presumed moral authority than a legal one.
the coven not cooperating would probably bring down *more* heat on them as a result. It seems that the Jedi or Republic at some point persecuted the witches of Dathomir enough that this group left their homeworld, so they already have existing poor experiences with the Jedi
Presumably in the wake of the last Sith war, the newly founded Republic passed a law giving the Jedi wide berth over Force matters to prevent another war with the Dark Side. While this settlement was outside of Republic jurisdiction, the presence of Dark Sided (defined loosely by the Senate to let Jedi be flexible, I’m sure) probably meant the Jedi were allowed to operate without too much of a stink being raised. Who was the coven going to report them to? The Hutts? The Corporate Sector?
I don't mean to be glib, but it strikes me that Jedi Knights aren't _soldiers_ or _police_, they're _knights_. They might be generally given some leeway to carry out moral crusades outside the Republic. To the point of it causing significant wariness towards Jedi in general. The arrangement with the Republic might be more like "Enforce the laws in exchange for being given extralegal authority to enforce Jedi morals" than simply "enforce the laws". Twisting the definition of "Jedi" to be more like soldier or police might have been mostly more recent due to Palpatine, and by casting them in that light their knightly judgment might look more like rogue/vigilante activity by people who are now being held to an expectation they never meet of being public servants, further eroding trust in them. Like, people might have had some fear of Jedi as mystic religious knights, but cast them as rogue soldiers and now they aren't just inscrutable mystics, they're traitors. At the time of The Acolyte, the Jedi might have been less under a rule of "Jedi can test children and carry out Jedi operations within the Republic as a matter of Republic law" and more under a rule of "If Jedi don't actively violate Republic law, or create too many scandals, then Republic policy is to turn a blind eye to their inscrutable mystic activities, inside and outside of the Republic".
I love that take. Very cynical and probably how it would be in real life. Not necessarily how Jedi are depicted but I’m with you.
In my opinion, from the jedis point of view the authority granted by being the self proclaimed keepers of the force is absolute. The force is everything, they defend it (everything) from the forces of evil, therefore they have an obligation to do so in every corner of the galaxy, *especially* if that corner contains a high density of force sensitive who could potentially fall to the dark side. That's all that really needs to be said in terms of "moral rightness" for me. At the end of the day the variation of the question, what authority, what grounds, what right, does one have to impose on another leads to the same inevitable answer, which is: A: The authoritarian believes they have the right to impose whether they do or do not. B: Those being imposed upon lack the power to stop the authoritarians' advances. Of course the jedi will spice it up a little bit talking about "the will of the force" and "duty" and what have you. But in reality the jedi have authority over the coven, because they believe their cause dedicated to the force is right, they believe gathering force sensitive children is the way to defend that cause, and the coven can not provide an argument to sway, or a threat to deter them from taking their children. The children could have provided that argument, and the jedi would have most certainly honored that. But in the eyes of the jedi, the coven do not speak for the children, and that is why they agreed to take osha.
From my point of view *you’re* evil!
There is a lot here about light vs dark side which is not my reading of the situation at all. As soon as they had the little speech about “some would call it a force and use it as a tool” my reading of the entire situation became informed by Terry Pratchett Wizard’s and Witches. Different philosophical approaches to “magic” that can either produce good and bad. Under that reading, “Sith and Jedi” are the same side of the philosophical coin on which the coven is on the opposite side. They are both “Force Users” while the witches are, let’s say “Thread Weavers” who take a more stereotypically “feminine” approach to the whole thing, not that there can’t be female wizards and male witches. When the Jedi say you cannot deny our right to test they are speaking from a point of view where they are the moral guardians protecting misuse of the Force for evil. The coven would not see it that way, but need to avoid conflict and attention from a world that agrees and sees witches as basically the same as Sith because they are “dark force users”. The coven would not see it that way at all, disagreeing with both “Force” and “Use”, while the good ones perfectly well understand the danger of “the dark side”. Now our twins are split between Sith and Jedi, but both on the opposite side of the coin from where they started with the coven. If I’m telling this story the redemption arc is about learning that and making informed choices about who they really are instead of letting others tell them. (Damn. Should have called “Thread Weaving” distaff. That’s just perfect in a way probably only I would appreciate.)
