The Mandalorian

Kreia has the advantage of being the villain. She's intended to have points, but ultimately be proven wrong. Though you can also go full Stupid Evil and beat her anyway, and she's like "Yeah, this is why I don't call myself a Sith, you're all fucking idiots."

Some of her points aren't super valid in the new canon any more because the Force works differently, but most of her stuff about how the Force is a capricious god wasn't really right in the old canon either.

Really Darksiders are really overplayed.

Give me a Lightside sociopath. I don't know Knight Templar like say Hao/Zeke from Shaman King as a random example off the top of my head.

Lightside villain is also impossible. TCW has an arc designed to basically explore that with Jedi Master Pong Krell, who's a complete asshole and a callous sociopath. He doesn't stay a Jedi for long within the narrative, because those traits are mutually exclusive.

Some of this depends upon how we interpret The Force. Personally, I've always preferred The Force as a moral entity. By definition, you cannot have an evil Light Sider, because all the "Light Side" is is moral goodness, essentially.

However, if you interpret the Light Side as tranquility, then you do have the possibility of an evil lightsider. Think Equilibrium and you get the idea. Eschewing emotion until you're utterly soulless.

Jorus C'baoth would beg to differ about it being impossible for there to be a light-side sociopath.

Yeah that’s how I imagine a Lightside villain to be.

A detached sociopath. Tranquil yes, but utterly uncaring to the suffering of others.

How was he?

Edited by slimcoder on Jan 25th 2020 at 2:46:22 AM

Arrogant beyond belief, and later his Clone was completely and utterly insane.

His clone’s ultimate plan is simply to enslave the entire Galaxy with Force brainwashing. Oh, and his ultimate confrontation with Luke was way better than Palpatine’s with Rey.

Edited by Beatman1 on Jan 25th 2020 at 6:54:14 AM

No it’s not. Being on the light side doesn’t require you to be be a good person (the Jedi require, or at least encourage it, but it’s not necessary to stay on the light side) just not a “willing to twist the Force into a tool of hate and greed” kind of person. But you don’t have to be hateful or possessive to be villainous.

The franchise forgets it on occasion, but the Force is a function of temperament, not actions.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 25th 2020 at 5:46:50 AM

People kind of ran rampant with the headcanon that "balance to the force" meant quality in the (false) understanding of the Ying-Yang symbol. The extreme version of that is the Jedi and Sith had to equalize in numbers.

The absurdity of that should be obvious if you think about it for just a moment. It's assuming that the morality of the universe is one half doing good things and living their lives and the other half trying to murder everyone. That's not balance, but a gross imbalance. The Ying-Yang symbol is not about simply good and evil but about how different aspects of ourselves temper the other, like how we can't be 100% altruistic at all times because being selfish includes doing a job to get paid.

The Mortis Arc of The Clone Wars was actually the first Lucas-canon to actually say that there IS a "light side" of the force. Lucas' previous comments on the matter indicated that he saw the dark side as a small component of the overall force but otherwise kept the Ying-Yang, with the Sith itself a particularly disruptive aspect of the dark side that threatened the balance itself. The existence of the Father, Son and Daughter was some metaphysical stuff that is harder to decipher, but it was clear the Father's role was to prevent the Son and Daughter from killing each other.

Its mostly the word choice Light and Dark

when the more accurate terms would be Positive and Negative and understanding that Neutral isn't a GOOD thing

though with with the Force elementals the Son is portrayed more less like he's evil 'since He is completely genuine in his promise to help Anakin stop Palpy' He is just so self centered in his want for Freedom he doesn't see the consequences of his actions

Infact his reaction to killing the Sister is him being outright horrified by whats happened but then he just refocuses the blame onto everyone else

To be fair, the term “the light side” didn’t become official until very recently. Before then, it was always just the Force and the dark side.

The whole “the light side” terminology comes from the misconception mentioned. I remember when it was made the official term a couple years back there was some distaste for it for that reason.

I'll admit, I didn't realize myself until it was pointed out TFA canonized "the light side" that it was never spoken in the original six films. It was always "the force" and "the dark side." I'll need to rewatch the Mortis Arc to see how their dialogue portrayed it exactly, but it was clear that the Sith were a separate facet to the whole system.

Joruus C'baoth was a great light-side villain.

His big thing is he was authorization but not malicious, intense desire for tranquility and he was going to make you tranquil. Thrawn's methods and motives suited him but he totally would not have been compatible with the Emperor or Vader. His methods were more and more on using the force to control people.

Over time though he degenerated and became more and more obsessed with having an apprentice and wanted Leia's kids desperately. He ended up having a clone of Luke created and used his force powers to basically make it a voiceless slave apprentice.

The original idea for the character was a defective clone of Obi-wan.

