#kinda like how Luke used all aspects of the Force in what is considered Legends now

[sweetescapeartist]

The Origin Of Elder Kai's Great Magical Capabilities

Where did Elder Kai's ability to use magic so well come from? Well, Elder Kai could already use magic very well. But, when explaining how the Potara Earrings work in Dragon Ball Chapter 502, he mentions that accidentally fusing with a witch enabled him "to work magic like the..." then his explanation is cut off.

In the world of Dragon Ball, there is good magic & bad magic. To do the unnatural, such as unlocking power beyond the natural abilities, we are shown that sorcery (wicked magic) must be known. And as shown with the wizard Babidi, his minions were given power beyond their normal abilities through his sorcery.

So, when Elder Kai fused the witch, her knowledge of witchcraft was combined with his own knowledge of godly magic. This granted Elder Kai the unique ability to use his new understanding of dark arts for good in order to give Gohan power far beyond his normal limits.

Godly magic can awaken latent potential.

Wicked magic can grant power beyond natural abilities.

Combined knowledge of good & bad magic can grant power FAR beyond normal abilities.

The magic of the Dragon Gods is beyond wicked magic & Elder Kai's godly magic. This is why Shenron was able to grant power FAR beyond normal limits to Piccolo within a few seconds instead of doing a process that takes 25 hours or more to do. Dragon Gods have the greatest magic capabilities that we have seen so far. I believe it is because as gods, they are beyond good and evil. So their magical knowledge is not limited by what people consider good or bad.

[bigskydreaming]

I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell. 

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20. 

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard. 

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

[gffa]

Hey! I just finished listening to the ROTS audiobook for the first time and GAWWWD i loved it. So beautiful, so heartbreaking, so tragic. So many incredible descriptions of characters and themes. So many hilarious lines and quips. But I gotta ask, during his commune with Qui-Gon, Yoda claims that the Jedi lost because they failed to change with the times whereas the Sith had evolved. Yoda apologizes to Qui-Gon for not seeing the wisdom he possessed and for being too rigid and traditional. (1/2)

(Actually 2/3) But this kinda goes against everything the Jedi and Star Wars stand for. If the Jedi are defenders of the light, peace, and balance since time immemorial, and are presented as such in the narrative (servants of the senate, forced into a war as a trap by Palpatine), how can Yoda claim that it was the fault of the Jedi they lost? And how can he claim that Luke and Leia should explicitly not be taught in the old ways (not forming attachments) if such ways are NOT wrong?(3/3) I’m Jedi fan #2 (after you of course) so hearing Yoda lament himself and his teachings in this novelization feels bad man. It certainly doesn’t come across in the movies or any other canon material. The whole idea the “flawed Jedi Order” is so annoying coming from Jedi-hating fans who misunderstand the movies but after reading this…I just can’t believe it. Thoughts?

Hi!  You’re super sweet to think to ask me about this and I do love everything I’ve read of the ROTS novelzation because IT IS SO PAINFUL IN THE BEST WAY.  As heartwrenching as it is, this is why I’m in here in SW fandom because look at all the feelings it gives me!As for where the Jedi went wrong re: the ROTS novelization, it’s sort of summed up in these two passages, when you consider the context of the galaxy around them–that this is about politics and not morals.  Here’s Yoda’s thoughts on fighting with Sidious:

    Finally, he saw the truth.     This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known… just-didn’t-have it.     He’d never had it. He had lost before he started.     He had lost before he was born.     The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years’ intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.     They had become new.     While the Jedi-The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war.     The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark’s own weapon?

Then the passage from the ROTS novel about Yoda’s talk with Qui-Gon:

    And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.     As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn.     “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.”     More easily said than done, my friend.     “An infinite mystery is the Force.” Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. “Much to learn, there still is.”     And you will have time to learn it.

