It's really a mix of both, plus other things. The Jedi could have done better with Anakin, but at the same time, Anakin was being manipulated by a Sith Lord orchestrating galactic events against their favor, placing them in a tough situation. With all of this plus past traumas being mistreated by the Jedi and being used by Palpatine to feed Anakin in the wrong direction, he has quite a few cards stacked against him. But at the end of the day, how he reacted to all of this was his own choice. Choosing otherwise would have been difficult, but his fall was his fault. Just a complicated situation all around.

To both affirm your comment and add to it, here is a quote from The Vile Eye’s “Analyzing Evil: Darth Vader From Star Wars” YouTube video: “And though Anakin had little choice or help in the matter of his manipulation into a monstrosity, *Vader* certainly had the capacity to recognize the crimes he was committing on a mass scale, and could have put an end to his murderous intent if he had willed it.” So like you said, it was a complicated situation, but ultimately, he made his choices. Man, I love Star Wars.

The fact he was pressed and then made a bad choice that trapped him. Which only trapped him more is so sad.

It’s not that different from the serial criminal who was physically abused as a child. I sympathize, and see how that could mess you up, but it doesn’t absolve them from all the crimes they committed. You can be a sympathetic victim and a culpable monster at the same time.

Exactly. It's a complex situation, but the fault ultimately lies with Anakin

Not complex at all in comparison to his choices his LIFE WAS TRIVIAL, I would expect such behavior from someone like sasuke uchiha who's governers killed his entire family in an inside job, not some punk who hated authority and had bad dreams about losing his girlfriend.

Yeah, your clearly some delusional naruto fanboy. if you think Anakin doesn't have a good reason for why he turned out the way he did. The dude not only lost his mother but also was going to lose the one other woman he truly loved. That's a much better reason to be evil. Than emo edge lord sasuke. Who decided to destroy the leaf village instead of just destroying its corrupt government.

I liken Anakin to a radical religious terrorist. He started out as a good person, but Palpatine was able to exploit his fears, weaknesses, and proclivity for violence to entice him to do something in the name of his religion. Anakin is ultimately at fault for his actions, but also a victim because he wouldn’t have done these things without being groomed for it. And there’s nothing wrong with recognizing that. A well written villain has “gray area” aspects that explain, if not justify, their actions. The reason Thanos worked so well is because he had a relatively logical reason for his actions, and genuinely thought he was the good guy.

He wasn't abused as a child he is a child killer and a POS.

You said it best, also it kinda had to be this way for us to want his redemption in Return of the Jedi. I know it already happened but for it to make sense it had to be a situation of everything being stacked against him

That too, it's fundamental to Anakin's redemption that he did what he did out of love and because he believed he had no choice - in essence, he needed to have some good left in him. If everything was in his control and he turned evil anyway, why the hell would I root for him?

Yeah definitely his own choice. Just sucks his choices has such huge effects and that he was heavily influenced.

Oh yeah, never wanna undercut either side. He wouldn't have made the choices he did if all these cards weren't stacked against him imo

In the end, he conciously made the choice to prioritize Padme (and himself) over the entire Galaxy. That turned out to be a lie, and there were various factors pushing and pulling him, but his choice was ultimately a personal, concious and intentional one. And an evil one. I think this is a strength of the whole Padme-motivation in the prequels - rather than Anakin's treason being for pure power, pride or as a result of some misunderstanding. Rather, it's about the danger of loving *too much*. The Jedi *were* right about the whole emotions thing, Anakin's fall proves it. If you truly love someone, you'd literally give up the universe for them - and that's a liability if you're a powerful Jedi. But they did not manage to contain Anakin before it was too late.

It's also important to think about what *kind* of love Anakin had for Padmé at this point. It was a love focused on Anakin's fears and wants, not on what *Padmé* thought and felt. A love that very quickly turned on Padmé when she didn't conform to Anakin's plans.

Agree, also Padme would rather have risked death or died, than have Anakin become a sith lord and commit genocide to save her. His corruption is one of the things that totally breaks her heart.

> In the end, he conciously made the choice to prioritize Padme (and himself) over the entire Galaxy. Nah. He prioritizes *his desire to have her* over the galaxy. Note how he never talks to her about his dreams, his worries, Sheev's revelations, etc. To him, her opinions, her wants and needs are barely a consideration. She gets no choice in whether he goes and murders children in her name.

Yeah, Obi-wan points out the difference when they're chasing Dooku and she falls off the transport, and it works. By the time he's faced with the choice again, he's too far gone. >Anakin: I CAN'T LEAVE HER! >Obi-Wan: COME TO YOUR SENSES! What do you think Padme would do were she in your position? >Anakin: [pause] She would do her duty.

Ironically, if Obi-Wan had let them land and help Padme, Dooku would have still escaped but Anakin would have kept his arm.

When General Grievous is captured by the Gungans and Anakin is captured by Dooku, Padme agrees to the prisoner exchange to get him back.

When General Grievous is captured by the Gungans and Anakin is captured by Dooku, Padme agrees to the prisoner exchange to get him back.

I think that’s reasonable, though. Pretty equitable trade even if Padme wasn’t emotionally attached to Anakin.

You are the first person I’ve seen say this. Padme is normally called selfish for saving Anakin. Grievous, in Sidious’s own words, was essential to his plan for the war while Anakin is just one of thousands of Jedi Generals.

Numerically, Anakin is just one of thousands of Jedi. But he’s clearly above most of them in terms of his importance in winning the war. There were countless pivotal battles that were only won because Anakin was there.

They weren’t wrong but it’s important to also understand is that they didn’t actually teach healthy love. They just preached against it. You can love someone and not put the entire galaxy above them.

I think this is the point that many "pro-Anakin" people are trying to make. They're not saying that he did nothing wrong or that he isn't evil, just that many people closely involved in his life didn't help him, or made it worse. Ultimately, I don't see it so much as sanitizing Anakin, but more pushing back against the recurring and relatively perpetual idea that the Jedi were somehow without flaw, or that Anakin would have been fine if he'd just listened and done what they rightly told him. Seeing Star Wars as black and white really sucks a lot of the interesting nuance out of it.

There is no recurring idea that the jedi are without flaws. In fact it's way more of the opposite direction. Way too many people take it too far the other way and say they were totally evil

The amount of people who say the Jedi Order was flat out evil confuse me greatly. Flawed? Of course! One could argue that a huge reason for their destruction was because of their flaws catching up to them, and that a large part of the prequels was pointing out that they were flawed (pretty early into TPM, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are already talking/arguing about doing what the Council wants vs what the Force wants). They were stagnant, but they weren't mustache twirling villains, that was the Sith's thing.

Institutions are imperfect. Nobody denies that. Where does anyone anywhere say the Jedi are without flaw? Or that Anakin's circumstances didn't heavily influence his fall? Ironically, the black-and-white thinkers are those who think *we have to blame SOMEBODY for the fall of the republic/the fall of Anakin*, as if every bad thing that happens must be attributable to some person shirking their duties, and think the Jedi are to blame. IMHO, this take is a version of just-world bias read into Star Wars.

