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Palpatine: The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way — including in their quest for more power.
Anakin: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inwards, only about themselves.
Palpatine: And the Jedi don't?
Anakin: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inwards, only about themselves.
Palpatine: And the Jedi don't?
Star Wars is one of the most recognizable multimedia franchises ever and there are fans who are likely to subject characters to different interpretations.
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- There is a sizable group of people analyzing philosophy that view the Prequels as having a degree of merit more than the media gives it because of supposed Campbellian and cultural subtext within these movies. Conspiracy theorists tend to view the Prequel Trilogy more positively as well due to the implied political and conspiratorial subtext within the movies.
- Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader:
- Is he a gullible, self-centered brat who always whines about how hard his life is? Or is he a hapless Pawn of Prophecy? Is Anakin also a psychotic Stalker with a Crush who used the Force to Mind Rape the woman he was obsessed with? Or is he a poor, misunderstood Jerkass Woobie who would have been fine if those cold and unfeeling Jedi had just tried harder to understand him? Well, it depends which fans you ask. It doesn't help that The Clone Wars retroactively reveals that he was very likable, heroic, competent, and fleshed out in addition to having legitimate reasons to distrust the Jedi Order during the eponymous three-year galactic war that began back in Attack of the Clones and later concluded in Revenge of the Sith. This is all fine and dandy for retroactively making Anakin a better character, but it also creates another interpretation by fans of how he truly is.
- Did Anakin use the Force to make Padmé fall in love with him? If so, was he intentionally using the Force to manipulate Padmé's feelings, or was he just so blinded by his obsession with her that he did so without realizing it? It would explain their rather awkward hook up and how Padmé could forgive him for massacring all those Sand People in a relatively short period of time - unless Padmé, like pretty much everyone else on Tatooine, just assumes that the Sand People are inhuman cannibal savages who go around brutalizing people for fun. Or is their dysfunctional and ultimately doomed romance down to the two of them being incredibly sheltered people who've spent most of their lives being dedicated to their careers and thus both have no idea of how romantic relationships actually work beyond base lust?
- Darth Vader is often interpreted as a Noble Demon, being the kind of guy that fights alongside his men. But is this Darth Vader being willing to throw down alongside his troops, or more Darth Vader having nothing left live for beyond the Empire and not caring if he gets killed?
- A team of French psychiatrists published a paper using Anakin as a case study
where they are argued that he should be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (see Personality Disorders and The Other Wiki for more information) and that this explains much of his behaviour. They argued that he shows many of the classic traits of the illness including impulsiveness, a pathological fear of abandonment, unstable emotions, paranoia, and dissociative episodes. Unfortunately, because There Are No Therapists in the Star Wars canon, Anakin doesn't get any help for his condition except a single unsatisfactory session with Master Yoda whereas in our world, he could have been properly treated and his turn to the Dark Side could have been avoided. An article rebutting this claims that the films gradually built up to his drastic actions, which doesn't make sense for someone with this disorder. - Did Luke really sense good in Vader/Anakin or was that just wishful thinking that turned out to be correct? He had lost two father figures already.
- Are Vader and Anakin literally separate people through some combination of dissociative identity disorder and the Force? Or is it just figuratively, and saying they are is a coping mechanism for both Luke (who never saw how Vader Anakin could be and idolizes him), Obi-Wan (who can't reconcile the monster with his old friend) and even Anakin/Vader himself (who associates all his happy memories with the time he was known by that name, unable to accept that both Anakin and those times weren't perfect)?
- It also implied that since Anakin'a father is technically The Force it is likely that Anakin is the Light and Vader is the Dark whom both have been fighting for control their whole life.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi receives his fair share of different interpretations from the fans and it's arguable that some inconsistencies are the results of Retcons in the Prequel Trilogy from things already established (or implied) in the Canon via the Original Trilogy:
- For instance, some cite his Chessmaster tendencies in the Original Trilogy and see him as self-righteous and authoritarian in the Prequel Trilogy. He asks who they intend to send and then it dawns on him that everyone else is looking at him.
