~ Warning: Potential SPOILERS may be contained!
The new Star Wars Episode VIII (8) is finally released.
All the fans are out there looking for a room to watch the new part of the saga and they will not be disappointed. The new movie is a quality addition to the Star Wars (SW) universe and delivers to the promises. Space chases, lightsaber battles (although not exactly with other… lightsabers), key characters dying, intense… spiritual battles, cool Jedi tricks which will make you gape in awe, the return of Yoda (OK, a Jedi is never really “gone”) and many cool funny moments. And the cherry on top: The promise for a new generation of young Jedi…
All in all the movie seems to move the story forward, but yet again it gives intense hints of something not many people anticipated: That the story does not move forward at all. Because it cannot. That the story is a story of balance, which is always there. From the beginning to the end, the universe will always be in an equilibrium no matter what Luke, Rey, Princess Leia or Kylo Ren do.
When Rey finds Luke and tries to convince him that the universe needs him, Luke at once dismisses any titles of grandeur. He does not want to be a myth. He knows the Jedi are flawed. He – as their leader once – most of all. He explains that there is no need to call for him especially. Rey does insist but in the course of action she does learn that the Force is nothing more than a field which penetrates everything and is interconnected to the balance penetrating the whole nature.
Where there is light, there is darkness.
Where there is good, there is evil.
Luke failed in many aspects. He gathered 13 students (rings a bell?) but one of them betrayed him; although not before Luke himself betrayed his student. The temple was destroyed (rings any bell?) and the darkness started to spread. At the end Luke did return. Only to sacrifice himself (rings any bell?) for the Rebellion to survive.
The key again is balance. Death is the seed for new creation. Sacrifice is the seed for eternal life. As in the philosophy of Christianity, the Star Wars saga is not a story which moves forward. It is a story where humans try to move backward and reconnect with what they once knew but they have now forgotten. People who see light and darkness instead of just accepting the cosmos and looking at the universal balance of everything in everything. Snoke did die. Only to give way to a new Supreme Leader. Luke did fight. Only to die. And give hope for the new fighters of the Rebellion – who will no question die someday. Rey did start to discover her potential. Only to balance the darkness rising from the other side.
At the end there will be no heroes. At the end we will just have new fights. And new islands of peace between them. With new heroes. With new leaders and new followers. At the end what one must seek from a Star Wars movie is not the resolution of something happening. But the epic journey of the cosmos that that equilibrium everyone seeks. A journey during which the protagonists’ only purpose is to discover “their place in the story”, as Rey so honestly craves for.
Seek not for grandeur. See balance.
See not for completeness. Seek the void.
Seek not the next episode. Embrace the ones you’ve seen already.
Because where there is emptiness, you feel complete…
The cosmos does not change. Everything is One.
From the times of Grand Moff Tarkin, to the days of Leader Snoke.
From the times of Darth Vader, to the days of Ben Solo.
From the days of Luke, to the days of Rey.
The world is not light. Not darkness either.
It just Is.