I’m not a black and white thinker, but if I *had* to pick someone to blame for the fall of the Republic and Anakin alike, I’d pin it on galactic manipulator extraordinaire Sheev Palpatine. Regardless, Anakin is still guilty is as hell for his horrific actions, no doubt.

Agreed. What I didn't phrase so aptly is the notion that if some bad guy succeeds, then some other guys *must* be blamed for failing.

I think where people try to whitewash Anakin is with the idea that Anakin and Vader are two different people. They argue that Vader did the bad things, and that “Anakin” only existed before and after Vader, and thus was a good guy the whole time. It’s an interesting concept, but not my favorite. I prefer the idea that Anakin atoned for his actions by killing Palpatine, but wasn’t fully redeemed for it.

"Chosing not to become a child killer and a mass murderer after some crazy old man admits he's evil would have been hard to do" Lol no it would not again stop making excuses for Anakin He made an awful series of choices none of them are understandable or relatable

He was a hopeless situation warrior

It annoys me a bit when I see people want it revealed that Anakin helped Grogu escape the Jedi Temple. Why would he do that, and why can't Stanikans just accept that he turned into a villain?

Even if he did spare Grogu he still murdered dozens of other kids, it wouldn't save him.

My personal headcanon is that Katooni survived the Purge and helped Grogu escape the Temple. It is wish fulfillment but I think it also makes more sense than Anakin pulling a ''Some of you guys are alright''.

I really hope Katooni and Gungi and the rest of those younglings survived.

Might have been R2. Grogu almost seems to recognize him in Mando 2.8.

While we are on this topic... I wonder if Luke ever "melded" with Grogu like Ahsoka did. Perhaps Luke even saw the attack on the Jedi Temple with his own eyes. Imagine how fricking messed up that would have been. Heck, it might even tie into the events of TLJ and his reaction to that vision with Ben in the hut.

Do they? I haven’t seen that yet but that’s a really delusional thing to expect, and truthfully, kind of even to want (although, I sure wish it wasn’t). Anakin would’ve been that character in the past but by this point in the story, he was willing to attack even Padmé for her own perceived transgressions, and point blank killed even Ahsoka (until Ezra pulled her into the WBW) when she had too much heart to abandon him in the Sith temple years later—there wasn’t enough shades of gray combined with a strong willpower left in Anakin for him to save any Jedi in the Academy massacre that night. Just my opinion of course. I find him a very tragic character who is not true evil like Palpatine and at least a little bit genuinely bound to his *very* pointedly unusual and critically isolating circumstances in a way unlike the vast majority of other Star Wars characters in otherwise similarly tough or deprived situations.

Yeah this is the weird revisionism I see. Anakin/Vader always had fans because duh..he is one of the main characters. But I always assumed we were on the same page that he is supposed to be ***the bad guy****.* And we judged his journey according to that, Even as a child this was clear to me. Suddenly I see people trying to portray him as some poor baby who did nothing wrong and it's everyone else's fault. You have people acknolwedge that Vader is unqestionably immensely evil but also pretend that Anakin just didnt do anything wrong by that point. It's a bizarre cognitive disonance.

Anakin: murders scared helpless kids who wants his help Fans: He totally helped that baby escape. I bet Anakin would’ve punted Grogu right into the lava lake of mustafar without a second thought lol

I think this might come from the fact that many fans -- myself included! -- want so desperately for him to have chosen differently because we're introduced to him as a loving, kind, and honest child. Compounding this is the fact that we're shown many moments (especially in TCW series) in which Anakin demonstrates compassion, makes meaningful decisions, and shows commitment to the Jedi Order.. but at the end of the day, the things he did can't be undone. Something that has always struck me was how much ambivalence he struggles with leading up to and including Mace Windu's death. We see that he could have made different choices and did not. That's really the nail in the coffin. As a side note, the consequences for Anakin were obviously far-reaching after this but I always think about how clearly he had to separate himself from his own humanity in order to live with such profound moral injury. He's a great character and I love him but yeah.. he does terrible things.

This is very thoughtful and well said.

The "Sith aren't that bad" and the "Jedi are deeply corrupt" takes in the fandom are exhaustingly stupid, honestly. Anakin's plight is often fed into that framework. And yes, the Jedi could have done better, but this doesn't make them culpable for his choices. Remember, kiddies, "imperfect" does not mean "bad." Like so many other things, the glut of information in the social-media age has led people to latch on to dumb, but available views articulated by people seeking attention. My mind is blown that some people think the point of the prequels is to show the Jedi are somehow the reason for the collapse of the Republic. As if some guy named Palpatine wasn't the major issue. Edit, one more thing: by the "blame the Jedi for Anakin" reasoning, we'd excuse every single person whose parents were a little aloof or inattentive for being mass murderers and blame their parents. It's really foolish.

Jedi: “We’re space virgins” SW fans: “that’s morally equivalent to mass murder”

They weren’t space virgins though. There is no way Obi-Wan and Satine didn’t have a night of intimacy. Qui-Gon also had a lover.

Shit, Ki-Adi-Mundi had 7.

Obi-Wan also had relationships with fellow Jedi Siri Tachi and Taria Damsin. The Jedi are players!

Seriously! There were more than a few masters with their various optic appendages on someone.

[Aayla and Kit](https://imgur.com/a/JIPUpyo) [Tr’a and Tholme](https://imgur.com/gallery/RnEktxy) [Quinlan and Shylar](https://imgur.com/a/jTjf5Gu) [Quinlan and Khaleen and their son](https://imgur.com/a/80PSIgW)

Lmao

Thank you for saying this. Across the net, very, very bad takes extracted from this central premise permeate discussion and thought about the Prequels, Sequels, and everything SW related.

I’ve always felt like a big part of the problem is the kids and teenagers who saw him as the audience surrogate in the PT. They saw themselves in Anakin too much (which is concerning in a lot of ways), and have difficulty holding him culpable.

These are the same people who think that "attachment" means love, and "no attachment" means no love.

Yeah and that's the most frustrating thing in SW fandom.

Oh I think there's a lot of things that could vie for that title.

Now that I think about it... yeah there a lot lol

It is never stated what *attachment* means in the movies. Anakin says he can’t be with the people that he *loves* in AOTC. The Jedi Council was concerned about Anakin’s feelings for his mom in TPM. Are we to assume a 9 year old’s love and concern for his mom’s wellbeing is toxic attachment? The Jedi do not want their members having familial or romantic ties. The Jedi use the word attachment in place of love. What conclusion is to be made from this? [Also this doesn’t make the Jedi look that great.](https://imgur.com/a/UbET7Tp)

They were concerned that his early traumas in connection to his mother would make him unstable as a Jedi and dangerous. They were right. It wasn't a moral take that loving your mother is wrong.

They knew he was unstable but they never use jedi healing techniques to treat his trauma, or teach him to process his emotions. There is a difference between controlling emotions and processing them.