- It could also be inferred that Obi-Wan himself is something of an Unreliable Narrator who tends to emphasise his own failures and relative culpability (which would fit in the self-effacing characterization mentioned above). For instance, when Obi-Wan tells Luke that Anakin's turn to the Dark Side was partially his fault because "I thought I could instruct him as well as Yoda. I was wrong." in Return of the Jedi it somewhat implies that Obi-Wan must have arrogantly demanded to train someone that Yoda would have been willing to train and done a better job with. Come The Phantom Menace this is shown clearly not to be the case. Obi-Wan is perhaps a little arrogant in the way he demands to train the boy, but it seems clear that a) Yoda was not willing to do the job and b) the demand is driven by his promise to a dying man rather than any belief in his own abilities as a teacher.
- And there doesn't seem to be any cases where Obi-Wan tries to represent his role in events to be bigger or better than is actually seen or to place blame for his problems on others. Maybe he really is that humble and/or shy of taking praise or credit?
- Why did he claim that Vader killed Anakin, which was Metaphorically True since the Vader persona destroyed the Anakin persona, rather than being straightforward? Was he trying to protect Luke from the Awful Truth but didn't have it in him to outright lie? Did he just feel like being poetic? Or are all seasoned Jedi a bit cryptic?
- Mace Windu is falling into this category as time goes on.
- Did he refuse to apologise to Ahsoka or is it that he did apologise when Plo Koon offered an apology on everyone's behalf since the Council does tend to appoint a designated speaker who speaks for them collectively. Had he always distrusted Anakin right from the start or only when Anakin accepted the Council seat despite everyone knowing he wasn't ready for it or to become a master? A deleted scene from Episode II shows Mace telling Obi-Wan to have more faith in Anakin to take the right path and when Mace tells Anakin he earned his trust the word 'finally' is tellingly absent from the dialogue.
- The Clone Wars gives several instances where he demonstrates trust in and gets along well with Anakin from bantering to interacting civally when both are injured.
- A growing section of fans have been pointing out how racism surrounding Mace's character has informed how people interpret his and Anakin's relationship with some arguing that the prevalence of certain attitudes towards this relationship cannot be separated from the fact Mace Windu is a black man while Anakin Skywalker is a conventionally attrative white man who also embodies the heterosexual ideal compared to someone living a lifestyle that doesn't conform to the nuclear family framework and is devoted to non-western forms of philosophy.
- Did he refuse to apologise to Ahsoka or is it that he did apologise when Plo Koon offered an apology on everyone's behalf since the Council does tend to appoint a designated speaker who speaks for them collectively. Had he always distrusted Anakin right from the start or only when Anakin accepted the Council seat despite everyone knowing he wasn't ready for it or to become a master? A deleted scene from Episode II shows Mace telling Obi-Wan to have more faith in Anakin to take the right path and when Mace tells Anakin he earned his trust the word 'finally' is tellingly absent from the dialogue.
- Some like to think the Jedi are more susceptible to the Dark Side than they admit due to certain actions and behaviors. Obi-Wan and Yoda in particular get hit with Ron the Death Eater interpretations in regard to their training of Luke and hiding the truth about Vader to him.
- The Jedi Order's heroic status is somewhat disputed in the fandom. The Order's policies about recruiting young children only and shunning attachments are born of their inspiration from Buddhist monks, but can also be seen as them indoctrinating children too young to know any better into their religion and being emotionally stunted when it comes to relationships. The Jedi Council's inability to stop the Republic's slide into corruption is attributed to their refusal to impose their will upon the denizens of the galaxy unlike the Sith but can also be seen as them becoming complacent and caring more about maintaining the status quo than actually helping people.