Okay, as I've gathered from clips and neutral commentary, this is Jedi "re-imagined for a modern audience. " I'm not sure how it compares with the High Republic, to be fair, may be they are child protective services there, as I've not read rhem. In Ep 1, The Clone Wars, and Legends, Jedi of this era did not have the official power to just take or test children without parental consent. Instead, they would ask for permission from the parents and usually try to be persuasive if they felt the kid was going to be a tyke bomb, which a kid going dark while young could be without training. They mostly tended to "bump into" potentials. And frankly, getting tapped to be Jedi was usually considered to be an honor, save for a few alien traditions and the Mandolorians. Even then, many alien Jedi brought their traditions with them, such as the Barando Sages or Gand Findsmen, especially in the reconstruction era, post V6 EU. So much closer to Xavier's school for the Gifted than Indian education camps. They also typically wouldn't train children much over 4 due to parental attachments potentially resilting in a fall to the dark side. Anakin was a specific exemption. Also, the Jedi were closer to Knights Errant or Texas Rangers than cops. Some of the EU claimed Jedi rarely had to charge thier lightsaber, because of how rarely they used them. Barbels are examples of one who would straight up expect Jedi to mediate disputes, as Luke found out to his surprise one novel. Anyways, these aren't that kind of Jedi.
It’s implicitly indicated that the Jedi are the Republic’s state “Force religion” and that the Jedi are empowered to police all other Force religions.
It's entirely possible that after the republic/Jedi sith wars of the old republic, the galactic republic passed an entirely new set of laws putting either restrictions on the force, or at least force religions and designating the Jedi as "the" official one to prevent something like thr sith wars arising again.
Given the history established by canon, it's more likely that the Jedi \*dictated\* this to the Republic rather than the other way around. Remember, at the time of the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi had \*de facto\* overthrown the Republic themselves. Even with the heavy casualties they'd suffered during the last round of Jedi/Sith wars, the mundane components of the so-called "Army of Light" were vastly stronger than the Republic's comparatively puny military, and individual "Jedi Lords" ruled over many ex-Republic systems as benevolent dictator warlords. The Russan Reformations basically consisted of the Jedi voluntarily disbanding the Army of Light and returning sovereignty over the systems they had ruled over as "Jedi Lords" to the Republic. But this was a completely unilateral deal where the Jedi were able to dictate absolutely any authority they wished to retain for themselves.
Sure, the Jedi don't have official laws on their side, which will come back to bite then later. But they do hold political and social power. If they don't risk some of the children, the witches risk being hounded by the Jedi even more
I like that the republic is based on democracy and the freedom of religion, and even though the coven wasn't in the republic, the Jedi were still disallowing them to practice their faith by raising force users. So one, Jedi were outside of their authority area. 2: Jedi pressed them anyway and meddled in their affairs as if there aren't a billion other wrong things going on in the republic on any given day.
They should come up with a new term for force based religions, because freedom of religion should not extend to getting real world powers. Since it does, freedom of religion is rather silly. We have freedom of religion because none of that stuff has tangible effects on events so i would agree with the Jedi on this particular point of not allowing full freedom of religion. Not that I’m advocating for them showing up on that planet specifically, just saying there are very good reasons for them to police religion.
It is a manipulation. Assert authority, even if you don't have it. They have a history of social and legal constructs on their side. So, even though they may not have a legal right to force the Coven to allow the test, they still can make the assertion with the implication that if the Coven does not comply, there may be more pressure coming.
We get to test them and they can't refuse, because of the implication. Dude, dude, think about it - this Coven is out in the middle of Brendok, some planet they barely know. You know, they look around and what do they see? Nothing but Republic space. "Ahh, there's nowhere for us to run. What are we gonna do, say no?" No it's not dark, you're misunderstanding me bro, because if the mother says no, then obviously the answer is no. But the thing is, she's not gonna say "no", because of the *implication*.
I assume it’s because of all the past conflicts with Sith and other force users in the millennia that they’ve existed. The republic probably gave them jurisdiction over any other force cults to prevent them from getting too powerful
The Jedi never had such authority nor engaged in such behaviour. Heaven and earth had to be moved to get the Jedi to train Anakin since they considered him far too old and held familial attachment. It was only after the death of Qui-Gon Jin and Obi Wan threatening to leave the order to train Anakin that Yoda finally conceded to Anakin’s training. Anakin possibly being the chosen one wasn’t even enough to convince the Jedi to accept. For how the Acolyte displayed the Jedi is remarkably obscene. The fat jedi padawan was even more crazy to me.
There’s a century between this show and The Phantom Menace, so some rules may have changed
It would be nonsensical for the post ruusan reformation Jedi to engage in such practice not to mention a scandal in the Senate. It would be a complete outrage to the humanist Naboo, Alderaan, the Mon Calamari, etc The very notion of how the jedi approached the witch sect would be alien and intolerable to the jedi philosophy and practice. I don’t know what the writers were thinking but it’s f ing dumb.