There’s also a line from Wild Space, about how “Too old I am to be the last hope of the Jedi.” Yoda thinks and, okay, Legends, but it always illustrated to me Yoda’s dilemma pretty well–they’re in a time of something they’ve never faced before and aren’t prepared for, because they’re not politicians and they’re not soldiers, they’re shoved into that role and run ragged so they never have a chance to recover or barely even breathe between fights, they’re manipulated into either this path or just not helping others at all, AOTC literally tells us that the Force is so clouded in the galaxy that it’s compromised for them.  Everything the Jedi had to rely on was crumbled away from them and so of course everyone ran right straight to Yoda because he had the most experience and they were looking for guidance.I’m also going to draw a lot on the Star Wars Propaganda post I made (which is a long read, like 5k words long, so I don’t expect anyone to have to Do Homework for this post, the basic summary is:  the Jedi’s greatest flaw was that they were bad at PR, because they are not talked about in the same way that the corruption and moral decay of the overall Republic is) because I feel like these two things overlap a fair amount, because it’s a great meta book on the state of affairs of the GFFA, and because it really lays this all out well!The thing about all of this is that it’s also to be taken with a grain of salt, that this is Yoda’s point of view in the very lowest point of his life, he’s just witnessed the deaths almost every Jedi and their entire culture, the Republic has fallen, they were ground down in this war they thought would be worth the sacrifices they were making, but instead everything was ashes.  Of course he’s going to feel like everything is wrong, that they were mistaken, because that’s a normal reaction to have in the moment!But it’s also about the structure of the prequels, in that politics are a huge, huge part of EVERYTHING that is going on.  One of the major themes of the prequels was ALL ABOUT Bush era politics, that’s why we had all those scenes with the Senate and all that stuff about taxes and trade routes and treaties–because that is the Republic that they had built up.  Politics set the stage for this.And the Jedi’s greatest failure is that they did not evolve to meet this new political climate.  They believed their actions would speak for them, rather than getting out into the spotlight to deliberately craft the narrative they were assigned.  They believed that tradition and trying to stay out of politics was the path that would be best for everyone–they were with the Republic (under Senate jurisdiction) because a thousand years ago the Senate asked them to become part of the Republic so that they could help smooth over the lingering war outbreaks after the last great war.  But they did not evolve to be political masterminds–while the Sith did.Palpatine didn’t kill the Jedi through being the best ever at using a lightsaber, he achieved the Jedi genocide through politics.  By becoming Chancellor.  By painting the Jedi as the narrative he wanted them painted with, rather than what the truth was about them.  By studying how they interacted with the Republic, their lore, and using it against them on a political stage.  By engineering a galaxy-wide war the was specifically designed to destroy them and destablize the entire galaxy so that they wouldn’t protest when the Empire rose.It says it right here:   The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark’s own weapon?The war itself had become the dark’s weapon.  So, that’s where the Jedi went wrong–they met a war with physically fighting back against it instead of becoming politicians who would use the war itself as a weapon, rather than a lightsaber.  They weren’t good enough at politics.Being bad at politics isn’t an inherently bad thing, there’s a reason a lot of politicians get portrayed as slimy and gross, that it’s rare to find truly good people who are also good at politics.  Star Wars itself hammers this point home pretty clearly, that people like Bail and Padme stand out because they’re good people in the swamp of the rest of the Senate!  And it’s not inherently a bad thing to be part of the system, because that’s how you can affect change, by working from the inside, by using the authority given to you to help the most people.And the point was, that they were trying to find balance in the middle and their balance (willing to help, to be part of the system so they can reach people who need them) is not inherently bad, but the political climate around them made it so that it was used against them.  To want to remain a step apart so that they could be used as neutral negotiators wasn’t bad, because that system literally worked for a thousand years, that’s probably the longest stretch of peace the galaxy has ever had!  It was only over the span of a handful of years that all this changed and they weren’t fast enough to adapt, they thought they could weather out this storm and they were wrong.It’s not as simple as “Oh, we were so wrong, we were so uncompromising, we were bad and terrible!” because that would take things out of the important context they come with.  This wasn’t about the Force or really even about being a Jedi or a Sith.  This was about narrative, propaganda, legal authority, and politics.

[robedisimo]

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

If you were to ask me which franchises I consider myself a fan of, it would take some time for Star Wars to cross my mind. Not because I’m not a fan – trust me, I am – but because loving Star Wars just goes without saying. If you’re asked what your defining personal skills are, you don’t reply that you’re able to articulate sounds in such a way as to form meaning. It’s an incredibly specific skill and only 0.00001% of animal species on Earth possess it, but it’s kinda implicit in the fact that you’re having the interview, isn’t it?

My point is, if you’re a “fan” of any kind, you’re a fan of Star Wars. Call yourself nerd, geek or pop-culture freak, for those of us worshipping at the altar of fiction there’s probably no more widely beloved embodiment of what makes telling ourselves stories so damn enjoyable. It’s been the foundational myth of modern geekdom for three generations now, and I doubt it’s going away anytime soon.

