“It’s at all times an honor to get to witness something or anybody rework into the Pressure,” younger padawan Jecki Lon tells Osha in The Acolyte’s fourth episode, maybe making ready us all for the carnage that was to come back only a week later in its fifth, leaving a lot of people reworking into the Pressure. However even with this transient second of perception right into a Jedi’s perspective on dying, there’s one factor that’s nonetheless haunted me greater than something about The Acolyte’s bloodbath final week.
After the Stranger has carved his way by means of the jungles of Khofar leaving solely Sol, Mae, and Osha standing, there’s an attention-grabbing beat within the climax of The Acolyte’s fifth episode, “Night time.” Given an opportunity to flee the phobia after the Stranger is carried away into the depths of the forests by a swarm of Umbramoths, Sol and Osha—unbeknownst to him, really Mae, now disguised as her twin sister—look at the fallen our bodies of the 2 Jedi closest to them from the carnage of the evening earlier than: the crumpled types of Yord, one in all Osha’s outdated buddies when she was nonetheless with the Jedi; and Jecki, Sol’s personal padawan learner. It’s only a quiet second between the 2 of them, and earlier than Sol tells “Osha” in a rush that they’ve to go away, marching again out of the forest and to their ship.
Within the second, it struck me as one thing odd, even with that prior dialog between Jecki and the precise Osha within the earlier episode. Would Sol actually go away the our bodies of those folks he cared about, who he simply watched get brutally lower down, to rot on a distant world? Certain there’s some practicalities to think about—there’s like eight our bodies to recuperate, together with a Wookiee, and solely two of them, they’re fully exhausted by the whole lot they’ve simply needed to endure, they usually don’t know how lengthy or if the Stranger will return to complete them off. Hell, we the viewers see that the Stranger does certainly return to the scene of his battle, stepping over Jecki’s lifeless physique to recuperate his cortosis helmet. However even then, and even with the Jedi’s entire complicated rigmarole on attachment, the concept Sol would depart Yord and Jecki’s our bodies like that just about tore me up greater than watching them get bought did. I feel the Jedi Order can be understanding partly if you happen to no less than recovered the physique of a kid, Sol! The kid in your care as a Jedi Grasp!
The Jedi have at all times had an interesting relationship with dying—on the one hand, accepting and virtually distant to the grief of it, understanding that, as Jecki instructed Osha, that they need to embrace and revere having the ability to watch a being rework into the dwelling Pressure as beings themselves deeply linked to it. It’s that connection that ultimately permits a few of them to transcend even past that second of transformation and manifest as a spirit, a Jedi artwork so uncommon and delightful, unmatched by the machinations and alchemies of the darkish aspect, that it turns into one thing of a consolation in and of itself.
However on the opposite, there’s a kind of respect to the bodily kind that continues to be after dying we see a number of instances within the saga that feels contrasted to the concept of merely abandoning a physique to extra naturally turn into one with the Pressure. We see a number of Jedi burial ceremonies within the Star Wars canon, cremations of the bodily kind that no less than give a way of respect to the physique that continues to be after an individual’s spirit has turn into one with the Pressure. Within the films, there’s clearly Qui-Gon’s funeral on Naboo, and Luke burning his father’s physique on Endor. Even in wartime throughout The Clone Wars, we nonetheless noticed the Order conducting comparable cremation ceremonies, indicating that even with the modified circumstances and context of the battle bringing much more useless Jedi with it, these rites had been nonetheless performed, indicating there was nonetheless some stage of reverence for the physique even with acknowledgement of the spirit’s separation.
Who is aware of, perhaps it truly is only a spur-of-the-moment necessity, albeit a painful one; perhaps on this week’s Acolyte or some future episode after Sol reviews to the Order we’ll see a full restoration staff despatched to Khofar to do what he couldn’t. In spite of everything, we’ve got seen glimpses of as-yet-unbroadcast scenes of Vernestra Rwoh on jungle planet with different Jedi that appears lots like Khofar—though these are scenes the place she wields her purple light-whip, so perhaps it’s a restoration mission that turns into one thing extra, if that’s the case. But when it isn’t, and the Jedi that fell to the Stranger are destined to decompose, the circumstances of their deaths stored hidden by the Order’s hubris? That’s maybe a darker destiny than any of the grim methods the Sith killed them within the first place.
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