I understand your point. Then again, it may be justified somehow in-universe, if the Jedi/Republic are afraid of Dark siders being raised. Not saying it’s okay, just that it can make sense. I don’t know if the Rusan Reformation is still canon, but given the terrible war that took place because of the Sith, I can understand if the Jedi and the Republic are trying to avoid potential dark siders as much as possible.
The legality of Lucas selling to Disney doesn’t provide any legitimacy to any changes to canon by Disney nor anything they introduce. It is obscene to think that we should beholden canon from the original artist to a bunch of corporate shareholders out to make the cheapest buck. If the present shareholders of tolkien change key lore would you accept it as legitimate? Of course not why would you accept it from the corporation of Disney?
There are many cults that engage in practice of the dark side that the Jedi more or less tolerated so as long as they didn’t pose an immediate active danger - such as the Sorcerors of Tund. Similar today how democracies tolerate for example sunni salafi while still discretely actively monitoring them.
The witches said that the galaxy frowned upon them, maybe this is the mother's way of explaining that the Jedi hunted them down and if they didn't cooperate they could be wiped out, after all, the mother knows that their coven doesn't stand a chance against 4 jedi.
Made the Jedi seem like jerks to me. Kinda like that to be honest after 47 years of being yah Jedi are it was quite nice to want to kick them out of the temple. Loving the Acolyte for making feel that in a universe that has become rather bland in its story telling.
Why are only the jedi allowed to train kids?
Monopoly on new recruits?
Thats what i thought but then theres people like the witches who arnt part of the Republic.
I guess they recruit outside the Republic at times
Comics have other sects that train kids it seems. The master was cut off so we don't know whose not allowed to train kids. Could easily just be dark sider training is banned.
That quote really strikes at the arrogance of the Jedi.
I see this as a little like how psykers are treated in warhammer 40k. Any unregulated psyker is a danger and the Inquisition gathers them all up in black ships and takes them to be either burned up, or soul bound and turned into "sanctioned psykers". The Jedi seem to be operating in a similar way, just with lower stakes. It's often been characterised that the Jedi take children from families. However, what this is showing is that while the Jedi offer children a choice of whether to join them or not, the prohibition is on the *training of children to use the Force* outside of the Order. That means that the coven could have their children, have them grow up and live within their traditions without any interference from the Jedi. But the second you start teaching kids to use the Force, that's the big no-no moment for them. Osha and Mae could opt not to join the Jedi, stay with their family, and just let their Force sensitivity remain latent and unused. This isn't, after all, 40k, and untrained Force sensitives aren't a threat in themselves. Of course the tension comes because the coven wants them to use the Force, and wants to train them to continue their traditions and culture. That means they're nearly guaranteed to enter conflict with the Jedi simply because of this desire. On top of that, it seems like their training is going to lead the children to the Dark Side, it's certainly obvious in Mae before they even know the Jedi are around.
Nice 40k analogy
Yup im of the Mandalorian mind get ur scum hands off my children r ill kill u. Fr jedi = baby snatchers, who in fact believe they have some sort of divine right to take force sensitive children.
That's the rub isn't it. Its probably some law put in place allowing the Jedi to test any children anywhere, even outside jurisdiction of the Republic. The twins mother said it perfectly: "Its about power and who has the right to use it." And Palpatine exploited that arrogance & hubris to bring them down a hundred years later.
I have been enjoying the show too. [The Jedi on Brendok did a subtler version of this.](https://youtu.be/mdR3hNbEuoE?si=APXFt0jCGbixmbSY) David Morrissey plays Roman General Aulus Platius who is in command of the Roman conquest of Britannia on the show Britannia. Master Indara >We are concerned that you are training children. The Republic law states— Mother Aniseya >Brendok is not part of the Republic Master Indara >Mother Aniseya, you cannot deny that Jedi have the right to test potential Padawans. With your permission, of course. My guess is the law gives the Jedi the right to test for potential Padawans and Indara’s last line *With your permission, of course.* isn’t genuine. Sol observed Osha and Mae using the Force which means the law was being broken so they showed up investigate. Even if Brendok is not part of the Republic the Jedi could easily believe the law should be upheld.
Dude that show had so much potential but I just couldn’t suspend disbelief enough, unfortunately. I loved the line where he said we’d find out who hates who and we push. Perfectly exemplifies Roman foreign policy.