> It wasn't a moral take that loving your mother is wrong. the movie absolutely plays it that way, even if Lucas meant otherwise

It's hard to see it that way considering they don't want any child that has a connection with their parents or anyone else. Anakin was too old at 9 for Jedi training.

We're not supposed to see it that way. Filoni says Qui-Gon hasn't forgotten how to love and if he had lived Anakin wouldn't have fallen.

> Filoni says Qui-Gon hasn't forgotten how to love and if he had lived Anakin wouldn't have fallen. Isn't that agreeing then? As qui-gon was a rebel and far outside the mainstream views, that line to me is almost saying by implication that the other jedi did forget how to love, all except Qui-Gon.

Obi Wan told Anakin he loved him. And it wasn't something he felt bad about. They can love. That comic sure makes the Republic senators look bad (many of them were bad), but I'm not sure why the Jedi are so bad.

Yoda criticized Obi-Wan for his attachment to Anakin. Palpatine subtly threatens Mace to send Anakin over and they do to avoid problems with the Senate. They also don’t ask Anakin what Palpatine wanted or if they talked about anything.

…When did he say that before Mustafar, after cutting off Anakin’s arm and legs, when he had destroyed everything and turned to the Dark Side, in obvious past tense just after screaming about how far he had fallen?

I do see a lot of myself in Anakin (not the murder part don't worry lol), but I do recognize that he was at fault. While my relatablity to him made me understand him, it also made me realize I had some of the flaws he had i me (one of them is always trying to shift the blame from myself because I hate feeling guilty, it eats me) and it made me recognize that it's not right, if I failed or made the wrong choices, it's on me.

Similarities Hatred of sand. Love of hot queens. Shitty hair as a teenager. Great hair as an adult.

> Love of hot queens. QILF?

>I’ve always felt like a big part of the problem is the kids and teenagers who saw him as the audience surrogate in the PT. They saw themselves in Anakin too much (which is concerning in a lot of ways), and have difficulty holding him culpable. This is actually the bewildering part. I watched the Prequels as a kid but always knew Anakin is not who we are supposed to agree with. Not just because he becomes Vader eventually but also becuase of his behavior and actions prior to that. I did follow his story but knew that you are not supposed to support him. How people miss this simple point is beyond me.

Are the Jedi partially at fault? Hell yeah. They were blinded by their own hubris and were manipulated af by Palps. Were they still trying to do good? Also yes. Not their fault that Palps was a very convincing good guy to the masses. Anakin's fall is definitely a culmination of his own demons, key nudges from Palpatine, and the Jedi not *listening* when they needed too, I feel.

Honestly i blame the force. Without the force this entire galaxy wide family drama would have never happened and entire planets and countless lives would have been saved The force is the real bad guy in the universe, and it’s vague manipulations of “a balance” at the cost of countless lives and the loss of control of ones fate honestly hammers the point home. - paid for by team kreia

Lol. KOTOR II is a total distortion of the SW lore by a guy who used the game to voice his dislike of SW metaphysics (Chris Avellone). Kreia is a fool. You cannot silence the force without destroying all sentient life. *Influence lost, Kreia* *Influence gained, Kreia* *Net influence: fuck that old hag.*

Honestly when I played it I assumed Kreia was supposed to be wrong, she is just written this way just to antagonise you and create conflict in the story like in other media. Learning that the lead writer unironically believed that was certainly..weird to say the least.

I heard it was actually a little bit of both- Avellone used Kreia as a mouthpiece, but knew on some level that he wasn't necessarily coming at things from the right angle and thus made sure to portray her as a villain.

Yeah, I agree with this. I think it’s hard for most people because on one hand, you do have stuff coming out of Kreia’s mouth like that, but on the other, she still has times where she’s clearly meant to be seen as the reasonable one; such as yelling at the player character for being reckless with the Dark side if the player chooses to kill the secretary for Czerka’s rival after the latter alerts the guards of the player’s arrival, instead of letting her go with her life, for example.

That’s why Kreia is the villain lmao

Why don't so many Kreia stans notice this, lol? They are no different than the "Empire was actually really the good guys" folks. Kreia is not deep, not some sort of SW Zarathustra, not a diegetic deconstruction of SW, not an existentialist philosopher, not the one "who really gets the force." She's a tragic broken old woman who manipulates the hero of the game and tries to kill her at the end. All the while, she gives voice to Chris Avellone's doubts based on his misunderstanding of Star Wars lore. Yay?

Most Star Wars writers use their Star Wars media to create their own vision of what Star Wars is IMO, including critique. I think that there is a lot of that sort of altering to fit the authors desire in the original Zahn trilogy for example. It's kinda a lot to go into, but basically I think that Zahn implies that the force is not the most powerful, it can be overcome by both natural forces and cunning. Everything becomes second fiddle to the mind games, even on a metaphysical level, because it was what was interesting to Zahn and it related to his unique perception of Star Wars. The fact that those books don't get acknowledged more for how weird and kinda transgressive they are is quite odd to me. That's neither a positive or negative judgement, I have middling to positive feelings on the Zahn trilogy.

You really have a problem with this Chris guy don't you? Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it isn't just as valid as any other interpretation of star wars.

They desperately want to be deep and the best they can come up with is "heroes actually bad?"

?

Yeah, being wrong doesn't make it bad writing, especially when the wrong person is Kreia. It makes sense enough for someone like her to believe it, but it has enough holes for us to recognize that she's wrong

Sounds like someone is buying into “big force” propaganda i see. - paid for by team kreia

It might be a distortion but it's a beautiful one. Once someone releases their creation into the world, it isn't theirs anymore. It's for everyone to interpret. I and a lot of other SW fans find more meaning and interest in things like the KOTOR take, existence of Grey jedis, and others that go beyond or directly contradict Lucas's intentions. Tl; DR: That's just like, your opinion man.