- There is also just how self-important the Jedi come off. Depending on the writer they came come off as either immensely humble or extremely sure of their own morality that they come off as a gang of Smug Super jerks. This doesn't even come from writers with anti-jedi slants: Dave Filoni had his favorite Jedi Plo Koon give a We {the Jedi} are Justice line that suggests this interpretation.
- Jar Jar Binks:
- There's been some speculation that Jar Jar is actually Force-sensitive. The main citation (as per The Fool) is that with some of the crap he lives through and pulls off, there is no way all of that is purely incidental.
- One theory takes it even further: Not only is Jar Jar utilizing Obfuscating Stupidity (his bumbling antics being a form of Drunken Fist), but he's actually a Sith Lord, co-conspirator with Palpatine, the Evil Counterpart to Yoda (who was also introduced as an annoying alien who was a lot wiser and more important than he let on) and possibly even The Man Behind the Man of both trilogies. The fact that the voice actor for Jar Jar seemed to nebulously confirm this theory on multiple occasions only threw more fuel on the fire.
- This video makes the argument that Jar Jar Binks is more heroic than Chewbacca.
- Jar Jar being made a Senator itself is subject to some interpretation: Was it a reward for his heroism during The Phantom Menace? Or just a way to exile him again without making Boss Nass look foolish for promoting him to General in the first place and/or upsetting his friends in Naboo? As a Representative he seems to be mostly subservient to Padmé, at least until she goes into hiding and leaves him in charge, is this the result of him being easily impressionable or does his position hold no real power?
- Ditto with him being made a General in The Phantom Menace. Boss Nass says he promoted him because he brought the Gungans and Naboo together. But considering they were about to head into a battle they expected to be a massacre, it could also be seen as a Uriah Gambit.
- The interpretation of Palpatine being aware of the impending Yuuzhan Vong invasion in Legends is a development of Thrawn's character. There's a lot of hints that Thrawn joined the Empire because he was aware of a threat and continued to serve because he thought that the New Republic would collapse due to internal infighting (though the Empire itself collapsed due to infighting). Later interpretations transferred this to Palpatine. (The current canonical interpretation is probably that any mentions of a "greater threat" by Palpatine during his reign was an excuse to hold power; the Vong invasion bolstering that was a coincidence.)
- The Force and The Dark Side: are they tools enabling justice or power? Or a single cunning entity manipulating everyone in the galaxy? Or at least the Jedi and the Sith. The two aspects of the Force are just that, aspects of one singular thing. Sith believe The Dark Side gives them power over the Force and others, but their quick descent into anger quickly makes them tools of it and not the other way around. Jedi, on the other hand, actively seek to follow the will of the Force because it has an Omniscient Morality License. What kind of long con it's trying to pull is anyone's guess.
- For that matter, is the Force intelligent? After all, the abilities possessed by the Jedi apparently come from microscopic creatures in their bloodstreams. We are expected to believe that these microscopic creatures are somehow able to convey the wisdom and guidance of the all-knowing, all-powerful Force. There are reasons to give that idea a healthy dose of scientific skepticism.
- Read about how Mitochondria have their own separate DNA chains.
- And... symbiont microorganisms serving as the conduit for the Force are less believable than cells in one's brain serving as one exactly how?
- For that matter, are midichlorians conduits for the Force at all? The correlation between midichlorian count and Force-sensitivity is well established, but the exact causal relationship between the two is never specified. While it's natural to assume that people are Force sensitive because they have a high midichlorian count, it could just as easily be the other way around. Perhaps midichlorians are harmless parasites that flock to hosts with large concentrations of Force energy in order to feed on its power. Or they could be simple quasi-lifeforms generated spontaneously in the bloodstream by the Force itself, but which have no tangible effect on the world beyond serving as a useful way of measuring Force-sensitivity.
- Palpatine tells Anakin that Plagueis could use the midichlorians to create life, so they would seem to be something more than a mere side effect.
- Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back was a Rebel sympathizer, not just clumsy and stupid. Amid several significant glances and nods, he tried to divert Vader's attention from Hoth and then alerted the Rebel forces to the impending invasion. (Oddly enough, another of Vader's You Have Failed Mes in that film, Captain Needa, was established in Legends' X-Wing Series to have had Rebel sympathies.)
- Related: Is it a coincidence that Captain Piett just happens to tell Ozzel about the probe droid's finding when Vader's within earshot? If not, was he setting up his superior knowing Vader's tolerance for failure in hopes of a Klingon Promotion? (Or, in an interpretation popular in Imperial-centered fan fic, was he eliminating an inept Admiral to save himself and the rest of the crew from being victims of his incompetence?)
- There's some debate as to whether the Jedi deserve the reputation of heroes at all.
- There is always the idea that the Canon are like history textbooks, created by and in the style of the "heroic" side. The Jedi are pure and benevolent and completely justified in their resistance of the Dark Side! Except.. while they depict the Sith as evil for using evil emotions, they themselves seem to eschew ALL emotions, and seem to consider all emotions, even the most positive, as evil ANYWAYS... What if the Sith were just another religious order, maybe hailing from a planet with a dangerously intense sun (thus, Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good for them), where they had learned to channel their passions and emotions in a positive way? Love to empower, fear transformed into to protection, anger at the injustice of the world mastered and channelled into focused will to accomplish good things.. Good, passionate people. Then in their spread across the Galaxy, they encounter another religion, the "Jedi". The Jedi, an order of strict and passionless fighters, are horrified at the blasphemous emotionality of the newcomers, and make them into acceptable targets in order to crush them in a patriotic, faith-based crusade... Thereafter, the very name of the other religion would be used to describe the violation of their stricture against emotionalism, and anyone walking their left-hand path would be labeled Sith.
- This isn't too far off from actual canon, which is that the Jedi and Sith are competing branches of the same religion which both became progressively more extreme to further distance themselves from the other. Most of the galaxy doesn't even know that there's a difference.
- People who watched the Prequel Trilogy and The Clone Wars as kids are less likely to hate Jar Jar Binks because the character was aimed at their age group when they first watched those installments. If they had been able to animate hair, then he would have probably been a younger Chewbacca. Jar Jar is also open to some interesting alternate interpretations, particularly once he becomes Senator. Is he really as dumb as he acts, and is he really a patsy for Sidious when he offers the motion to create the clone army? Or is it all just Obfuscating Stupidity, and he in fact knows exactly what he's doing (possible motives: vengeance against the Gungan leadership who humiliated and exiled him around the time of The Phantom Menace).
- Upon first viewing the Yoda/Dooku fight, you would be forgiven for thinking that Dooku got his ass handed to him by the little green man. Take a second look, and you'll see a Dark Jedi Master take on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and simultaneously school them in the art of lightsaber combat. Then, after proving himself equal to Yoda in knowledge of the Force, he chalks up a no-score loss by defending against everything the Green Pinball of Destruction can dish out. He only retreats to report back to the Emperor when it's clear the fight has become a stalemate, Yoda's backup is seconds from arriving, and Obi-Wan starts to regain consciousness.
- But it is that Dooku, who had all his attacks repelled and resorted to a dirty trick, also clearly became too afraid even of distracted Yoda to attack him when the latter was stopping the falling pillar.
- Oh, it's not that Dooku would have won had the fight continued. It's just that the fight wasn't the Curb-Stomp Battle that everyone assumes it was. The Count holds his own (albeit barely) and retreats when it becomes clear that he can't win against Yoda. Add that Obi-Wan is regaining consciousness and Yoda's military backup is seconds away, and the odds are about to tilt against him rather badly. Probably didn't hurt that his master had a backup plan.
- But it is that Dooku, who had all his attacks repelled and resorted to a dirty trick, also clearly became too afraid even of distracted Yoda to attack him when the latter was stopping the falling pillar.
