Star Wars Ep III: Clash of the Heroes: The End of the Sith Dream on Mustafar
How Sidious' Hopes came crashing to an end
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for helping out with some Star Wars discussions and about the importance of details in the construction of all Star Wars related content. Do check out his substack, he’s a brilliant writer and podcaster, seriously check him out as he’s a great Star Wars commentator.Dreams’ are fragile things. Anyone who has ever dreamt a dream and had to struggle for it, and seen it broken before him, can attest to the fact that when it all shatters around him to how tough it can be.
And the thing is that in Star Wars at the end of the third episode, everyone’s dreams come crashing to an end.
First there’s Padme’s foolish hopes that she could tame the darkness in Anakin. She knew that that darkness had compelled him to butcher Sand People, that Anakin had feared it and wished it gone. She had nourished it, had fed it and had been drawn to it sexually and loved it, yet the realization of just how terrible it could be was a moment of shock. It shattered her.
She reports to Darth Vader all that Obi-Wan has told her, speaking like a child trying to take comfort with her parent. In a way, where Bariss Offee Anakin’s closest female bond in the Clone Wars had been a mental and Jedi equal, Padme was mentally nowhere near his level. She was always just arm candy, and it was the image of her from when he was 9 years old that Anakin had loved. Had he been made to live with her without the Clone Wars going on, it is a known fact he’d have gotten bored and likely would have broken up with her (something that would have destroyed Palps’ hopes to turn him).
Padme though is told that Obi-Wan is trying to turn her against him, she begins to realize what has happened. And reports all else that Obi-Wan told her, and Darth Vader listens intently.
The trouble is that she could not reach him. Padme lacks the will (and brains) to accomplish what her genius, forceful son later would.
Here’s the actual dialogue where he warns her; ANAKIN: I don't want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don't you turn against me!
The threat is explicit, the savagery barely hidden. All know what he is capable of. All save Padme. She pleads with him one more time, and it doesn’t work.
What is so interesting is when Vader calls her a liar, and says she brought Obi-Wan there to kill him: PADME: NO! Anakin. I swear ... I ...
Interesting. It is also mentioned in the Ep 3 novel she feels betrayed by Obi-Wan, angry with him. It is interesting that she should blame him and kind of wish to pass the buck onto him.
Padme is deep down a strange character. Usually portrayed as good, she is however at her core a politician who fanned the flames of Darth Vader, and justified his crimes multiple times and sought to live in a fairy-tale whilst half the Galaxy burnt. In a lot of ways she’s a fool, but in a lot of other ways she’s a dangerous one.
In recent days I’ve begun to think her not a heroic female like Leia, but a ‘temptress’ one who dilutes Anakin’s sense of obligation, his loyalty to his father Obi-Wan’s teachings and question whether it was Anakin she loved. She holds onto the necklace he gave her in death, so that at the end she realizes what she did to him, yet it was never him that she felt such passion for but Vader.
We must remember that whenever Anakin behaved honourably, and with dignity or confessed his feelings in an earnest manner she pulled back. When he discussed politics and defended a military dictatorship, when he mentioned butchering the Sand People and such she reaches out. And in the Expanded Universe, when let’s say his second mother figure dies and Obi-Wan is bereft at the death of Siri, where does Anakin go? Does he go to comfort his father, or does he bed Padme?
In this way while she was not cognizant of what she was doing, she certainly has a part in corrupting Anakin Skywalker. And she did so knowing that it was dangerous for him to be self-indulgent, to be neglectful of others, to revel in anger and hatred, knowing that Anakin himself FEARED that side of him. Yet she shushed him, and took no interest.
This is interesting, but then when she saw the towering dark figure before her, she realizes too late what she has done. In a way, Padme birthed Vader before she ever birthed her twins, and she did so with Palpatine in a spiritual sense at the expense of Anakin Skywalker. This is why Padme could never have redeemed Anakin. She didn’t know him. She didn’t even like him if we’re being honest. In this case it is a case of ‘nice guys finish last’, Siri loved Obi-Wan because he was a nice guy. Tahl loved Qui-Gon because he was good. Leia loves the good in Han, the dangerous side interestingly kind of bores her. In the Courtship of Princess Leia, it is shown that after a time she began to lose interest in the crazy antics and wanted Han to commit to her (he did).
Yet Padme is different. Raised the spoiled daughter of a nobleman, she had all the stability and wealth and popularity one could possibly want. She lives the feminist dream. A nice, stable guy like Pablo courts her, but she loses interest in him, then comes Anakin and she shows as little interest in him as she does Pablo. Sure she enjoys a kiss or two, but it’s just harmless flirting and fun.