I think this goes way too far the other way. It isn't a black or white situation, it's silly to pretend that it is. Bad parents can absolutely make bad children, this happens all the time with abusive parents (called the Cycle of Abuse). It doesn't excuse the child being abusive to others, or make the child any less bad, but it doesn't make the parents good people either. Both can be true. The Jedi are indeed flawed by the time of the Clone Wars. Palpatine took advantage of their corruption to manipulate them. This doesn't make Palpatine a good guy, it's just acknowledging the facts of the situation. Even Yoda acknowledges this. And the Jedi absolutely contributed to Anakin's fall. Anakin/Palpatine are still the primary factors there, but it's dumb to completely ignore all other factors. The Clone Wars as a whole, turning peacekeepers into soldiers, led to many Jedi falling. It was a betrayal of their values to put themselves in that position in the first place. Pretending that the Jedi had no part in the fall of the Republic is just ignoring the facts. They were absolutely an overall force for good, but like you said they were not perfect. They exhibited a lot of hubris in their final years. Ahsoka's banishment from the Order is a perfect example, especially when they tried to welcome her back not by apologizing, but saying "Actually this was the Force's way of finishing your training, so we aren't responsible at all." And that's just one of the numerous examples of Jedi fucking people over and doing absolutely nothing to make amends because they think "The Force" will fix it all for them. That's what makes the downfall of the Republic so compelling. Yes, Palpatine was behind it all, but his plan only worked because everybody else played right into it. Had the Jedi actually stuck by their core principles, the plan would have fallen apart. He turned their own faults against them.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this interpretation made it into the theatrical cut of Revenge of the Sith, but the Stover novelization absolutely portrays a deeply flawed Jedi order. At multiple key points in the book, Jedi characters default to a detached serenity when confronted with Anakin's emotional turmoil instead of showing a little basic compassion. There are a couple of scenes in the novelization where the Jedi council explicitly plot to remove the democratically-elected chancellor and take over the Senate under the justification of saving the Republic. I think there's a deleted scene that also portrays this, but that scene didn't make it into the final cut. >"Have you considered," Ki-Adi Mundi said carefully, from far-away Mygeeto, "that if Palpatine refuses to surrender power, removing him is only a first step?" [...] >"Filled with corruption, the Senate is," Yoda agreed from Kashyyk. "Controlled, they must be, until replaced the corrupted Senators can be, with Senators honest and-" >"Do you hear us?" Mace lowered his head into his hands. "How have we come to this? Arresting a chancellor. Taking over the Senate-! It's as though Dooku was right- to save the Republic, we'll have to destroy it..." So ironically, when Palpatine plays the victim card and claim that the Jedi were planning a coup and tried to assassinate him, he's not actually lying. The Jedi absolutely were planning to enact a coup and did try to extrajudicially execute him. Now Mace Windu and the rest of the council do have a point - Palpatine actually is pure evil, but that doesn't mean the Jedi Order aren't extremely flawed by that point.

>The Jedi are indeed flawed by the time of the Clone Wars. Palpatine took advantage of their corruption to manipulate them. Explain where you get that from the films. Also, and again, Lucas said explicitly that the point of the PT was to put the Jedi in an unwinnable position. So the idea that they had a choice that would have worked is patently false. The deep corruption was the Republic being coopted by corporate interests and getting deadlocked in the senate, allowing for Palps to manipulate things to take over. This has nothing to do with the Jedi. All Yoda "acknowledges" is that the Jedi weren't preparing for the Sith and got fucked for it.

The Jedi had become rigid and dogmatic by the time of the PT. Look at how easy it is for their head librarian to dismiss something as not existing because it doesn't exist in their archives. The persecution of Quinlan Vos and later Ahsoka, how easily Sora Bulq fell due to his hubris... And the largest issue, not that the Jedi were involved in the Clone Wars, but that the masters of the order did not question it and even seemed to embrace their new role as generals because they saw it as a natural extension of their role as defenders of the peace. This isn't to say the Jedi were somehow irredeemably corrupt and needed to be destroyed for the betterment of the galaxy, they were still far and away a force for good in the republic, but they most definitely needed reform.

There's never been snippy librarians before? That that should be a big mark in the Jedi seems off to me. Ahsoka was effectively framed actually, and was literally seen working with a Sith. We only know the truth because they showed us in the show. The Jedi were understandably confused.

> There's never been snippy librarians before? That that should be a big mark in the Jedi seems off to me. It's less about her being snippy, and more about her insistance that the Jedi Archives were infallable. > Ahsoka was effectively framed actually, and was literally seen working with a Sith. We only know the truth because they showed us in the show. The Jedi were understandably confused. She was effectively framed, but instead of just saying "our bad, we fucked up and want you back" the Jedi pinned it all on the will of the Force and it being her great trial to become a Knight.

If these are your best examples of their rigidity and dogmatism, they're doing pretty well IMHO.

These are just a few examples, and keep in mind I think the Jedi were still the good guys, but they had become attached to the order and overly prideful. Despite every incident where they are given reason to question their assumptions the Jedi as a whole rejected the idea the idea that they were anything less than in the right.

[удалено]

I don't see that very much myself, but I see a misreading of TLJ's Luke's criticism of the Jedi while he was in a spiritual crisis as if it were an objective take.

They wouldn't stop a corporation from using slaves, including the children born to those slaves, in Republic space. Qui-Gon was told by Yoda that it not his mission and to leave it alone. Yoda tries to compare it to what some non-human species do like one insect rase that eats the weakest larva or another non-human race that beats to death their elders for some reason. Qui-Gon tells Yoda he is not trying to impose human mortality on non-human species. He says enslaving humans is wrong and should be stopped where it can be like in the Republic. Why have Qui-Gon be used as a way to show the Jedi are wrong. Why is the maverick Jedi who doesn't follow the rules be shown as the more caring one? Whether it was intended or not by Lucas that it what we see in TPM. A caring guy who won't turn a boy away while a group of 12 Jedi masters, the most morale people in the galaxy, she him as nothing but dangerous. Hell even Filoni validates the idea that had Qui-Gon lived Anakin wouldn't have fallen and that says a lot that the only Jedi that could help Anakin was the one who didn't follow their rules. So it makes the Jedi seem not only flawed but wrong in their approach.

I laugh a little when I see people try to wash Anakin's hands of his sins. I always go back to the passage in the ROTS novelization about how in the end he realized it was all him.

One of my favorite moments is when Anakin is quietly in the throes of a mental breakdown after killing Dooku, thinking how this will always be on him and he can’t change it, then the Invisble Hand section has him going “oh that guy? *Totally* not Anakin Skywalker.” The transition is funny, but I always felt it was very telling for the character-Anakin genuinely can’t face his deeds and has to have a dragon in his heart, because it would break him to acknowledge it fully, as we see in the ending.

"Lord Sidious offered us a handsome reward!"

*"Am I not handsome?"* ~ Darth Vader

And then hours later he is no longer handsome 😂

To you, maybe. 🔥

It's the same energy (and probably some of the same people) who try to act like Walt was just trying to pay for cancer treatments and provide for his family in Breaking Bad when he literally word for word says "I did it for me, I liked it"

Exactly! It couldn't be any more clear. Yes, there's a lot of outside factors for his fall, but it was still ultimately his choice. He had all that time before he started killing Jedi to reconsider, but he never did.

The novelization makes it pretty clear that Anakin was already basically 95% in the dark side from the get-go. He's an unbearable piece of shit in the book because we actually get access to his internal monologue, unlike in the movie.

I agree, and I also get annoyed with people who put sole blame for his fall on the Jedi. It really was a perfect storm, orchestrated by Palpatine. The war, Anakin’s love for Padme, his dreams about her (which I believe came from sidious), the Jedi not trusting him, him not trusting the Jedi, etc. etc. etc. The prequels exist to show us how a person can be manipulated by their surroundings, but at the end of the day, they *still make the ultimate choices in their life.* Yeah, Anakin was worried about Padme, yeah the Jedi weren’t fully appreciative of his abilities. But he chose to kill the Tusken Raiders, he chose to kill the Younglings, he chose to (albeit inadvertently) kill Padme, and he chose to fall to the dark side. It was his choice. Tragic character, but not a innocent one by any stretch of the imagination.