- Master Yoda. Nearly all the installments he has appeared in presents his initial characterization in The Empire Strikes Back as being a facade. At times, he acts as the Grand Master of the Jedi Order... who doesn't take himself that seriously and can be extremely silly at times. The serious side is still there, in spades when it has to be, but he also fights with serving droids, makes fun of himself and others, and once reacts to a flabbergasted apprentice asking how he'd know she'd cry at good news before becoming happy by leaning in as if to whisper in her ear and then loudly saying "Grand Master of the Jedi Order am I! Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? 'How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?' Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is."
- He was 900 years old by the time of the Original Trilogy. You'd have to be at minimum a Deadpan Snarker to deal with the fact that you've survived roughly 7-9 generation of friends.
- This is the main explanation for near everything Yoda does onscreen. He's 900 years old. He's experienced everything possible for mere mortals to experience, learned everything possible for mere mortals to learn, and has lived centuries as an all-seeing, all-knowing wizard. He may still have youthful spirit and a desire to tackle deep philosophical problems, but it's been depressed as of the last few hundred years because he's completely and utterly bored - there has been absolutely nothing new in his life to really latch onto.
- In Return of the Jedi, Yoda cracks a joke about how he looks as he is preparing to die. Unlike his initial appearance which was probably mostly obfuscation, in this case, he has no reason to be anything but himself. By the point in the story Luke first meets him, Yoda has seen the universe crumble around him, is banished to a planet just pulsing with the dark side, and whom probably knows that he is going to die soon. One might interpret from this that Yoda was a bit more jovial before The Empire, but that all the crap he's gone through has left him with little more than some gallows humor.
- In The Clone Wars, a comment made by a Dark Side shadow of Yoda implies that Yoda may have actually experimented with the Dark Side in the past.Dark Yoda: Yoda plays not with me anymore. Yoda thinks me not worthy.
- The Prequel Trilogy seemed to indicate that Yoda was always a stern leader. The Prequel Trilogy also implies that Anakin was never a good person past childhood, and that he fought with Obi-Wan all but from the get-go.
- There's equal hints that Anakin argued with authority figure to compensate for spending almost a decade of his life as property and disliked being reminded of it.
- Yoda, stern? The Yoda who said "Hmm, lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing!"? Sure, maybe it was for the benefit of the Younglings, but that itself is evidence that Yoda retained a youthful spirit even as his body aged.
- Why does he talk the way he does? Is it because he's grown bored with how language works due to his age? Is it for impact? Did all Jedi speak like that hundreds of years ago? Or is it because he doesn't speak English (or whatever language Luke speaks) fluently?
- He was 900 years old by the time of the Original Trilogy. You'd have to be at minimum a Deadpan Snarker to deal with the fact that you've survived roughly 7-9 generation of friends.
- The Clone Wars features characters that have been subjected to different character interpretations made by the fans:
- Almec's claim that Jango Fett is not a real Mandalorian in light of The Mandalorian confirming Jango was a Foundling. Was Almec simply trying to distance his peace loving government from a violent mercenary? Or was he exhibiting snooty elitism towards the Foundlings as not really Mandalorians? This would be befitting the Canon’s depiction of some Mandalorians feeling more deserving the label over others given their infighting over their cultural identity. As Almec proves to be both a Smug Snake and an accomplished liar, either is possible.
- It could also be that pulling a Chuundar and allowing himself to be cloned for a slave army using Mandalorian training methods, thus perverting his culture's traditions for profit and making slaves of most of his sons, would have at least a few of his brethren disgusted enough to land Jango in dar'manda territory.
- Did Savage Opress become evil of his own free will? Or are his evil acts the product of the Nightsisters' brainwashing? Or some combination of the two? Savage's death scene only serves to further muddy the issue as it features him presumably reverting back into his pre-Dark Side self.