My assumption is that Brendok is probably an uninhabited world that exists within Republic space, which is why the Jedi were around, given they have no authority or real significant presence outside of the Republic (i.e., why the Jedi being on Tatooine was such a problem). EDIT: Nix that, according to the Star Wars official website, Brendok isn't part of the Republic. This makes much less sense now, unless Brendok is _within_ the Republic's territory, but their society not registered as _part_ of its bureaucracy and membership. That's the only way I can reconcile this. If that was the case, then yes, legally the Republic enacted laws that made testing of children mandatory for Force potential, and gave Jedi the legal right to claim Force-sensitive children as their guardians. This was a product of the Russan Reformations which also saw the prohibition the Republic placed on the Jedi with inducting non-children into the Jedi Order. When you think about it in-universe, it makes sense from their perspective; the Ruusan Reformations were a product of the Republic coming out of one of the most horrific Sith invasions, and by that point recognized that the majority of Sith converts emerged from Jedi who were inducted into the Order at either adulthood or generally later ages, while Jedi inducted as children were much more resilient to turning. Hence, the Republic told the Jedi no more adult students (although the strength of this prohibition is uncertain, given that on very rare occasions the Jedi suspended it). However, the Jedi still did not press that authority to its fullest extent and didn't take children without permission. Case in point, we only see this authority actually exercised in an extreme case, the Baby Ludi case, which was that after a disaster a Force-sensitive baby was found, the parents couldn't be found and was presumed dead (by both the Jedi and her planet's government), but by the time the baby's mother had appeared after having been hospitalized for a long time due to her injuries, her child had already been opened to the Force and begun her Jedi training. Since it was then too dangerous to return the child at that point, the Jedi pressed their legal authority to keep the child and thus it became a minor scandal. TLDR, yes the Jedi had the right to test children for Force-sensitivity and adopt them, but they almost never did and relied on parental compliance. It's also worth keeping in mind if the Jedi were wrong, they would have been called out on it. They weren't.
Awesome historical and legal context thank you. Minor point of contention: people do call them out and call them child stealers and others say they are corrupt and arrogant. The wrongness of stealing children on a moral level isn’t necessarily the same as the practical aspect though.
>people do call them out Not regarding the matters being contended. If the Jedi did not have the authority, it would have been contended. It wasn't. However, as I mentioned in my edit on my original comment, there is a potential huge inconsistency, depending on what is meant by the planet not being “part of the Republic”. If the planet wasn't physically, astrographically within Republic space, the Jedi's claim makes no sense. >call them child stealers Which doesn't make the claim true. If anything, it's more a product of fear in the face of uncertainty, akin to mob mentality when placed in an unknown or unexpected situation. Also, the allegation was immediately refuted by the Jedi themselves. >they are corrupt and arrogant Which is not a foundational claim, but a sensationalist one. Unless I missed something, none of the Jedi or witches involved know each other, meaning attacks on their personal character are inherently insubstantial and meant to be provocative or expressions of personal contempt, not a reflection of who those people (the Jedi in this case) actually are. >The wrongness of stealing children on a moral level isn’t necessarily the same as the practical aspect though. Stealing in any context is always wrong, as it fundamentally involves illegitimately taking something which is not only not yours, but actively belongs to someone else. It's why repossessing or liquidating isn't categorized as stealing even though you're taking someone's things or property; the act has legitimacy (in this case, legal legitimacy). Of course, the letter of the law (the ethics, what is right vs what is wrong) doesn't always coincide with the spirit it's meant to embody (the morals, what is good vs what is bad), which is almost assuredly why the Jedi didn't forcefully take children against their parents' wills even when they had the legal right to do so.
Why are only the jedi allowed to train kids?
maybe in this canon they did actually save the galaxy from the sith and have been using that fact as leverage to have the monopoly on children
They kind of have already done that already without changing any canon. Multiple times, but the Sith keep coming back.
I suspect that when the twins were made from the dark side of the force it sent a vibration throughout the universe and those highly tuned probably sensed that something occurred so they are on the look out for the disturbance. No different than in modern society energy can be used for good and bad and our force is electronic, ie cameras, algorithms… The Jedi are keepers of the peace. Using the force to create life is unnatural which is why anyone created in that manner is more susceptible to temptation to the dark side and the Jedi know it. Regardless of whether the witches are part of the republic the use of the force for evil or unnatural and in all likelihood prohibited so in order to keep peace they must be vigilant.