Two years ago, writer/director J.J. Abrams tried to recapture that magic in The Force Awakens, a long-awaited seventh episode which – in my opinion – got a little more praise than it actually deserved... mostly out of everyone’s desire for it to succeed, if I had to hazard a guess. It was an entertaining nostalgia-filled romp and a fantastic technical feat of filmmaking, but it left us wondering: was there anything more to the saga’s future than just a warm cup of yesterday’s excitement, served in a shiny new packaging?

As it turns out, yes. Yes there was.

Holy crap.

Enter writer/director Rian Johnson, best known so far for the 2012 critical hit – and moderate box-office success – Looper, picking up where Abrams had left, grabbing the wheel with both hands, and leaning on the gas pedal as hard as he can. Handing what was supposed to be a cohesive trilogy arc over to a completely different author could’ve easily ended in a tailspin, but the franchise’s engines come out of it roaring. For the first time in a really long while, Star Wars is back, both narratively and creatively. And, most importantly, it’s back at the top, setting the high mark for the rest of the blockbuster field.

There’s too much to say about The Last Jedi and too little one can really touch upon without indulging in spoilers, so let’s get past the technical aspects first. Johnson’s film is a feast for the eyes, and I honestly can’t recall another Star Wars instalment so absurdly rife with stunningly iconic moments of visual creativity. I can guarantee that at least five scenes from this movie will be permanently seared into your personal mental library of great franchise-defining moments on visual merits alone, without even starting on those that are equally memorable from a narrative standpoint. Meanwhile John Williams’s score, it goes without saying, is as majestic as ever, and helps keeping things familiar even when they occasionally breach into surprisingly new territory for the franchise.

Indeed, Johnson’s almost alarming confidence in steering the ship leads to an episode that’s structured in a very unusual way for a Star Wars film. Rather than a sequence of events, The Last Jedi feels more like one single, prolonged scenario fracturing into an elaborate series of subplots, not unlike what you’d expect from an especially expansive episode of today’s long-form television. It’s an odd approach and it does result in occasionally uneven pacing, but the upside is that Episode VIII just doesn’t let up, ever: it’s a breakneck rollercoaster run from beginning to end, containing the full spectrum of what viewers can get from the Star Wars brand. It’s tense, it’s action-packed – the space battles and lightsabre fights are absolutely amazing –, it’s emotional... and often surprisingly hilarious, too.

As other reviewers have noted, The Last Jedi hits a number of comedic notes of a sort that’s pretty unfamiliar for the franchise, but the great news is that it works. All jokes land, and some of them land really hard. As a matter of fact, here’s the one “spoiler” I’m willing to throw your way: you know those “Porg” creatures we watched fill our holiday toy aisles, threatening to turn the galaxy far, far away into a Minions cartoon? Forget about those: they’re not a concern. Johnson’s Star Wars isn’t afraid to indulge in the more kid-friendly aspects of the saga, but – and here’s the catch – there’s balance to it.

A balance which seems to pervade all elements of this sprawling new chapter, 152 minutes – now the longest Star Wars ever, beating Attack of the Clones by a good ten minutes – encompassing everything about the franchise: the classic narrative archetypes and the surprise plot twists, the epic drama and the silly creatures, the practical effects and the all-you-can-eat CGI buffet. Where Abrams seemed to be looking firmly backwards to the Original Trilogy, Johnson appears to look both ways: to the old and the new, keeping the best of the classics while moving ahead at full steam.

Perhaps the most trivial but telling sign of that attitude is the almost total abandonment of classic Star Wars wipe transitions, here at the franchise’s lowest in a numbered episode – Rogue One dispensed with them entirely, along with the traditional opening crawl. This mixture of old and new breathes through every single one of the film’s structural elements, carrying forward Abrams’s work especially when it comes to the use of practical sets and – were possible – practical effects. One scene in particular – I won’t say anything more, it’s absurdly good – is actually pretty shocking in how much it serves as a defiant middle finger to Lucas’s CGI overdose in the Prequel Trilogy.