- Is Darth Maul a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who acts the way he does because of all of the hardships he's endured throughout his life and for all of his evil genuinely cares about his brother Savage Opress? Or is he an utterly unsympathetic villain whose obsession with Obi-Wan has turned him into a revenge-fueled psychopath that treats Savage (who he began referring to solely as "apprentice") as a minion and an investment? There's arguments that can be made for both. Maul's reaction to Savage's death presents that he did care about his brother, albeit in a cold and detached Jerk with a Heart of Gold sort of way.
- Barriss Offee has been subjected to multiple character interpretations by fans as a result of the events that occurred during the Fugitive arc in season five:
- Is Barriss a misguided but genuinely Well-Intentioned Extremist who is ultimately proven right? Or is she a hypocritical, self-righteous Knight Templar who is in denial of her own turn to the Dark Side? Again, arguments have been made for both interpretations.
- In a similar vein, her mourning one of the Jedi who were killed in the bombing she masterminded. Was she merely acting? Or was she showing some genuine remorse? Likewise, was her conversation with Ahsoka after the memorial service manipulation? Or was she having doubts about her choices? The look of sorrow and guilt on her face as Ahsoka walks away suggests the latter, but her later actions imply the former. In the end, it's most likely both as Barriss was actively manipulating Ahsoka, but she still felt remorseful about having to do it, which is reinforced by the sad look she gives Ahsoka after being exposed and arrested at the end of the story arc.
- Her comment that she feels Asajj's lightsabers suit her muddies the waters even more. Only Sith use red lightsabers, after all.
- Ahsoka Tano's decision to leave the Order has been subjected to some interpretations by fans. Did she do it because she realized that Barriss had a point about the growing corruption of Order's values and morals? Or was she simply too hurt by the way she had been betrayed by Barriss and abandoned by the Council? By extension, was it the mature thing to do, or a selfish child's "self-pity"? While the first option appears to be more popular among fans, some argue it was the latter.
- Almec's claim that Jango Fett is not a real Mandalorian in light of The Mandalorian confirming Jango was a Foundling. Was Almec simply trying to distance his peace loving government from a violent mercenary? Or was he exhibiting snooty elitism towards the Foundlings as not really Mandalorians? This would be befitting the Canon’s depiction of some Mandalorians feeling more deserving the label over others given their infighting over their cultural identity. As Almec proves to be both a Smug Snake and an accomplished liar, either is possible.
- Boba Fett is a particularly weird case. Most fans latched onto him for his mysterious past, cool, near-silent demeanor, badass armor and the fact Darth Vader spoke directly to him in his first appearance. The Canon latched onto this interpretation and made him incredibly badass, to a degree Depending on the Writer. However, his actual portrayal in the theatrical films is... pretty different to this badass interpretation:
- The Clone Wars reveals that Boba had the tendency of to be something of a Butt-Monkey when he was younger, with his plans repeatedly failing even when helped by more experienced Bounty Hunters previously shown as quite competent, like Aurra Sing. "Bounty" even ends with Asajj Ventress tying him up, gagging him, stuffing him in a box, and selling him to a despotic warlord in place of the kidnapped girl said warlord intended to take as his bride. Though Boba does trail the Millenium Falcon to Cloud City, he doesn't participate in the fighting there at all; Vader does all the work, and Boba's sole role there is to watch Han Solo get carbonite-frozen and then run away to Tatooine with him once Luke and Leia escape. Then on Tatooine, Boba gets a rather lackluster fight, including being killed off when a blinded Han Solo accidentally shoots Boba's jetpack, causing it to propel him off a skimmer-skiff and into the mouth of the Sarlacc. However, such is Boba's cemented reputation amongst Star Wars fans as an uber-Badass Normal that anyone who doesn't think of Boba as a badass is seen as crazy.
- Though Vader does directly talk to Fett in their first appearance, it's only to say "no disintegrations". Which, as this blog rather crudely notes, is a more refined way of saying "I told you I need them alive, so do not kill them, you understand me?" Out of all the bounty hunters there, including IG-88 and Dengar (whom the same Expanded Universe establishes are a psychopathic Serial Killer droid and a man who lost most of his brain in a racing crash, respectively), Boba Fett is the only person Vader feels needs to be reminded that, in this case, the job is specifically to bring the bounty in alive.