But then there’s Vader… violent, unstable and full of hatred, he excites her. Vader however needs to dominate as he’s a conqueror and a brute. And of course perhaps he’s the one who could finally dominate her and excite her. Trouble is a chained beast once released from its chain is rarely something that one can civilize, one can transform and tame. This isn’t Hades or the Beast who long for love, Vader has no need for love as she defines it.
So Padme fails.
Next up is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Darth Vader was a monster. This much he could see from the very beginning when he was Qui-Gon’s Padawan. It was this shadow that unnerved Mace and Obi-Wan.
Yet Anakin, the boy full of dreams and lonely without his mother and grandfather, whom Obi-Wan comforted and took into his arms to cry a thousand times. The boy he raised to manhood, whom he failed several times and then learnt to properly help up and whom he had doted upon, yet he was utterly unprepared to train (as he mentions in the Ep 3 video game), was gone now.
Murdered by a combination of Palpatine, Padme and Darth Vader. The first two had been entrusted with Obi-Wan’s second born (as Ferus Olin was in some ways his first born, Ferus is Anakin’s rival from the novels and Siri Tachi’s Padawan), and he had hoped they might treasure him. They didn’t.
In away his anger and bitterness is natural. It was why he wished to go kill Palpatine. And to an extent, it is highly possible he could have pulled it off. But he would have died. Yoda for his part could not have struck Vader dead, as Vader would have risen to the occasion and slain him. So it was necessary that Obi-Wan fight and defeat Darth Vader.
At the sight of Obi-Wan, Darth Vader lashes out against Padme. Choking her, and holding her aloft with the Force.
Told to release her he does. And this is interesting. Even Darth Vader shrinks before Obi-Wan when he uses his ‘Dad’ voice. His fury such that Vader balks and backs away from properly slaying Padme.
He then does something that Anakin quite honestly stopped doing in the books when he was a teenager; he pouts and complains.
DARTH VADER: You turned her against me!
This is an irrational accusation that makes little sense. How could Obi-Wan do any such thing when it is Vader who assaulted her, and turned her against him. It was his brutality against the younglings his sadism that turned her stomach. Being faced with the wicked bloodlust of the young Sith Lord frightened her.
Obi-Wan stares for quite some time at the unconscious Padme. He had helped cover up the affair for 3 years, because neither Padme nor Anakin/Vader were particularly competent at covering their tracks. Alarmed to have seen such cruelty shown to one Vader is supposed to love, this misdeed is one that is beyond Obi-Wan.
A dangerous man true, as no good man is safe by his very nature. Obi-Wan had always however dealt as gently as he could with his the love of his own life Siri Tachi, and had always dealt fairly with her. Never able to bring himself to harm her, he cannot believe any man could claim to love another and yet try to murder her outright.
Like Padme he can sense that there is a thread of light within Vader, yet it is at this moment that Obi-Wan stops believing her can reach it and turns upon Vader.
It is also the moment when both his and Vader’s dreams shatter.
OBI-WAN: You have done that yourself.
VADER: You will not take her from me!
This is the exchange that tears father and son apart. On Vader’s end his dream of raising his children by Padme with Obi-Wan, with the two of them ruling as father and son over the Galaxy after Vader had disposed of Palpatine is over (this fantasy of Vader’s is taken from the Episode 3 novel).
Obi-Wan’s dream of raising his boy to be an upright man is gone. In his place stands a monster.
The accusation that Obi-Wan wishes to take Padme and the children she contains, the twins he longs to see born, Vader is flinging everything at Obi-Wan who is amazed at the madness that has gripped the slayer of his son.
OBI-WAN: Your anger and your lust for power have already done that.
Very true.
OBI-WAN: (continuing) You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind until now . . . until now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.
Here Obi-Wan points out the truth that Vader has allowed his mind to become twisted with hatred and lust for power.
Anakin would never have done what Palpatine wanted, but as he had been under the political tutelage of the Chancellor for a number of years he was vulnerable. One can compare it to a violation by any authority figure, with Vader’s way of thinking, his paranoia a twisting of how Anakin should think.
The trouble is that he’s become a fanatic. And as all know fanatics tend not to think all too clearly.
VADER: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new Empire.
Let’s unpack this statement.
First; Vader doesn’t want Obi-Wan lecturing him. He’s weary of Obi-Wan playing the Master, because he’s chosen for his Master Palpatine.
To be honest, you cannot lead a man who doesn’t want freedom to freedom. In a way the chains that bind his mind and soul, are ones he must break through. Freedom at times is a choice one that an individual must make.
The sad thing about Anakin is that as a child he was a slave, and as an adult one can suppose that not having choices, and having to do as told was a comfort to him so that he chose happily and willingly to be once more a slave.