Okay, well, maybe not a middle finger per se, but certainly a conscious effort to fix what hadn’t been done so greatly before: an effort which Johnson actually delivers towards Abrams’s treatment of characters as well, retroactively making a couple of The Force Awakens’s weakest aspects more interesting for fans. There definitely is a certain desire to be in charge reflected here, culminating in the fact that The Last Jedi, long and story-packed as it is, feels more like two episodes in one... or one and a half, at worst. In a way, it’s as if this film wanted to be its own end to the trilogy, tying things up in such a way as to render future developments irrelevant to Episode VIII’s narrative.

And if you ask me? That’s a good thing. Will the next Star Wars be just an Ewok-filled appendix to a spectacular second chapter, or will it actually surprise us all with an explosive epilogue once Abrams hits us with Episode IX: Return of the J.J.? As far as I’m concerned, that not longer matters: the Sequel Trilogy has already delivered, and delivered in spades.

But I’ve kept you waiting long enough. What about the cast? Well, I’m happy to report that Daisy Ridley is a lot more convincing – and noticeably at ease – in her role as Rey than the first time around. John Boyega’s Finn is entertaining as ever, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe finally gets a lot to do in this new instalment, which is great because that man deserves a leading role in a franchise all his own. Everyone else does great in their respective roles – keep an eye out for Laura Dern in an especially hard-to-forget new addition to the saga – and both Adam Driver and motion-capture veteran Andy Serkis rise to new heights of villainy, finally freeing the Sequels from the gaping void left by Vader.

It’s the returning cast, however, that truly allows The Last Jedi to shine. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better return to major-league acting for Mark Hamill, nor of a better return to pop-culture prominence for Luke Skywalker, a legend reinvented for a whole new generation of adoring fans. Yet for all that Episode VIII devotes so much time and love to the aging Jedi Master, it finds enough in its story not to leave Carrie Fisher’s beloved Princess behind. Leia is perhaps the biggest surprise in Johnson’s film; if this is how we were fated to see her for one last time... well, what a send-off. What a wonderful send-off.

In a year that already gave us War for the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner 2049, this is incredibly the most satisfied I’ve been upon exiting a theatre over the past twelve months. Go see The Last Jedi as soon as you can: it’s fun, it’s huge, it’s a new generation-defining classic. It’s warmly nostalgic, yet boldly new. Above all, it’s a work of love of the highest order. It’s the best Star Wars film ever made, even if it can never hope to recreate the groundbreaking impact of The Empire Strikes Back’s small-budget wizardry. If your inner child has been good this year, this is the gift it deserves for the holidays.

[Verdict: EXTREMELY POSITIVE]

[trendingnewsb]

Star Wars has time travel now — but it’s not as big a deal as you think

The entrance to a time-traveling Jedi temple.

Image: lucasfilm/Disney XD

As we saw with the very vocal minority of Star Wars fans who got upset about The Last Jedi, bringing new features of the Force to the screen can be somewhat controversial. 

Now we’re witnessing a new freakout over Force powers. The TV show Star Wars Rebels, set between Episode III and Episode IV, just revealed for the first time in the saga’s official storyline that the Force can let you travel in time. 

But there are good reasons why fans should hold their blaster fire on this one. 

SEE ALSO: ‘The Last Jedi’ director offers perfect response to critics of the movie’s ending

In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker used a hitherto unseen skill, Force projection, to send an image of himself across the galaxy and save the Resistance. “That’s not how the Force works,” cried some fans — until director Rian Johnson dropped the mic by showcasing the book from which this power was drawn.  

In Rebels‘ most recent episode, “A World Between Worlds,” apprentice Jedi Ezra Bridger discovers the entrance to an ancient Jedi temple on his home planet of Lothal. He opens a mysterious door via a moving mural, and finds himself in a vast netherworld of pathways and portals. 

“It is a pathway between all space and time,” says the Imperial minister who has been excavating the temple. And then, more ominously: “whoever controls it controls the universe.”

As Ezra walks through the eerie space, he hears whispers of people from the past and future of the entire Star Wars saga: Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Yoda, Kylo Ren. 

Finally he reaches a portal showing a scene from the finale of a previous Rebels season: former Jedi apprentice and Rebellion leader Ahsoka Tano dueling her former master Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader. He also sees himself as a younger man, confirming that this is indeed the battle he witnessed in the past. 

And then Ezra crosses the threshold, pulling Ahsoka out of the fight and into the netherworld to save her from Vader. 

Here’s the moment itself — but if you have five minutes it’s worth watching the full scene here. 