- After Lucas explained that the opening scrolls were R2D2 narrating a century after Return of The Jedi, a lot of fans wondered if he was an Unreliable Narrator. Making himself look cooler (explians why he can fly in some movies and not others) and making up or guessing scenes where he wasn't present, therefore explaining various continuity errors. Due to Artoo being Out of Focus in the Sequel Trilogy, some fans guess that BB-8 might be the new narrator.
- The Sith Rule of Two. In theory, Darth Bane's ideal is that each apprentice overthrows the master once they've learned all they can, and thus each successive generation of Sith is supposedly stronger and more knowledgeable than the last. But given that the Dark Side of the Force is inherently corruptive and therefore tends to work contrary to any kind of idealism, and the will of the Force supposedly opposes the Sith in the long-term, it's more likely that knowledge is lost with every generation of Sith: the master is always looking for a better apprentice and has an incentive to keep some knowledge from them for self-preservation, and there's always a chance the master might die an accidental death before their apprentice is fully trained, or that an unready apprentice might get lucky and kill their master too early. There's also the possibility that if the Master and Apprentice are in the same place, then a fortunate Jedi or just the Force deciding to pull Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies could wipe them out entirely.
- In Legends, Bane's whole "Rule of Two" idea came from Revan's holocron. Revan was trained by Kreia who was no fan of the whole Stupid Evil the Sith tended to run with and wished for both the Jedi and Sith to be destroyed. Kreia also favored the long game and subtle manipulation over brute force (or Force), and would have passed those ideas down to Revan, who was quite the long-game thinker and strategist in their own right. Revan's Sith status is in doubt, given they were being quite unwillingly yanked on Vitiate's leash by that point and setting up a Genghis Gambit to destroy the Sith Empire while feigning loyalty to it. It could be that the whole thing was Revan setting up a whopper of a Kaizo Trap that would lead the Sith into an Unwinnable by Design path they wouldn't recover from.
- Emperor Palpatine in turn, while the most successful Dark Lord of the Sith in history (in that he succeeded in utterly destroying the Jedi Order where thousands of years of previous Sith had failed), can be interpreted as a demonstration of the above. He broke the Rule of Two by picking apprentices more useful as tools for his plans than as potential successors: Darth Maul was a good Jedi-killer but not much of a grand thinker, Count Dooku was almost twenty years older than Palpatine according to canonical dates and thus likely to pre-decease him, and Anakin Skywalker was an arrogant, easily manipulated Hot-Blooded fool who, like Maul, was good at killing Jedi but not at grand strategy.
- The Love Triangle in the original trilogy:
- Were Luke and Leia actually attracted to each other pre-Surprise Incest reveal, or were their feelings platonic from the start? Their infamous kiss was initiated by Leia purely to spite Han rather than out of any romantic interest on either Luke or Leia's part, while Luke's supposed attraction to Leia is mostly limited to calling her beautiful and expressing some jealousy over Han's interest in her in A New Hope.
- For that matter, Luke's own involvement in the triangle is subject to multiple interpretations. Did he have feelings for Leia and back off when he saw that she was in love with Han, or was his jealousy over Leia and Han's flirting the result of him being in love with Han, not Leia? Or was that jealousy actually mere instinctual brotherly protectiveness, with him subconsciously sensing that Leia was his sister all along?
- Was Leia's annoyance with Han in A New Hope and the first half of The Empire Strikes Back purely her way of covering up her attraction to him, or did she genuinely dislike him until they were forced to spend time together?
- Palpatine. In canon he is evidently an effective chessmaster: one doesn't take over the galaxy with a war he leads on both sides for not being this after all. However what many fans go deep into the rabbit hole over is just how much of everything was part of his plans (not helped by George Lucas's out-of-character insistence that everything in the Republic was basically fine until he came along): in other words, was he manipulating everything, or just pre-planning some things and improvising with others?
