The Star Wars universe has time travel now—everybody panic!
Wait.
Okay, it sort of does. But panic is actually not necessary! Because the fact that time travel has finally been introduced has served as a valuable lesson about who wields power in this galaxy and when there is just too much going around.
[Major spoilers for the last episodes of the Star Wars: Rebels, as well as The Clone Wars.]
If you were watching the Rebels episode “A World Between Worlds,” you were probably a little shocked (/confused/excited/furious?). The remaining Ghost crew trekked to the Jedi temple on Lothal only to find that the Empire was busy trying to excavate the darn thing. And they were doing a pretty good job of it, too. Ezra had already been nudged toward the temple by the Force-connected guardians of the planet (lots of Loth-cats and Loth-wolves, one who might basically be the embodied spirit of his former master Kanan Jarrus), and though he and Kanan were able to enter the temple before as a duo, he was relatively lost on how to enter it without that handy master-apprentice tag team. In getting closer to the Empire’s operation, Ezra and Sabine find artwork at the base of the temple, artwork connecting the temple to the Ones.
Okay, this is going to take some explanation.
The Ones were revealed in a special George-Lucas-plotted set of episodes in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Viewers learned that there was a planet named Mortis hidden away from normal space-time (think the Phantom Zone from Superman?) in the Star Wars galaxy, and that planet housed a trio of hyper-power Force-wielding beings: the Father, the Daughter, and the Son. The Daughter embodied the light side of the Force, while the Son embodied the dark side, with the Father acting as a balancing point between them. The Father broadcast an old Jedi distress call to the Jedi Order, who sent Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano to investigate. Drawn to this planet by the Father, the trio found that he had been searching for Anakin in particular. Having heard about Skywalker’s potential “Chosen One” status, he decided that Anakin must be the one take his place keeping the balance between his children following his death.
For some reason, the Father assumed that the Chosen One’s job would be babysitting. Anakin disagreed. (He was also not sure that he was the Chosen One at all, which is fair, if surprisingly humble of him.)
Long story short, Anakin’s presence leads to the death of both the Daughter and the Father—and then he kills the Son to make sure the guy won’t escape Mortis. As he lays dying, the Father tells Anakin that he has brought Balance to their realm (by killing everyone, it seems) and that he will do it again (…by killing everyone, if we’re being honest).
It turns out that the Jedi temple on Lothal is a relic of the Ones; the art in the planet’s caves and the outside the temple are depictions of them, and also serve as a guide on how to access the temple… in a manner of speaking. Ezra figures out how to engage with the art in order to enter the temple and finds himself on a different plane altogether. It is a dark realm with portals leading to different points in space-time; Ezra hears the words of Force-users past, present, and future through the portals, and paths lead in every direction. While he’s there, he finds one portal that leads to the point in time about two years previous when Ahsoka fought Darth Vader—and he removes her from the fight before she falls. Ahsoka warns Ezra against using the realm to that purpose, and prevents him from rescuing Kanan in his master’s critical final moments. Ezra realizes that this is the reason why Kanan’s spirit wanted him to find this place; he wanted Ezra to learn that it was his duty to find the point in time when he could be most useful to those he cared for, and make his life count.
Unfortunately, the Emperor has also been looking for this realm, and Ezra’s entry into it gives him a window on the place. Ezra and Ahsoka barely escape with their lives, and there’s no indication of whether or not the Emperor will be able to find his way back and use the space-time realm to his own ends.
Well, there is an indication in the long run, being that the Emperor clearly does not manipulate time to defeat the Rebel Alliance. So what exactly is going on here?
It seems likely that time travel was introduced Star Wars for the express purpose of proving why it cannot exist in the Star Wars universe as a constant. And also, explicitly, why beings who are too powerful in the Force are not capable of living alongside the rest of the galaxy.
That the Ones discovered the ability to time travel should come as no surprise; the Father tells Anakin that he and his children fled the “temporal realm” in his explanation for their circumstances. It stands to reason that the ability to place themselves in a “non-temporal” realm would coincide with the ability to manipulate space-time. But leaving that portal realm behind for others to find is a perfect example of the problems raised by overly-Force-powered individuals. Whether they result from purely normal circumstances, or they are created by another being’s ability to manipulate the Force (as in the “Sith legend” about Darth Plagueis being able to influence midi-chlorians to create life from nothing), there are fundamental risks that go well beyond the struggle of “light vs dark.”