I think the Prequels and TCW played with having Jedi who were Light side (and I'm on team 'hate that term') but were becoming less and less moral as they overlooked the little things in favor of the bigger picture until everything got screwed up because the devil was in the details. They were so focused on winning the war they didn't stop to consider that the clones were technically slaves, etc.

I imagine the clones being a slave army was brushed aside because they were really the Republic's only option. The Judicial Forces were police, not an army, and the Jedi were peace keepers, not soldiers.

An angle that I'm starting to like now is the idea of The Dark Side not being evil, but its users are.

For example, places like The Cave on Dagobah are the Dark Side's actual "place" in the universe. Its purpose is to act like a mirror, showing people their flaws so that they know where not to go. In a sense, it exists to be resisted. The Dark Side is meant to stay in those caves (metaphysical or literal), and part of why The Sith are evil is because they bring it into places it has no place being. They cannot give up their hatred and evil, so they embrace it and carry the darkness out with them.

Dunno, just a thought I had after reading KJ Mackley's post, probably has implications I haven't thought of that I don't like, but I think it might be neat.

As for an antagonistic light sider, what I would do is make it so that they had legitimate good intentions, but were either misinformed and/or had terrible judgement, so their actions were "evil" even though they were not.

A simple example would be something like "a child recklessly points a realistic toy gun at someone in front of the Jedi, who thinks it's real, so they cut the kid's arm off". As long as The Jedi really did think the blaster was real, and that the only way to stop someone from dying was to cut the kid's arm off, then The Jedi is technically not evil. Though I will admit that this scenario stretches Hanlon's Razor quite a bit with a Jedi.

A much better example would probably be that of a Jedi who was lied to or who misinterpreted evidence, and now thinks that The Hero is actually part of some great evil.

I will note, though, such a character might be less liked than most Sith by the audience, since someone harming others through non-malicious stupidity is even more irritating than doing so through malice.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Jan 26th 2020 at 11:43:01 AM

>Jedi misinterpreting evidence and being after the hero

So Star Wars The Fugitive, then?

Imo Pong Krell could’ve been an awesome light side but evil Jedi character, an examination of the Jedi’s own sliding moral compromises in the war, but then they ruined it by having him actually want to be Dooku’s dark apprentice and yadda yadda right at the end of his story.

But he does outline what a good “evil Jedi” trait would be: arrogance, self-righteous belief that what they say is right, callousness towards others (Jedi are encouraged, but not required, to be compassionate) and caring more for the big picture than individual people. The Vader comic features a probably-evil Jedi with that kind of character who screws over all of Mon Calamari in order to get revenge on the Empire and facilitate one of his (ultimately correct) visions, who is never stated to be Dark Side.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 26th 2020 at 3:47:31 AM

Oh yeah Ferran Barr.

The only Jedi to actually enact Order 66. That was a dope moment.

@theLibrarian Yeah, that'd be how I'd do the story. There'd be some sort of fugitive from justice who the Jedi thinks has committed, or is in the process of committing, some sort of serious crime. So, the poor hero is now being chased by a powerful psychic warrior.

...

I mean.

Billions of people do that recreationally. Drinking just a bit of poison. That's a fairly common vice.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 27th 2020 at 1:03:10 PM

True. But constantly drinking alcohol isn't considered healthy or balanced.

I guess a better analogy is 'having a well that's half poison and half water isn't really good'.

For the Clones thing, yes they probably saw it as having no other choice, but the point stands that the war had the Jedi losing morality more and more to win it. Technically they could have insisted the Clones be allowed citizenship as soldiers, or could have refused to lead the clones, or just declared neutrality in the war (as some characters like Depa or Santine seem to think they should have). But the fact stands that they accepted the position of being overseers (Shaak Ti even called the clones property of the Jedi). It's an excellent look at why someone would trade a moral stance due to politics and practicalities, but it still really screwed them over and they walked into Palpatine's plans because they put the pragmatic over the moral.

You know, the recent discussions regarding the Dark Side made me think again about that scene from the penultimate episode .

In Legends one of the scariest thoughts (for both Sith and Jedi) was the idea of Yoda succumbing to the Dark Side.

There's a scene in one of the Clone Wars-era novels where Dooku tries to tempt Yoda and there's a split-second where he thinks it's working - only to mentally crap his pants at the Nightmare Fuel a Dark Side Yoda would present.

From what we've seen , the whole species seems to have a natural affinity for the Force, yet there's never been a Darksider among them (not even in Legends).

So seeing a member of Yoda's species - a child no less - force-choke someone Luke nobody's business becomes even more disturbing.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jan 27th 2020 at 3:46:35 PM

In the old EU the cave was explained to be that because a powerful darksider died in that cave and he basically infected the place.

Yoda stayed there as the darkside cave canceled out his force footprint.

The ruins of the Death Star II were supposed to be infected like that and Exar Kun's temple on Yavin IV.

Edited by Memers on Jan 27th 2020 at 8:11:28 AM

Also the remains of Byss.