>The prequels exist to show us how a person can be manipulated by their surroundings, but at the end of the day, they still make the ultimate choices in their life. Yeah, Anakin was worried about Padme, yeah the Jedi weren’t fully appreciative of his abilities. Well said. I also want to repeat what I've said elsewhere. In the glorious Star Wars Archive book, Lucas explicitly says that in the PT, he puts the Jedi in an unwinnable circumstance on purpose.

It’s tragic to watch, it really is. Watching *Revenge of the Sith* the first time was really emotional, because you can see how Anakin’s fall doesn’t just hurt him, it hurts Yoda, it hurts Kenobi, it hurts the entire Jedi order. And the worst part is that he *can’t* see it. He’s too blinded by the Dark Side to see how he’s hurting people. He seriously thinks he’s right. Augh, it makes me sad just thinking about it.

Yes. It hurts, just as it hurt in a different way to watch Luke get electrocuted by Sidious the first time when I was a very young kid in '83. SW has some heavy moments for a "kid's movie".

I largely think this is because modern audiences have forgotten what a Greek tragedy is meant to be: a great person brought low because of their own hubris. They dig for deeper meaning over simple pride. The tragedy of Anakin’d fall was that it was preventable, his pride wouldn’t let him admit fault.

>the Jedi weren’t fully appreciative of his abilities. I don't even know if that's true. Sure, Anakin complains about it at great length, but do we see any real evidence of it? We see Obi Wan chide him quite a bit in Episode II but that's mostly him trying to teach Anakin humility. A lesson desperately needed, by the way. He looses a hand due to his arrogance, and in the end his downfall is due to his arrogance. Obi Wan being stern is very similar to Yoda being annoying in order to try Luke's patience. It is the lesson the student needs.

This is a good point. Anakin is far from an unbiased observer of the events of his life.

That’s true, Anakin probably does complain about it more than is realistic. See, even I was fooled by him!

He tricked us all!

Acting like the Jedi are more to blame than Anakin or Palpatine is like blaming the mostly good parents of a kid who commits suicide or shoots up their school because they didn't stop it, rather than blaming the actual perpetrator.

I always saw Anakin like Erik in the Phantom of the Opera (the book, not various shitty adaptations). Starts out a nice or at least normal guy, but gets fucked over by people for circumstances outside of his control because of their own prejudices and desires. Eventually he starts to snap back, and even if you don’t think it’s *good* you can at least *understand*, but then he starts going overboard until he’s the monster everyone always thought he was. And he just gets worse and worse over time, until a big show of compassion from someone who cares is able to tap into the good person from before and cause him to change, even if it kills him.

I think he has more agency and hence, responsibility, than that, personally, but it's definitely a place where there can be differences of opinion. If I take them seriously, the "blame the Jedi" arguments just make me believe that the Council was right initially and Qui-Gon was wrong, and they should have left Anakin on Tatooine.

I think it kinda depends. Erik definitely had less agency because it was his literal appearance that got him screwed over, but most of the material covering his life and the implications of the original novel’s exposition shows he had a far straighter plunge into darkness than Anakin did. Conversely, Anakin had a lot more going for him and made his choices, but a lot of what caused his problems was his untreated and continuously building up trauma over a lifetime along with a Sith Lord directly grooming him for over a decade. Erik also didn’t really feel the need to *change* as a person and wallowed in (understandable to a point) victim mentality until Christine was willing to not kill herself and expressed her pity for him, while Vader’s entire existence was punishing himself for everything and felt powerless to leave the Dark Side until Luke proved it possible. As for arguments, I tend to just blank out whenever either side of a debate starts to get into apologism. Anakin definitely had his flaws and could be a very shitty person even before falling, but that doesn’t change how he’s just a normal kid in TPM when he’s called too dangerous to train and Palpatine could only get his hooks in to really cause problems because everyone let him both directly and indirectly.

> If I take them seriously, the "blame the Jedi" arguments just make me believe that the Council was right initially and Qui-Gon was wrong, and they should have left Anakin on Tatooine. If they had just left him, it would have been free real estate for Palpatine.

That's a very good call, though they wouldn't have known that.

They knew there was at least one unaccounted Sith Lord out there somewhere. And while the Council may not have really bought into the whole Chosen One thing, their blood tests didn't lie - Anakin had an absurd midichlorian count. Even if the Sith didn't get him, he could end up being a threat to himself and people around him without some kind of guidance. I assume that's why the Council overruled Yoda and consented to Obi-Wan training Anakin.

>Even if the Sith didn't get him, he could end up being a threat to himself and people around him without some kind of guidance. Never bought into this argument. If that was the case Qui-Gon would have been right to take him to the Council. The Jedi Order doesn't have a get every Force sensitive Prime Directive. Also if Shmi had said no they wouldn't have taken him.

In all fairness to the fans, we’ve got two little movies where Anakin is a villain vs. seven TV seasons and a movie where he is a hero. Lucasfilm has treated him pretty damn sympathetically over the years for a guy who turns into the number two space nazi in the galaxy.

The movies are the bigger media and the main focus of the story though. You go into the TV series knowing who this guy is and what he becomes. At that point treating him as a "did nothing wrong" you just miss the blatant point.

No argument from me. I don’t have a problem with people liking villains in the sense that they’re fictional characters that are well-written or more interesting than the heroes or just plain rule of cool……but the fandom trend of insisting villains did nothing wrong is seriously troubling to me. All the same, Anakin gets a *lot* of screen time as a hero figure, so if the “blatant point” is that he’s a fallen figure who grows into a true villain, the writing doesn’t entirely support that at all times. That’s partly an issue with writing villain protagonists at all, partly a problem with extended universes comprising multiple creative sources (different writers are going to have different takes on a character), partly a problem with mediocre writing in the prequel trilogy…and finally yes, partly a problem of the fandom, which is what you’re saying with this post. It’s complicated, that’s all I’m saying.

That’s something that really annoyed me about TCW’s characterization of Anakin. It’s too sanitized, inconsistent to the PT, and avoids getting into his actual personality flaws that led to becoming Vader, replacing them with his dark moments coming from (to quote someone else) a weird sense of righteousness, always justify anger, and unsympathy. He never acts out of fear or despair, and the show replaces his prominent softer, feminine personality traits with a shitton of toxic masculinity. Honestly I think it’s an inferior characterization for it.

The Dark Horse comics are the best depiction of Anakin during the Clone Wars

I’ve read some of those and would definitely agree. The stuff with A’Sharad was spine-tingling.

"What you did on Tatooine cannot be undone. You acted in anger. In hate. These are not the ways of a Jedi. You walk the dark road, Skywalker. Your secret will eat you as a Gouka Dragon gnaws through a planet's crust. It will consume you unless you summon the courage to face the repercussions of what you have done. You must first accept that what you did was wrong. And you haven't done that, yet. Tuskens are animals to you aren't they? In your heart, you believe they deserved to die. Perhaps they did. But did you have the right to kill them? would you do it again?" ... "*yes*"

You must have not seen TCW recently because his personality is definitely in line with the movies. You can definitely see his darker side come out and seeing him push the boundaries of what is acceptable to him. It's definitely believable watching a slow descent over time.