To that end, the Ones pointedly don’t have much of a backstory; it is presumed that they are a family of Celestials, members of an ancient civilization that predated the galactic community entirely (also known as the Architects; these are a people rooted in the old Legends canon, so it is entirely possible that the concept of Celestials do not carry over into current canon). It is unclear if their abilities are naturally occurring due to their status as such, or if they might have been given those powers as a result of an experiment similar to Palpatine’s on Shmi. All the same, their powers are staggering—the Son and Daughter are shown with the ability to shape shift into animals and even other people. The Son shows Anakin Skywalker his entire future, including his fall to the dark side and transformation into Vader. Later, the Father forcibly removes that information from Anakin’s mind so that knowledge won’t have any bearing on his upcoming decisions. The trio also appear to be extremely long-lived; the ancient Jedi distress call that the Father sends out to broadcast their location to the Order is over 2000 years old, and the temple on Lothal is similarly ancient. There are references to the Ones going back ages in architecture and Jedi scripture. Adding a breakdown of space-time to their list of skills seems fair enough; they’re basically gods.
And as near-gods (in ability if not invulnerability), they have to be locked away somewhere else.
The Ones have sequestered themselves in isolation for good reason; the Father knows that they are too powerful to be around average citizens of the galaxy, that they pose a danger to others. The Son is itching to be set free, but that’s in his nature for being a pseudo-embodiment of the dark side. Anakin is called in as a proper replacement for the Father—and it’s important to note that had things not gone incredibly sideways on his visit, Anakin could have done this job. He displays the ability to keep both the Son and Daughter under his power. Which means that Anakin himself is essentially too powerful for the galaxy as well. He is on par with the Ones, some of the most mighty beings this galaxy has ever known. With enough time and experimentation, he might have been able to learn all of these extra powers for himself as well. And let’s not even start on the problems with someone like Anakin Skywalker having access to endless time travel portals whenever the mood strikes him.
This leads back to an argument I’ve made before—it’s possible Rey’s awakening abilities in the current Star Wars trilogy are the result of the Force (consciously or not; I personally like to think of the Force as the immune system of the galaxy) attempting to eradicate the Skywalker line. The Skywalkers are too juiced up as Force-wielders—their continued presence in the galaxy has led to a wide breadth of catastrophes. And due to the presence of the Ones, we have seen where that unchecked power can lead. If the ability to fuss with space-time is a natural progression of the certain amount of power in the Force, then anyone too powerful is an automatic threat to the fabric of their entire universe. An abundance of meddling could bring the whole thing crashing down, and there’s nothing to stop it once someone reaches that kind of power… unless they’ve got a very particular Force-balancing dad, apparently.
There are classes of powerful Force beings that subvert this, but they are mostly animal in nature, or completely removed from the galaxy at large. There’s the Bendu, the self-professed “one in the middle” of the Force that Rebels introduced to canon, but the advantage of the Bendu is that he clearly isn’t interested in the machinations of the galaxy. The Bendu doesn’t care about strength or even about controlling others to his own ends; he wants to be left alone, and only becomes dangerous when his peace is disturbed. Then there are the Force-imbued lothcats and lothwolves, and the convorees, who have Force abilities, but seem to be more deeply connected to the will of the Force, often seeming to act on its behalf. Their engagement with the Force seems primal, often even supernatural, though it is often unclear where those lines are meant to be drawn where the Force is concerned.
But even if we account for the lothcats and the Bendu, too many Force-sensitive beings in the galaxy reach a point of raw strength that puts reality in danger. The ability to understand and manipulate space-time is a deeply intertwined part of this problem. To some extent, Force-users already meddle in it too much; visions of the future are part of the difficulty in keeping Jedi focused and uninhibited by fear. Yoda can insist that it is “always in motion,” but it’s rare that students take that lesson to heart every time the Force offers up a glimpse of what may be coming. And that’s without noting the Force-wielders who actively go out of their way to suss out the path before them. This ability to perceive space-time and its currents are already an ability that Force-sensitive beings actively engage with, sometimes without intending to. The idea of them gaining more power in that arena is a frankly horrific concept, one that may have been a part of the galaxy’s emergence, but is no longer useful to them now.