- In canon and Legends, he's shown a few times to actually have had plans fail. In The Phantom Menace he explicitly didn't plan for Chancellor Velorum to try to go around the Senate to the Jedi, nor for Nute Gunray to fail in his attempts to kill Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and capture Queen Amidala. In the canon Star Wars: Darth Vader he remarks that he hadn't planned on Darth Maul's defeat, but had planned for Dooku to only be a stopgap apprentice while he waited for Anakin to come of age, comparing him to "a proton torpedo" that "served his purpose and was gone". See also the clusterkriff with the zillo beast in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In the Legends novel Labyrinth of Evil, the Jedi manage to forensically trace the provenance of the clone army almost all the way back to him, which forces Palpatine to improvise by ordering General Grievous's attack on Coruscant at the start of Revenge of the Sith just to throw them off the scent.
- In particular is everything in Anakin Skywalker's life being manipulated in some way to better have him fall to the darkside. This is most commonly held in the idea that he created the dreams of Padme dying during Revenge of the Sith to drive Anakin to extremes, but fans have gone to construct feasible arguments that Palpatine set up or exacerbated every event that fed into Anakin's eventual fall from deliberately setting up the scenarios that led to Anakin's disillusion with the Jedi Council (such as setting up the need for Obi-Wan to fake his death and making Ahsoka's trial into far more of a affair than it needed to be) to even setting up Anakin and Padme or putting into motion Shmi Skywalker's abduction and death due to the similarities of the prophetic dreams. Interpretation is entirely a case of just how far fans are willing to believe Palpatine's manipulations could possibly have gone.
- Sith manipulation aside, how justified were the Separatists in revolting against the Republic? The films, naturally, paint it as Black-and-White Morality, but given the rampant political corruption in the Republic—to the point where, per The Phantom Menace, megacorporations literally have their own senators and the Republic does nothing about one using its private army to extort actual member planets—and the fact that neither the Republic nor its ostensible guardians the Jedi Order seem to have a problem with raising an army of Slave Mooks to stop the revolt, it can come off as anything from Gray-and-Grey Morality to Evil Versus Evil. The situation is muddied even further by the fact that those same megacorporations also provide the lion's share of the Seps' fighting power, so there's a fair argument to be made that while the Republic is probably overdue for a revolution, this particular revolution isn't going to have the results its proponents think it will.
- In The Rise of Skywalker, General Pryde kills Hux because he suspects Hux is the spy. While his suspicions are correct, the movie never really tells us exactly how Pryde knew that Hux was a spy. Which begs the question: Did Pryde really know that Hux was a spy? Or did Pryde just kill Hux and pin the blame on him, because having worked for Palpatine for a long time, he knows that the Sith don’t take kindly to failure and would’ve probably punished him instead if he hadn’t shifted the blame on someone else? If so, then his execution and blaming of Hux would turn out to be more of an Accidental Truth by pure luck rather than anything else. Or alternatively, maybe he took the opportunity to kill Hux to get rid of an ambitious potential rival that might one day try to usurp his position for the Emperor’s favor?
- Given that no official translations exist for Grogu's babbling, fans share different ideas on the meaning of "Patu!" Some common guesses translate it to "Papa!" or treat it as the sound Grogu makes when he wants to eat.
- Padmé Naberrie Amidala, particularly during and after Attack of the Clones: heroine and Only Sane Woman of the Senate who had a chance to derail Palpatine's plans but failed? Or Obstructionist Pacifist and Broken-System Dogmatist who didn't know when to cut her home planet's losses after it became a victim of the Republic's dysfunction in The Phantom Menace? And was her work in the Senate actually a credible threat to Palpatine's plans, or was she just a useful idiot who did exactly what he wanted by delaying the Military Creation Act until the clone army was actually ready and he could manufacture a crisis to justify activating it?
