Light spoilers for the most recent episode of The Baby Yoda Show, aka The Mandolorian, follow:
I am, for better or worse, a Star Wars person. I don’t remember the first time I watched the original trilogy; they were just part of my life! My dad took us to see Phantom Menace the weekend it came out (yike), and I went to early showings of all the sequel trilogy movies. I have seen every episode of The Baby Yoda Show. I go here.
And Jedi are the worst!
One of the best things about The Baby Yoda Show is that until now it hasn’t been about Jedi and Sith. It’s about a hot guy who always wears a mask and is good at killing, but is very soft for a tiny puppet baby who makes cute noises. I love them and their little adventures. And yes, viewers knew the tiny puppet baby would probably try to be a Jedi at some point, but that wasn’t the basis of the show’s appeal.
In this past week’s episode, hot guy Mando and Baby Yoda meet someone who trained to be a Jedi, who uses the force to communicate with Baby Yoda. It’s also the first time we learn anything about the little guy’s past, including his name; neither is important for the point I want to make, so I won’t spoil.
But hot dad Mando is like “Ok, can you train the little dude to be a Jedi?” And the person is like, “No. He’s too scared and he loves you too much. This will make him a bad Jedi who turns into a bad guy Sith.” Mando is like ????
It was at this moment while watching that I tweeted:
Not to dig into Star Wars lore (I hate the concept of “lore,” ugh), but in it there is the deeply deranged idea that if someone experiences fear, anger, or even love, they are set on the path toward the dark side, the Sith. Jedi are detached from their emotions, and that makes them good.
In this week’s episode, someone says that a BABY (he’s 50 but he is also still a baby, we don’t need to go into this), who still has lots of time to learn about his emotions and how to manage them, is basically doomed to be a bad guy because of his emotions! I saw someone on Twitter predict that the adorable baby will turn evil, à la Darth Vader! Bro, what?!
I worry about George Lucas for coming up with this insane mythology, where goodness means being able to detach yourself from others. Of course emotions are hard and scary, and lots of people have done bad things out of fear and anger. But lots of people have also done bad things because they were shoving their fear and anger as far down as humanly possible. Acting like being afraid or mad is a path toward villainy is so obviously bad I am struggling to not just write, “AHHHHHHH” for a whole paragraph. I just want to send all Jedi to talk therapy to work through their junk.
In the world of Star Wars, loving people makes you a bad person, incapable of joining the elite Jedi! That’s so silly! I know this is a movie/TV/book/comic book series about space wizards, but I need the human psychology to make a lick of sense here. And of course it isn’t consistent — Star Wars wants us to root for many relationships, until it suddenly tells us they’re bad.
Last year, a cartoonist I really like, Faith Erin Hicks, made this great short little comic about Anakin and the story from his perspective as a former slave who’s ostensibly freed by the Jedi, but the Jedi don’t care about his mother, who’s still enslaved. Anakin’s love for his mother is supposed to be a weakness ion the Star Wars world, when clearly and obviously it’s a strength!
I’m just disappointed all this Jedi nonsense got into my Baby Yoda Show. Baby Yoda and hot dad Mando don’t have to save the universe. I just want them to carve an OK life for themselves amid the galaxy’s chaos. That’s all any of us are trying to do.