So there it is. The concept of time travel was introduced to the Star Wars universe… to basically prove that this universe cannot function with it. Or function with uber-powerful Force-wielders who have the ability to engage it on a manipulative level. Here’s hoping that Palpatine never gets the chance to futz with it now that Ezra directed him to the exact spot where this odd portal realm exists. And here’s also hoping those are the last of the time travel shenanigans for Star Wars. I will take them briefly for the sake of getting Ahsoka back, but anything beyond is going to tumble the delicate house of cards into a conveniently placed black hole.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is always interested in how near-gods cause problems. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Time travel is a door that once you open it, you can’t close it again as something writers can reach for in a given fictional universe. Now that we’ve seen it once, we’ll see it again. First time we see it in the theatrical movies, I’ll be done.
This was still confusing, honestly, anything trying to incorporate the Mortis arc was going to be confusing. I thought we agreed that those episodes didn’t exist.
Nice illustration of the Father, Daughter and Son at the top though.
I think this interpretation fits — though honestly I suspect the whole thing was just a twisty way of bringing Ahsoka back.
That said, Sheev apparently couldn’t access the “time zone” without Ezra’s presence there, and it didn’t look like Ahsoka was standing directly in front of a portal. Its likely the portals are “access points” within the time zone, but are not actually fixed to specific entrances (and rather just function as windows to specific times otherwise). Sheev hadn’t found a doorway like Ezra did; instead, he was able to sense Ezra, find the area as a result, and was using spooky force magic to drag himself in while using Ezra’s presence to find it — or at least that’s what I’m assuming given the situation. Its therefore likely that Sheev isn’t able to find an entranceway by the time of RotJ — or he did, and that’s how he rose to power in the first place, but that’s getting into timey-wimey shenanigans we probably shouldn’t touch.
Either way, I like the idea that the Force considers balance to be less about “equal parts dark side and light” and more “kill overpowered force users before they ruin the meta.”
Remember when the Force was about playing with a floating shooty ball?
@@.-@ lol
Don’t forget that Ezra closed the portal and caused the temple to self destruct this would limit the Emperor’s efforts in this regard. Obviously he is now aware that this is possible but we can assume was unable to attain it before the end.
This episode evoked Indiana Jones throughout. Like Indy had to get past the Nazis to find the Lost Ark, Ezra had to get past the Imperials. I could swear that the background music was deliberately echoing Indy themes at times. And the power Ezra found was like the Holy Grail in the Last Crusade. We got a taste of its power, but then it was snatched away because, I suppose, it was too much power for humans to handle. In the same way, the power Ezra found was lost, perhaps forever.
The Force does have a bit of timelessness and transcendence to it, so its nexus could be a place without location or time. But it should remain beyond the reach of any but the most powerful Force users, who should only be able to catch glimpses of what it contains, not access it as directly as Ezra did.
The episode did set up Ezra’s temptation in the finale. Although, in that case, what was offered was only a trick of the Emperor’s.
Gods. Nice. Wow.
Time travel in one universe makes no sense. It will never make sense. I give due credit to Doctor Who for using the phrase “timey-wimey” rather than trying to invent some explanation.
If you use time travel, don’t try to rationalize it.
Kinda surprised no one’s mentioned yet that time travel existed in the old Star Wars EU, in the form of “flow-walking”.
I have a complex Legends-based headcanon about the Celestials, the Ones, and the galaxy’s deep past (my self-insert Star Wars character is a crackpot archeologist).
Note that the “rock formations” we see everywhere on Lothal are based on Ralph McQuarrie concept art of Alderaan. We ended up never seeing the surface of Alderaan in the movies, but in the KotOR video games we do, and sure enough, these same rock formations are visible –except that they’re not rock formations at all, but Killik mounds.
The Killiks are a millennia-old race originally native to Alderaan, and are known to have been a “client-race” of the Celestials(*). The ant-like Killiks were the builders of the Celestials, responsible for creating Centerpoint Station (the Corellian System), Sinkhole Station (the Maw Cluster), Kessel itself, the Starforge, and who knows what else(**).
The ancient Killiks might well have set foot on Lothal and built nests like they did on their homeworld. That much is easy.