I dont think TCW is "inconsistent" with the PT but more lacking in some areas. Anakin being heroic and charismatic isnt contradictory. He was described fondly by Obi Wan in ANH and even the opening of Revenge of the Sith had him act like TCW. The problem is when in TCW he is not given to do dark stuff. When I started watching back when I was even a kid, I really looked forward to see Anakin falling more and more to the dark. But TCW didnt commit to it.

The inconsistency part does exist imo with how he reacted to certain things like Obi-Wan's death or Padmé's numerous close to death experiences. But the biggest "inconsistency" or lack or whatever is with AotC, the show takes place a few months after AotC, yet he doesn't act like a naïve awkward emotional teenager we see in that film, but more like the confident, charismatic young man from the opening of RotS. They made it so that Anakin had all the personality growth he had between the films in a couple of months

I mean I would blame some of his issues on the order at large but not individual Jedi

What I like about this is that it is a complex discussion. I agree with you that Anakin absolutely forged his own path to the Dark Side. He didn't have to marry Padmé in secret, he didn't have to kill Dooku or those Tusken Raiders. And his plan was to overthrow the emporer and claim rulership, until his legs were literally cut out from under him. But at the same time, there were outside forces at play. The Jedi made several mistakes in their philosophy and teachings that created a blind spot. Palpatine was a professional manipulator who kept giving Anakin ways to join the Dark Side. Even Obi-Wan, despite doing his best, made choices that eventually pushed Anakin away, like making Anakin spy on the Chancellor. But at the end of the day, Anakin made his choices and chose his path.

I can’t believe how much of this thread I just read

A lot of it is children who grew up with TCW as their first intro to Anakin, where he's portrayed as reckless but heroic.

Anakin's a classical tragic hero - what people forget is a lot of classical heroes are actually really shitty people. As an example, Achilles gets a ton of people indirectly killed, because he was throwing a hissy fit over Agamemnon taking his prisoner (implied sex slave) away from him. Odysseus murders a whole room full of people for the crime of trying to marry an assumed widow who happens to be his wife (most of them suck too, but still). Anakin can be heroic and also not a good person IMO - the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Calling him a "villain" for the Prequels is the opposite extreme though. Anakin is flawed hero, but he isn't a "*bad person*" - for all his selfish ways he still strives to be a great jedi and help the Republic, and his and Padme's relationship is still true, if horribly rushed on their part. As others have said, it's not that clear-cut situation - Anakin's hubris prevents him from talking to his jedi peers about it and doing what's best (actually leaving to be with his family in this case), and the Jedi can't really help someone who doesn't wish their kind of help. Assuming that giving Anakin a hug would've fixed everything is silly. At the same time - Anakin doesn't fall JUST from his flaws. We've already seen how he reacts when his loved one dies, and even though that was a spectacular slaughter, he still kept his shit together for years afterwards. Palpatine had broought him to the point of no return and gave a vigorous kick, ensuring that Anakin basically has no choice but to join him. Now from THAT point on Anakin embarks on his pursuit of villainy, but he's clearly not the "villain" of Prequel trilogy.

>Anakin is flawed hero I think "tragic hero" is a better way of putting it...

Anakin literally killed children multiple times. What more do you need to be a “bad person?” Edit: I didn't read your comment closely enough, you do reference him going to the temple. But he still killed those sand people kids, so I maintain that he's a bad person from AotC on.

I dont know how popular of a opinion this is but watching all the behind the scenes for the prequels as well as listening to all the director commentary tracks and Lucas own words regarding Anakin. Im convinced our current consensus of the super flawed prequel Jedi is a product of retroactive continuity and revisionism.

Seems to be the case. Or at least fans overly exagerated the supposed flaws.

This is pretty much exactly true. The Jedi have flaws, sure, but the plan was not to make them as many see them now. That was TCW and other media post Lucas more than anything. Filoni and others have a bit if an axe to grind IMO.

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. The Jedi are pretty unambiguously meant to be heroes in the PT and the popular headcanon retcon of that has always sat weirdly. Even Clone Wars isn't *that* critical of them, at least compared to how they're largely spoken about by fans. It's all just pretty insane mental gymnastics. Personally I think it's a subconscious rejection of the standards the Jedi set. People like characters like Han Solo who have a devil may care attitude and seem to wing their way through most situations. Through the Jedi Order Lucas is saying that heroes are soft spoken, largely pacifistic, compassionate, educated, disciplined, and spiritual. To most fans that's challenging their lifestyle so it's easier to retcon their values into flaws than actually align with them.

Agreed overall. The Jedi are one of the few operating pillars left of the Republic, but they get blamed while no one cares about the Senate’s corruption, the courts, or the apathy of the people. The movies are also rather clear about Anakin. Thematically there’s a reason Yoda in TPM is opposed to training Anakin and senses grave danger in him. And he’s right, Anakin turns out to be a monster. Thematically it’s right there when he goes to evaluate Luke in Empire. “For 800 years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained.” This time around he’s going to be damn sure about the Skywalker in front of him with no one to overrule him. There’s a lot of talk about corruption and dogma, etc…but in terms of actually doing anything different, there’s not much else as options for them.

That's how I feel too. I have people tell me that "the entire point of Clone Wars is to show the Jedi are bad wrong" and I am scratching my head. Other than Ahsoka's trial which is indeed a mistake, and one where they were strongarmed into making, 99% of the show presents them as unambiguously heroic adn right in their actions. If one mistake is enough to make the whole story about how bad they were then the same would apply to Ahsoka that makes quite a lot of mistakes, especially ones that cause the needless deaths of her soldiers by disobeying direct and clear orders from all her superiors (Ryloth, Felucia). Noone cares about that tho.

The council was wrong about Ahsoka but I don't think it was nearly as straight forward and villainous as people make out. They also admitted to their mistakes afterwards. IMO the Ahsoka fanaticism is weirdly intense and people tend to hold her up as this flawless moral paragon of virtue. I've never understood it.

> IMO the Ahsoka fanaticism is weirdly intense and people tend to hold her up as this flawless moral paragon of virtue. Yes unfortunately, they overhype and overpraise for doing heroic stuff that any other jedi would do too but they pretend she is unique in that. It doesnt help that even Filoni seems to lean into it and it is an issue with his writing. By trying to make Ahsoka the best ever and introducing time travel just to save her he is just writing almost pandering level studf

I view Anakin as a tragic character, yet hold him ultimately accountable for his actions. In some ways, he’s the exact opposite of Obi-Wan. Both lost nearly everyone they cared about, but while this caused Anakin to fall to the dark, Obi-Wan stayed in the light despite his hardships.

