Thread by @AmeliaRoseWrite

One of the sneakiest awesome things #TheLastJedi did was actually make the midichlorians bullshit pay off.

PUT DOWN THOSE LASER PITCHFORKS AND HEAR ME OUT

The midichlorians are an example of my overarching argument about The Prequels: that they contain a very nuanced story told very, very incompetently.

The Jedi are SUPPOSED to be spiritually enlightened warrior monks. That's what our image of them is. It's what Luke thought they were. It's what Anakin expected them to be.

And then he gets to Coruscant and finds out that the mystical spiritualists are a bunch of fucking politically motivated bureaucrats bickering about age limits.

To be a Jedi, this wise council says, requires exactly two things:
1. being so young you won't remember the family they took you from, and
2. some kind of blood greebles

That's fucking it.

Dude, even public schools have slightly more rigorous tests than that. (SLIGHTLY.)

So a high midichlorian count correlates with Force sensitivity, and says absolutely NOTHING ELSE about the kind of person you're dealing with. It is basically the Stanford-Binet IQ test for the Force. One damn number that determines your life.

The Jedi have stopped bothering with actual spiritual substance. "Hello, my child! I see that you're searching for meaning and guidance in a difficult life in a galaxy full of strife. Your midichlorians are 47. Too low. Good bye."

So along comes Anakin. He is looking for guidance and meaning in a vast, confusing world. He finds a group of bureaucrats arguing about whether the large number of greebles in his blood makes up for him being past the age cutoff to receive any guidance.

They're enforcing the state hegemony. They deny him the things that do give him meaning--relationships. They are soulless. The Jedi have forgotten their purpose. He is DISILLUSIONED AS HELL.

And then along comes Palpatine. He doesn't point a box at Anakin and say, "Your number is 76." He doesn't hand him a list of rules about relationships. He doesn't deliberate and nitpick details. What does he do?

HE TELLS ANAKIN A STORY.

This kid, whose soul is starved for something he can't even identify, who is being told that all the things that fill that need are forbidden, whose Jedi training has consisted of PowerPoint bulleted lists, hears a STORY. About a larger universe out there, something spiritual.

Fuck YEAH, he's gonna follow the guy who offers him all the things the Jedi were supposed to. It's twisted and nasty, but at least it's not just a number.

Then, well. Things go awry.

And then you get Luke.

Luke hears Obi-Wan's stories of the Jedi. There's something rich in them, something his soul wants, too. Since the Jedi bureaucracy is wrecked, all that is LEFT is stories. He gets a bit of guidance from a couple of crazy old men, and the rest he's got to make up himself.

If you end with the original trilogy, what you've got is Luke attempting to resurrect what the Jedi were SUPPOSED to be. Which is cool, but ...

#TheLastJedi shows us that, 30 years later, he's seen where this shit is going. You'll get elitist Jedi and regulations meant to keep you on the Light Side and they'll forget about the actual Force binding the whole universe because they're too busy counting blood greebles again.

The whole series, from the very first movie, is about how he finds balance through the Force. The big moment in A New Hope isn't when he blows up the Death Star; it's when he shuts off his targeting computer--ignoring the numbers--and trusts his feelings.

This is just the extension of that. Now he burns down the JEDI rules. He realizes that, like the computer, he doesn't NEED them. And Rey, and all the other new little kids out there, don't either.

What's Rey's blood greeble count? What's Poe's? Finn's? Roses's? Leia's? Ben's? That stable kid's? WHO FUCKING CARES.

Let go of your number. Maybe it can guide you. But don't let it define you. Find the meaning, the story, the self. Trust that. Cultivate it. And remember that the Force isn't just about moving rocks.

(Though that rock-moving thing WAS cool, amirite?)

FIN