The question remains though, who began him on this path? Anakin himself? Watto? Padme? Palpatine? All of them? Obi-Wan offers freedom. Anakin chooses in place of freedom liberation from freedom.
What do I mean? Liberation is about liberating oneself from previous mores and restrictions. Freedom is about the power to act freely as one wants or to speak or think without restriction. Typically in our ‘Post-Abroath’ (Abroath Abbey Charter) world most of us just want the freedom to live our lives in peace. This is a noble ideal, but liberation from this notion means well slavery.
Liberation from Freedom, can only mean to destroy one’s chains’ to it, to liberate oneself from previous moral mores and notions.
For Anakin liberation from freedom means to seek slavery once more, to be allowed to satisfy his base desires and instincts and murder, destroy and ultimately crush all those he hates (which is a lot of people).
He seeks liberation from the ‘lies of the Jedi’. But the Jedi never lied to him, so what he seeks is liberation, illumination away from something that doesn’t exist. This is a double negative in a way, so he seeks to move away from the light of Truth, away from the ‘reality’ one could say of being a Jedi, away from helping others, away from having the cumbersome responsibility of freedom.
Freedom is a tough thing to live up to, ask anyone who has properly enjoyed it from the likes of Robert Bruce, to Jesus, to Jehanne D’Arc to the likes of many figures from the 17th to 20th centuries. It takes work, and needs constant safeguarding.
By turning away from the truth and claiming it to be lies, Anakin has comported himself as irresponsibly as any man could. He has also thrown away the sacrifices of his mother Shmi, selecting for himself the slavery she died so that he might not suffer it. She wished only for him to enjoy the freedom she never fully tasted until she met Cliegg Lars, and yet Vader prefers to enchain himself. Why? Because it is comforting. It is what he knows. Freedom takes constant vigilance and responsibility.
Freedom would demand that he be vigilant regarding the sort of woman he selects for his children that they might have the sort of love and care he had as a child thanks to Shmi and Siri. He must be as doting, as kind and as true as Obi-Wan was a father to him. This is hard work, and it isn’t always fun. So Vader turns away from it, rejects it and calls it lies.
He claims to not fear the Dark Side. Yes some might say Jedi shouldn’t know fear, but to an extent they ought to fear the consequences it could bring about, and fear it even as they should scorn the Dark Side.
Why scorn it? Because it is the shadow. It is the lesser of the Light. If one makes the comparison let us say to the idea of a bright light-bulb casting light upon a room, and that light is the Light Side, what is the Dark Side but the shadows in the corners? So which is stronger? The Light obviously.
Interesting fun fact; in the whole of the Expanded Universe, the Dark Side has never overpowered the Light. Naga Sadow was beaten and fled, Freedon Nadd ruled over a single planet until he couldn’t, Exar Kun split the Order after Odan-Urr’s death true, but he was defeated and overpowered.
What of Malak? He was overpowered by Revan after Revan turned to the light. What of Sion, Atris/Traya & Nihilus and the Cult of Freedon Nadd? All overpowered by a couple of Light-Siders, when the lot of them had decades of experience and training and such above them.
Then there’s the New Sith Wars, where the Jedi conquered the Sith, though the Sith had the upper hand for the most part throughout the history of the 1000 years of warfare.
What is more is that the Sith have never won a single war, have never properly beaten a Jedi Knight in battle when it was time for a final battle. It is fascinating that always the Jedi triumph, and why is that? Well it is because the Sith rely on the shadow and the Jedi the fullness of the Light.
What is more is that the Jedi tend to be able to think clearly, focus in on every detail and use their surroundings, their situation and everything of the world around and within themselves to conquer the Sith, who is usually fighting like a slavering beast, only able to focus on brute force and little else.
As to the proclamation that Vader now commands an Empire and that he has brought peace, justice and security to it, this is so false that it is farcical. True it is his Empire, but rulership is often a lonely affair and more of a prison than a truly free affair.
Peace? What peace? All that Vader has done is make martyrs of the CIS leaders, with a few of the survivors as shown in Battlefront II simply turning on the Droid-Factories once more on, which would require Vader to fight damn hard to quash a huge CIS resurgence of sorts.
After that he has an endless war against rebellion after rebellion until ultimately the Emperor’s favourite toy the Death Star is destroyed, at which time the war starts in earnest.
Justice? There is none where hatred is allowed to prevail, and lies and cruelty.
As to security? For whom? It is doubtful there is any under an authoritarian government, so that what Vader has done is upset any and all forms of security the Galaxy might otherwise have enjoyed in the aftermath of the defeat of the CIS.
And this is what Obi-Wan questions. He reacts with scorn at the notion of ‘Vader’s new Empire’, to which Vader issues an immediate threat to kill him.
OBI-WAN: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic ... to democracy!!!