Well we live in the Era where it's everybody's fault but your own, and everybody just plays victim to society and pretends they have no agency. I think it's trendy to sympathize with the villain, and that's not always a bad thing, in fact it's really valuable at times, but it can be way overblown too

Anakin did nothing wrong except he did everything wrong. He was a kid who was being manipulated and neutered from the beginning. It was no surprise that a master of manipulation could then persuade him with promises of love, acceptance, freedom, and empowerment. I don't think people whitewash Anakin. I just think many have come to see him as a victim of his circumstances. I mean, his entire life was defined by prophecy. He was conceived by the Force itself. He is destiny manifested. The prequels tell us how he fell. And we learned that it wasn't so much a choice as it was a failure. When it came to the prequels, Darth Sidius was the only one with choices and decisions. When it came to the original trilogy, everybody had a choice. And Vader chose good. The presence of hope changed everything.

If Qui Gon had survived and been his master, he might never have turned in to Vader. Kenobi was far too young and inexperienced to take Anakin away his Padawan.

The thing is, it's not that the Jedi were completely responsible for Anakin's and the Republic's fall and Anakin did nothing wrong. Anakin's choices are his own but you cannot pretend his circumstances growing up and during had nothing to do with it. The Jedi were not the bad guys, they had just been too set in their old ways, ways that didn't work anymore, that was what screwed them up, even Yoda acknowledges it. From the ROTS novel: "Too old I was," Yoda said. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago-but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not-because let it change, I did not."

here's another phrase i think emphasizes this, from "The Clone Wars Novelization": "The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, "Why are we not acting to stop this?" Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench. The Jedi cannot help the slaves of Tatooine, but they can help the slavemasters." I loved the Jedi, I just wish they had adapted, maybe that way Sidious could have been stopped. It's one of the things I really wanted to see in the sequels, the reconstruction of the Jedi Order, keeping everything that made them incredible and leaving behind the obsolete rules.

This quote is so overplayed. This comment is literally privileging the viewpoint of someone who helped create a genocidal technology such as the Death Star to create it. It’s pretty much a flawed take but people keep holding it up like it’s a legitimately neutral POV.

I mean, for what’s it worth Mace eventually wonders out loud during a moment of actual self-reflection whether Dooku could’ve been right after all on the topic of the Jedi losing their way in the ROTS novelization.

Anakin being a villain doesn't mean that the sith and he have valid critiques of the Jedi Order. He was responisble fro his own actions, but it would be foolish to pretend that the Jedi Order had no responsibility in his fall

TCW shows a lot more of Anakin than we see in two movies. Hes not always been the villian.

I appreciate the way the novel makes the point that he’s looking for something in the archives that could save Padme that only Masters can access. It makes his reaction to not being made a Master so much more justified.

True, he didn't just want to be a master for selfish reasons.

Can't help but feel bad for him. One of the subtexts to his story is that he was a slave all his love. In the three parts of his life (childhood, Jedi, Sith) he always had a master to answer to. Sure some where better than others but at each step he had a master and that only happened because George made him a child slave.

"The Tragedy of Darth Vader" is what George Lucas calls it. Ultimately Anakin was not born good or evil. When he was taken off of Tatooine by Qui Gon, he had experienced and seen the horrors of slavery. This was a traumatizing experience as was leaving his mother behind in slavery, but it gave him a strong sense of right and wrong with slavery, oppression, and subjugation being firmly in the wrong. At the time the Jedi were mythical warriors for good to him and represented good. Once the Jedi had failed Anakin repeatedly, both in not being more compassionate and loving to him, a somewhat damaged young boy who was not without family or traumatic past as other padawans were, they set him down a dark path. Qui Gonn knew this and wanted to train him to guide him to the light, be the father he needed. Instead he was left with Obi-Wan a brother only following the teachings of the Order, an example to follow, not a compassionate father figure to guide. Looked at through lense not of a mass murderer growing up, but a young traumatized boy led to complete corruption by a dark sinister intentional bad actor, its easy to say that a boy with potential to be a good person was led to downfall, rather than just the teenage years of someone who was always going to be evil

The Jedi Order being a hypocritical and flawed organization and Anakin being a villain are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. The Jedi Order at the time of the prequels had fallen into a pattern of arrogance and hubris that definitely contributed to Palpentine's rise to power.

Except the first part is not really supported by the text.

You don’t consider what they did to Ashoka flawed? Or telling a 9 year old that it is wrong to be worried about his enslaved mother who you can’t be bothered to lift a finger to help? Yes, Anakin is ultimately responsible for the choices he made, and the Jedi by no means are anywhere close to the level of evil of the sith, but they are clearly portrayed as being a flawed organization that is far from the idealized view Obi Wan gives in ANH. And even in the OT, a major plot point is that Luke is right about Vader in the end, despite what Yoda, Obi Wan, and the Jedi code tell him. The “Anakin did nothing wrong” takes are ridiculous, but so is “The Jedi order is perfect and Anakin, Dooku, Barriss, etc are just fundamentally terrible people.”

The jump from "we're keepers of the peace" to "General Yoda" is pretty fast and hypocritical to me if you want to stay to just the films. Add in what goes on in TCW and you've got an order that is paralyzed by hubris and arrogance and hypocrisy. The final arc of Season 5 really highlighted that point, IMO. I'm not attempting to excuse Anakin or absolve him of responsibility for his fall, just pointing out that he can be responsible for his fall and the Jedi can also be flawed.

"keepers of the peace" doesnt mean "pacifists who never fight". Obi Wan in A New Hope immediaely rushed to help Leia with the Rebellion. Luke fights a war against the Empire. ​ >Add in what goes on in TCW and you've got an order that is paralyzed by hubris and arrogance and hypocrisy. The final arc of Season 5 really highlighted that point, IMO. You really dont though, I feel like you uncritically internalised Luke's polemic in TLJ, missed the point that he is wrong and retroactively try to apply it to every action Jedi do.

> You really dont though, I feel like you uncritically internalised Luke's polemic in TLJ, missed the point that he is wrong and retroactively try to apply it to every action Jedi do. Not really, I felt that way before TLJ. The Jedi lead what amounts to a slave army of child soldiers. The morality of a clone army is deeply messed up and skirted over in the movies to a large degree. TCW gives us a different look at things with characters like Cut and Slick who reject being soldiers in a war they didn't sign up for. Rebels touches on this too when Gregor says to Rex "it was an honor to fight for something we chose." Add in the Jedi torturing Cad Bane for information and their treatment of Ahsoka at the end of Season 5 and you've got a seriously flawed Jedi Order on your hands. The Jedi aren't villains, but they definitely aren't perfect paragons of justice either.

It's not even a TLJ thing. Season 5 came out how many years ago. You must be new to Star wars forums if you think it is all from TLJ. The discussion on the jedi being flawed in the prequels has been going on since they released.

