“It’s all the time an honor to get to witness something or anybody remodel into the Drive,” younger padawan Jecki Lon tells Osha in The Acolyte’s fourth episode, maybe getting 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 Drive. However even with this transient second of perception right into a Jedi’s perspective on loss of life, 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 way of the jungles of Khofar leaving solely Sol, Mae, and Osha standing, there’s an fascinating 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—study 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2 Jedi closest to them from the carnage of the evening earlier than: the crumpled types of Yord, one in every of Osha’s outdated pals when she was nonetheless with the Jedi; and Jecki, Sol’s personal padawan learner.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 depart, 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 depart the our bodies of those individuals he cared about, who he simply watched get brutally minimize down, to rot on a distant world? Certain there’s some practicalities to consider—there’s like eight our bodies to recuperate, together with a Wookiee, and solely two of them, they’re utterly 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 complete complicated rigmarole on attachment, the concept that Sol would depart Yord and Jecki’s our bodies like that just about tore me up greater than watching them get acquired did. I feel the Jedi Order could be understanding partly in the event you at the very least recovered the physique of a kid, Sol! The kid in your care as a Jedi Grasp!
The Jedi have all the time had an interesting relationship with loss of life—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 with the ability to watch a being remodel into the dwelling Drive as beings themselves deeply linked to it. It’s that connection that finally permits a few of them to transcend even past that second of transformation and manifest as a spirit, a Jedi artwork so uncommon and exquisite, 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 type that is still after loss of life we see a number of occasions within the saga that feels contrasted to the concept of merely abandoning a physique to extra naturally turn into one with the Drive. We see a number of Jedi burial ceremonies within the Star Wars canon, cremations of the bodily type that at the very least give a way of respect to the physique that is still after an individual’s spirit has turn into one with the Drive. 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 related cremation ceremonies, indicating that even with the modified circumstances and context of the battle bringing much more lifeless Jedi with it, these rites have been nonetheless performed, indicating there was nonetheless some degree of reverence for the physique even with acknowledgement of the spirit’s separation.
Who is aware of, possibly it truly is only a spur-of-the-moment necessity, albeit a painful one; possibly on this week’s Acolyte or some future episode after Sol stories to the Order we’ll see a full restoration group despatched to Khofar to do what he couldn’t. In spite of everything, now we have seen glimpses of as-yet-unbroadcast scenes of Vernestra Rwoh on jungle planet with different Jedi that appears rather a lot like Khofar—though these are scenes the place she wields her purple light-whip, so possibly 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 saved 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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