What of this line? What Obi-Wan holds up is the Republic, and the Jedi Order. However Vader has become so subverted during his quest to ‘rescue the Republic’ that he now holds it in utter contempt, a pretty funny thing if one actually thinks about it.
The trouble for him is that he’s dealing with a madman, and as reasonable as Obi-Wan’s argument is, that he can’t side with Vader due to prior oaths and loyalty to the traditional form of government the Galaxy has enjoyed for 30,000 to 35,000 or so years or so might make sense to us but to Vader it doesn’t.
Obi-Wan is shaken when Vader responds darkly, no longer interested in debating with him.
VADER: If you're not with me, you're my enemy.
Ouch. This one is the most fanatical line Vader possibly ever utters in the whole of the Saga. It is one that Obi-Wan struggles wholeheartedly with.
The notion that if you don’t mindlessly agree with him, you’re his enemy, is one that in this age has become quite common sadly. There’s a whole retinue of people who unironically talk like this, and react in this manner to the slightest disagreement.
It is sad, and were they to be given the kind of power Vader enjoys it is hard not to see that they would react the same way.
Darth Vader regards the whole of those who might disagree wtih him as his enemy. Make no mistake though that, Anakin didn’t mind or care much about disagreement, to him you disagree with him, whoopdie-doo (as seen in Ep 2). He didn’t mind others’ opinions or about politics, he honestly didn’t. He just wanted to be left alone to help people.
Vader though cares a great deal about your opinion because he’s thin-skinned and is of the opinion he ought to be allowed to dictate to you his and punish you should you disagree.
He’s not a good person by any stretch of the imagination.
OBI-WAN: Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.
Now a lot of people have joked about this line being an absolute. To an extent. But we know from having observed Obi-Wan he’s a fair-minded person. He’s not someone who deals in absolutes. So his statement isn’t completely one.
There’s nuance to it. But the mockery and refusal to deal with it, and look at it honestly is a sign of how subverted people have become. Only fanatics, only the wicked deal in absolutes. This is not an absolute but a fact.
So what Obi has said is a fact. And if it is a fact, and not an absolute that means the joke has no ‘raison d’etre'. It is little more than an infantile mockery of the Truth. And why not mock it? Why should anything be sacred, why should petty facts get in the way of laughter? Because mockery of the important leads to taking that stuff for granted, and taking good things for granted is the first step towards throwing it away and that leads to selecting slavery and to throw away what the ancestors sacrificed for you.
This is what Darth Vader did in Star Wars Ep 3.
Obi-Wan is stating not an absolute therefore but a fact. He is relating an observation of the Truth. He cannot lie as a Jedi, and therefore must deal in truth and facts.
The second part of his statement is him stating his duty. This is also fact. He will do what he must. But what must he do? Must he kill Vader? Maybe. But he will do what he must we know to defend the Galaxy, to defend others from Vader, to protect himself and to protect his people from further persecution.
It is therefore a noble statement, if one said with equal parts vulnerability and evenness. He doesn’t like what he must do, but knows he cannot shrink from it.
And Vader tells him he will ‘try’. And remember that bit about ‘Trying versus doing?’ from Ep 5? Well Vader just mocked that bit of philosophy.
Because whether either of them know it or not; Obi-Wan just said something prescient; he will do what he must. Not as a maybe but as a fact.
Implying he will win. By resorting to mockery, Vader doesn’t deny it. This means he recognizes on some level Obi-Wan will succeed, and all that’s left is to seethe and ridicule it.
That said, internally Vader’s gonna be struggling with Anakin, as Anakin has no wish to see Obi-Wan dead, even as Vader must try to kill Obi-Wan. On Obi-Wan’s end he is full of doubt, fears what he must do and has good reason to feel utterly crushed.
What is so interesting is that as the Battle of Mustafar rages, and the dreams of Amidala, Kenobi, Skywalker and Vader all lie in pieces, along with those of Jinn, Yoda, Dooku and many others soon Palpatine’s dreams and hopes will be left in tatters and the shattered glass that once composed them strewn all about the grounds of Mustafar.
Hoo boy, This is one doozy of an article. I'm going to have to read it a few times to digest all the thoughts in here.
My biggest grief against the Jedi has always been that line about absolutes. Is there not good? Evil? Are these concepts not absolutes or, to the Jedi at least, are grey areas fine?
I've never heard such an indictment of Anakin and Padme's relationship, but it's true. Their relationship was full of passion and excitement which can feel intoxicating but may not be healthy for either person. They were young and immature. No one in their positions should have entertained that type of relationship, even if the attraction is understandable.
There's no way it would have been sustainable either, because how could someone like Padme, a senator and former queen be both single and pregnant with no one knowing who the father was? Not exactly beneficial to her political career!