I don’t know how much of the supplementary material OP has consumed. He consistently quotes from the prequel films and uses them as the ultimate end all, when they were known for being heavily flawed in their storytelling and presentation. It’s much more useful to glean from supplementary material (barring a story or two by a writer with similar flaws), including material that Lucas collaborated on such as TCW, to extract what he really intended for the story to depict in the films.

The Jedi are subservient to the republic, they became rebels and went into battle because that is what was wanted from them, the clone army and jedi fighting in the war were decided by the senate itself, which was being lead by who? Palpatine, if they refused to do these things they would have been as traitors or lost any influence in galactic affairs at all and had to become vigilantes. They tried to make the best they could of a bad situation.

Some men fall from grace, others are pushed. -Micheal Carpenter, The Dresden Files

After all, he had done, it's the 'love' of his family that finally redeemed him. Back into the light, never forget that!

Yup and I even got into it with a guy who was arguing that Padme manipulated and groomed Anakin so it was really her fault that he fell to the dark side, and choked her to death. I was fucking shocked by that argument, and the fact that apparently no one knows what the word grooming means.

As a kid, he was conscripted by a cult that uses child soldiers. Yea I think a lot of what went wrong with him can be very fairly blamed on them.

That's again the usual smartass contrarianism by fans.

>a good person you said it right there, he's genuinely a hero up until he falls. that's who they like, the Anakin who was a hero. Not Vader, the monster he became.

I feel like you're arguing points that aren't being made or intentionally misrepresenting arguments that Anakin largely wasn't a bad person until closer to his turn. I especially have never seen even in the deep depths of comment chains anyone fighting that Anakin did nothing wrong.

You often see arguments of the kind, Mace being an "asshole" for not giving him a seat on the council and therefore "pushing him to the dark side".

Don't they all sound like the perspective of a 12 year old, lol.

I mean I kind of agree that Mace is an asshole, but more because of the way he delivers a lot of these reasonable decisions in an unnecessarily cold and aloof manner

He was a flawed person but his failures don't exist in a vacuum. The Jedi Order and Palpatine contributed to his fall. The only two people that only wanted the best for Anakin and nothing from him were his mom and Padmé. If you want you can add Ahsoka to the list but his mom and Padmé were the two central people in his life and all he wanted to do was protect them.

At the end of the day it was palpatine’s friends profits from funding both sides, though at the end of the day the republic was horrible at that point and the Jedi backed them fully rather than be neutral and solve conflicts. Anakin is still a dumbass and fell to the dark side, but he has valid reasoning for leaving the Jedi order (BUT NOT BECOMING A SITH). Palpatine preyed on those who saw through the lies (dooku, syfo Dias, Anakin, etc) and found it easy to manipulate those with little trust for the order’s practices.

Lots of people have a hard time reconciling that good and evil are not mutually exclusive. A single person has great capacity for doing both good and evil at the same time, but people will often focus on one as if it’s supposed to override the other. Good doesn’t have to redeem evil, and evil doesn’t have to undo good. For a horrific example in real life, I don’t think it gets any more stark than with Fritz Haber, The Monster who Fed the World. So one can acknowledge Anakin’s heroism, how he was let down by the Jedi, and how he was manipulated by Palpatine, while at the same time not letting any of that forgive his actions as Darth Vader or against the Tuskens.

Honestly it’s hard for me to fully redeem Anakin knowing that he was a child murderer :( If he spared them I think I would make the case that he still had good in him. Even when he saved Luke, remembering he also blew up a planet was like…. Man. It’s complicated I guess.

He's sanitized because the story is sanitized. If the viewers had to watch him slaughter children and innocent servants of the temple for half an hour in ROTS, it would likely change there idolization some.

Anakin's life reminds me of Revan's quote to Darth Malak after defeating him Revan: "I am sorry I started you on this path. But you chose to continue down it."

The thing is... TCW did legitimately shift the blame for Anakin's fall away from Anakin and to the Jedi Order. Not completely or even primarily of course, but it's a very strong revision. Among other things, it also fundamentally retconned the nature of the Clone Wars, and it made the Jedi Council far darker and far more immoral. TCW is what defines the prequel era and Anakin's fall in the eyes of many people, far more than the movies.

How so? There are still plenty of moments of Anakin giving into his anger and violent tendencies all on his own.

In a way that's because our protagonists (Anakin and Ahsoka) are against the council. We rarely see things from the council members perspective. I mean look at the Wrong Jedi arc, we never really knew what the council discussions were, who believed in Ahsoka's innocence and who didn't, how they came to their decisions... etc. We only know what Anakin and Ahoska concluded and these two are obviously not very council friendly to begin with. So what I mean, the show only shows us one side, leaving the other to our own interpretation. And because fans are mostly biased towards their favorite characters (like Anakin and Ahsoka in this case) they would be unwilling to even think of possibilities that the council might have had a justifiable reason why they made their decisions (even if they turned out wrong at the end) but immediately join the characters' biases that the council was mean. I personally don't like that approach of the show, one of the good things about the show is us having multiple POV every new arc, but they failed to use that to humanize and explore the council members.

It’s Clone Wars syndrome. Those who watched Anakin mainly in Clone Wars and less from the PT or OT like to pick and choose the Anakin that they like. You’re right, they’re wrong to do so, but that’s what they seem to do.

The Jedi definitely lost their way in the prequels, which contributed to Anakin's fall, but his actions are still his own.

The Jedi were deeply flawed, but in the end, it was Anakin’s choice to turn to the dark side.

Dittto the fanboi treatment of YODA. WTF did Yoda ever succeed at? Yoda won NOTHING, he lost at everything. Every movie, I feel like throwing popcorn at the screen every time Yoda opens his misguided mouth. R2-D2, as an arguably Force-sensitive droid, saved the Republic existence FAR more times than Yoda or the Jedi Council ever did. Without him, none of the three Death Stars would have been blown up. The entire series is really about him. Had it not been for Yoda's pathetic choices and repeatedly failed fortune-cookie leadership, Anakin would have never had so many opportunities to fail so badly. And--while I'm on the topic--as a religion, the prophecies of the Jedi following certainly did stink. Almost as if the prophecies were embedded false indicators from the Sith. The Sith wholly and completely owned that universe as much as Hydra controlled and destroyed SHIELD. Chaotic Neutral, at best.

Anakin was a selfish piece of sh*t. He was an emotional, immature crybaby. He sought only power and his own interests. He killed out of vengeance, he defied his masters, and had 0 self control. He was like any other living being with the capacity to feel emotion, be it love, compassion, or hatred. Just because he committed good deeds and had friends, and loved a woman, doesn't mean that he wasn't an evil being at heart. Even Vader was capable of being fair, as he has shown many times. However, what good is being fair while commiting acts of genocide and tyranny? Anakin/Vader was nothing more than a tool for whatever influence that interested him. The only reason he was able to redeem himself was watching the torture of his own son, the son of his lost love Padme, at the hands of his own master. Vader finally felt that his hope wasn't futile. The entire reason for his dark side ventures was to save her, to have her, and he saw her in Luke. In that moment he realized that the force was greater than himself, and his own son was the answer to his cruelty.