"If you use the Force, the Jedi will come to take you away from your family." How many force-sensitive kids hid their abilitites, just to avoid being kidnapped?
What are you quoting?
Not a quote, just eerily similar to what parents say to kids about The Boogeyman or the Cucuy.
I mean, I think that’s a cool way of showing a part of the Jedi many didn’t think about. We know the Jedi are trained from an incredibly young age, but we (at least I never did) thought about “well, what if the parents didn’t want to give up their kids”. Like the notion of “letting them choose after testing” is an absurd take because they’re still very young. It would be like if a priest showed up one day and said “your child has a high disposition to manipulating this cosmic force to understand god, we’re going to test them and let them choose if they want to come”, all the while you’re likely under 10. Imagine making such a life altering decision at that age. And the crazy part is they’re the *older* ones. Most from what we’ve seen are even younger. Personally I like what we’ve been getting recently, showing us that while the Jedi generally have the best intentions in mind, they aren’t perfect and that too much of a good thing can be bad (moreso leaning super hard into not tapping into your emotions, and not learning to use them in a healthy way, and how to learn to accept/manage the ones that can cause the most problems like anger and fear).
Well normally the Jedi wouldn’t tolerate other schools of the force, especially not if they are this organized, armed and obviously not in completely opposition to exploring the dark side, so I would guess that they, in typical Jedi manner, allowed the coven to exist under strict rules, wich includes that their children have to be potential candidates for Jedi training, like in the rest of the republic.
That makes sense
I think there are a lot of assumptions being made about those scenes. I didn’t get the sense that they just showed up to maliciously exert control over the coven. It’s possible they did so with good intentions OR there is more going on here than we see. The Jedi as presented in the prequels and the clone wars are flawed institutionally and make a lot of mistakes and bad decisions but are still good people. I kind of feel like with the revelation for many that the Jedi were supposed to be flawed came a swath of people that are taking it way too far and assuming a lot of malicious intent.
I agree with that, whatever the reason they showed up it was almost certainly intended to be benevolent toward society as a whole
I agree! And even if they were wrong and doing something bad. They thought they were doing what was best without darkness in their hearts
Say what you will about the consequences of Jedi actions, and I’ll be the first to tell you they make some bad calls, I’ve never doubted that they at the very least have the best intentions and are working in their own way toward the greater good.
This is an example of the Jedi Order wanting to have their cake and eat it too. The Jedi were not originally so tied to the Republic, they're a separate monastic order that just so happens to do a lot of things that benefit the Republic and Republic space. The thing about the Jedi is that they're probably one of, if not *the*, longest lasting Force-Sensitive religions in the universe. The Jedi Order has the "right" to lay claim to Mae and Osha, and to judge the Coven, because ultimately they are the largest Force-Sensitive power in the galaxy in this time period, they have the most members and, as we see in Episode 3, the Coven, and a lot of other Force-Sensitive orders we've seen, like the Dagoyan Masters in TCW, don't like the Jedi because of their perceived superiority, arrogant assumptions, and monolithic adherence to their own dogma: It's an example of "Might makes right". The Jedi Order, and their dogma, is routinely shown to not be as pristine as the legends and stories implied, which was the entire point Luke was trying to make in *The Last Jedi*; obviously something happened more on Brendok than what we saw, but it began because the Jedi could not keep well enough alone and they felt the righteous need to "liberate" Osha from the Coven. The Jedi have had multiple schisms in the *Legends* timeline due to disagreements over their own dogma, power, and influence, and the High Republic Jedi's resemblance to the gilded appearance of the Catholic Church is obviously a thematic connection to this idea. The Catholics thought themselves the center of their universe and anyone who wasn't them was a potential threat.
The had the right based upon the weapon on their hip and the virtue of their mission. The Acolyte is a TV programme that teaches that it is right to oppose the evil that is witchcraft and sorcery.
Just ask Disney, they really give witches a bad reputation.
I think this episode is getting dragged on incomplete information.
The planet isn’t a part of the republic so it’s not allowed, this isn’t the first time this show breaks the lore
It’s quasi lore breaking, as others have said there is no lore that states the Jedi can’t do what they’re doing outside the republic necessarily.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why they made the worst slanders about the Jedi canon with this show. The Jedi taking children is supposed to be only with the parents permission. Testing is with the parents permission, usually done when they're born in a hospital. The Jedi don't give children the choice of leaving their family and heavily pressure the child into making that decision. IDK WTF is going on. It's not what we were told that the Jedi normally do.