And there we have it. The first instance of time travel in all of Star Wars filmed entertainment — and a step too far, grumbled some old-school fans on Twitter. Meanwhile, one film website suggested J.J. Abrams might use time travel in Episode IX to “fix” the “problems” of The Last Jedi — and perhaps even bring Luke Skywalker back from the grave.

To say i’m not all enthused by the introduction of Time Travel to @StarWars is a monumental understatement.

To expect @disney to use it artfully and responsibly is ridiculous given recent efforts. Perhaps this really is the death spiral.

Its kinda depressing.

— RIP Star Wars (@RIP_SW) February 27, 2018

But is this really a betrayal of the basic idea of Star Wars? Will Force-wielding residents of the galaxy far, far away suddenly start zipping around time and space through portals like they’re in some mashup of Stargate and Doctor Who? 

The answers are no, and very likely not. Let’s dig into the reasons why. 

Almost no one can time travel

After impulsively saving Ahsoka, Ezra visits a couple other portals. In one, he sees his master Kanan nobly sacrificing himself a couple of episodes into the past; Ahsoka convinces him not to mess with the timeline by reversing that necessary sacrifice. 

In the other, he sees Emperor Palpatine, voiced by Iain McDiarmid. As even the most basic Star Wars fan knows, the Emperor is the most utterly evil and one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy, a Sith Lord who pulled a decades-long con on the entire Jedi order.

And notably, even the Emperor cannot enter the world between worlds. He needs Ezra’s help to do so (and crucially, he knows Ezra’s name), although he can send his Force lightning through the portal in an attempt to reel Ezra in. 

Why was Ezra able to access the temple? Why is he known to the Emperor? That’s a question that may well be answered in the series finale of Rebels coming up next week. In the meantime, the time-traveling temple mysteriously vanished at the end of “World Between Worlds,” suggesting even Ezra won’t be able to use this ability again.

This is part of a bigger mystery

According to the wonderfully creepy moving mural on its outside, the temple appears to have been built by a mysterious, squabbling family of all-powerful Force users from the planet Mortis — known only as the Father, the Daughter, and the Son. 

This trio was introduced by George Lucas himself during the Clone Wars series, in conjunction with showrunner Dave Filoni (who also runs Rebels). They were there to test whether Anakin Skywalker was the true “chosen one,” and gave the young Jedi a vision of his horrific future as Vader (which was then wiped from his mind). 

We’ve not seen the Mortis trio since, and their origin remains unexplained. But the future vision clearly indicated they had some kind of power over time, so the netherworld is at least somewhat consistent with previous Star Wars canon. 

In short, perhaps this isn’t so much about the time travel. We should see it more as the Star Wars storytellers’ promise that they haven’t forgotten about these weirdest of the weird fringe of Force-using characters.

This is not really the first time

We’ve seen Force users travel in time before, albeit not on the screen.

In the pre-2014 series of Star Wars books now known as Legends, the characters Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker are able to use a rare power called “flow walking” to view (but not change) the past and the future. In the 2006 novel Bloodlines, Jacen goes back to see his grandfather Anakin Skywalker being trained by the Jedi order. 

Granted, these books are no longer part of the official Star Wars saga (as you can tell from the fact that those kids don’t exist in the movies; they’re effectively combined into Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren.) However, Lucasfilm has made it clear that Star Wars writers are free to pick and choose elements from the vast Legends archive to reuse going forward — so we may see flow walking on the screen yet. 

What we saw inside the temple seems to be more proactive than flow walking, considering Ezra actually changed the past by saving Ahsoka. Still, it’s not as if time traveling skill is entirely unheard of in Star Wars’ long history. There is precedent, just as there was with Luke’s Force projection. 

Rey’s Force vision in The Force Awakens and her trip into the underground cave in The Last Jedi both have time travel aspects. In the former, she sees brief snatches of long-distance past and future; in the latter, a string of versions of herself seconds in the past and future. Luke’s vision on Dagobah in Empire Strikes Back — of his friends being tortured in Cloud City — may also have been a glimpse of the future.

In short, Star Wars likes to get timey-wimey with it — but only in brief glimpses. As much as it breaks new ground, the time travel of Rebels is also extremely limited and judiciously used. There’s nothing here to suggest a time-traveling retcon in Episode IX. 

The Force as we know it is still with us — but it also has a constant capacity to surprise. 

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Read more: https://mashable.com/2018/02/28/star-wars-time-travel-rebels/

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