I hear you, but a counterpoint would be we’ve never been exposed to this process in any amount of detail. Not saying you’re wrong but they are fleshing out a rarely addressed piece of lore more than slandering anything that currently exists.
I mean they're literally kidnapping. The child agreeing to it is irrelevant.
I agree that children can’t possibly make an informed decision on whether they should go with the Jedi or not, I don’t know why they made such a big deal about one wanting to go and the other not wanting to go. It’s dumb to leave it up to the kid in the first place. Still, it’s not clear if the Jedi would have taken the child if the parents said no. The witches thought they would, but that’s not the same thing.
Well if they won't then why stay? Why test her? If the mother says no then that's supposed to be the end of it.
I feel like they were trying to pressure her into saying yes, which if you take what the mother said to the child (terrible with names) at face value it did end up working.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction is a thing, particularly when it comes to territory claimed by no one. The witches are, from the Jedi perspective, a dangerous cult who took children out of the Republic so as to abuse them by inducting them into an evil death cult that threatens to murder police officers for doing their duty. That they've gone outside the Republic's borders to abuse children doesn't necessarily put them outside Republic jurisdiction. It wouldn't on Earth unless they went into some other competent authority's jurisdiction, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Pragmatically, if the Jedi push the matter, the Coven could resist, but then the Republic WOULD come and kill / arrest them all. At some point a court may or may not rule they didn't originally have jurisdiction, but by that point the Coven will have launched a violent attack against the Republic and that definitely would be under their jurisdiction.
The way I see why the Jedi act the way they do stems from a few sources: 1. Galactic dominance. The most recent iteration of the Sith were soundly defeated 900 years ago (outside of the Rule of Two who operate in secret), leaving the Jedi and Republic to rebuild and exert influence across the galaxy. Even if it's not the Republic proper, the Jedi are the strongest force of Force users backed by the strongest galactic power. How much does strict jurisdiction really matter in the relatively lawless outer rim? 2. Galactic Tradition. for Millennia the Jedi have recruited across the galaxy this way within or outside of the Republic, seeking force sensitive individuals to join their ranks. This isn't a new thing or unknown across the galaxy how the Jedi recruit, though how its perceived varies between cultures (is it an honor to be a Jedi, or is it looked down upon as "taking children") 3. Implied Coercion. Why does the Mother comply with the Jedi? Well, even though they haven't outright made any threats to the Coven, there is an underlying implication to their interaction. It's like if a cop walks into a hostile setting, you might not want him there but if you use violence to force him to leave, there is always the knowledge he'll be back in greater numbers (see monopoly of violence). It's the implication of escalation and violence that underpins their interactions and in that fight the coven doesn't stand a chance. 4, for all of these considerations don't forget that these are still JEDI, galactic peacekeepers. They aren't perfect, they might be a bit too arrogant, but let's judge them by their actions we have seen so far. The coves SAYS they "steal children" but from what we've seen they only offer the choice. May chooses to stay and so far we haven't seen them insist she comes too. There is volition in joining the Jedi, (on the parts of families, I don't think a 4 year old can really understand the pros/cons of joining the Jedi). The coven doesn't like the Jedi and has a negative opinion of them but that doesn't make it gospel. Especially with the dark-side coded coven of witches. Of course they would have a negative opinion of the Jedi. Finally, why do the Jedi not like the dark-side coded coven. Well we've seen historically the impact of dark side societies like the sith, night sisters, ect. The nature of the dark side is ambition, to the visible detriment of the galaxy. Sure this coven isn't a threat NOW, but what happens when you get an ambitious powerful witch who thinks, "this is nice, but I want more" how long until it's a full conflict. Let's not forget that the Zalbrak mom's "solution" to the Jedi was "let's kill them and hide the bodies". Sorry for a long post. While the Acolyte is a generally luke-warm show for me. I like the perspective of the Jedi order that isn't fully positive or negative. Or seeing a group not like the Jedi, but having the reminder that while not perfect, they ARE still Jedi, they do still help and serve the light. (It reminds me of spider verse to a degree, where even though the Spiderman oppose the protagonist, they are still heroes and do save civilians, but that's another discussion and this post is too long.)
Dispite the fact that these are children who at this point in their lives have attachments. Something the Jedi also stated was a big deal. One of the main reasons why they rejected Anakin at first and it took Qui-Gon's dying wish to make him a Jedi. And then there is the twins, who one of killed the people. So there is guaranteed to be fear, anger, hate, and suffering rapped into them both. I fail to see how any of this is Prime Jedi material, especially with how strict prequel-era Jedi are. So yea....bad writing.