We know that other Celestial “client races” had access to interstellar teleporters; the Kwa had star-temples that worked much like Stargates (allowing them to simply walk from planet to planet), the Gree had hypergates that worked similarly, and the proto-Cthol had a spacegoing launch gate (which eventually self-destructed, creating the Kathol Rift). It makes sense that the Killiks would have their own version –probably a similar short-range system is what allowed the Loth-wolves to travel halfway around the planet through the grass.
Killiks are shown to also have an interesting relationship with chronology –they see the timeline of the universe as a wheel, marked by periods of destruction (the Dark Side), and reconstruction (the Force), and they don’t distinguish between reality and mythology. If anyone would figure out how to build a time portal, it would be them.
Then the Killiks disappeared when the Celestial civilization fell, and thousands of years later, the Jedi (successors of the Force-using Celestials) arrived on Lothal and claimed the “temple” as their inheritance.
(* My crackpot hypothesis; these weren’t “client races” of the Celestial race, but members of the multispecies Celestial Civilization itself.)
(** I tend to think Starkiller Base started out as Celestial technology too; it seems beyond the scope of something either the Empire or the First Order could have built without attracting attention.)
A few thoughts in bullet form as this is all good stuff:
1)I also really dislike time travel as a device, and I groaned when it was brought in. I really did enjoy the aspect of the World Between Worlds where you could hear voices from all eras of the saga, because that to me makes sense. We know the Force can provide vague hints of the future, the past, etc. But I totally agree with you that this kind of ability is a game breaking ability.
2)Since I don’t love Ahsoka, it frustrated me even more that it was introduced simply to bring her back. And even if I did love Ahsoka, I REALLY hate death fake outs. Ahsoka dying at Vader’s hand would have been a really tragic, poignant and narrative satisfying end for her. And now she’s basically sticking around up through to potentially the sequel era? I mean, on one hand I am interested to see where Ahsoka the White is off to (and the Sabine team up is NOT something I would have seen coming at all but on the other hand…whatever.
3)Every time I read somebody explain the Mortis arc, I still shake my head at it. I kind of laughed at your explanation that the Father wanted Anakin to ‘babysit’. I never really liked the way they portrayed balance in that arc. I mean, this is just MY definition (since I pretty much make up my own so I can feel like it makes sense), but balance is more about perfect balance between emotions, attachments, etc. Not being greedy/aggressive. The ‘dark side’ seems to be more or less associated with evil (even though in a true dualist system it wouldn’t really be about good and evil) so I hate this idea that ‘balance’ is just a balance between good and evil. Like, if somebody wants to murder 100 people, and somebody wants to stop them, balance isn’t letting them murder 50 people and calling it good. I just…argh. That whole framework bugs me. Also what exactly was Anakin supposed to be doing? I guess maybe the Mortis arc was trying to go more with this idea that Anakin was supposed to keep these two super powered Force users in check Because in a sense, darkness and destruction are needed for life cycles. So if the dark side had been portrayed as some value neutral thing, then maybe it would make sense that Anakin (or somebody else) could bring balance to the force by keeping them both equal but opposite (kind of like what happens at the end of Mistborn…) but since it’s not, I personally find that idea unsatisfying on a moral level.
I kind of lost my train of thought, sorry. But then Anakin gets his mind wiped in the end so it just makes it extra unsatisfying.
4)I think I said this, but agreed that all these things are way too powerful. But then again, even non Force users are building superweapons and capable of mass destruction so really, I don’t want to live in the Star Wars universe. And honestly, I liked it when the stakes were smaller – when Vader’s fall is just about him, and yes, it has massive galaxy wide consequences, but not necessarily that he could control all of space and time with timey wimey powers and contend with virtual gods.
5)I still think Anakin himself is the Force’s master stroke, not Rey. But Kylo’s gummed up the works again. And if the Force is really ‘against’ superpowered Force users, then why Rey? She’s pretty powerful as well. Unless the Force just intends all of them to be wiped out. Which is not to say that I don’t think the Force might also be ‘correcting’ with Rey – I just don’t think it’s *quite* so sentient and specific to desire the eradication of a specific line. But I think Kylo himself IS out of balance, and so the Force somehow recognizes that and there will be people who answer the call. In this case it’s Rey. If not her, perhaps somebody else would have. If Ben/Kylo hadn’t turned, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a need for it (although I presume Rey would possibly still have latent Force abilities).
Speaking of time travel, is that how Jacen Syndulla was conceived????
@12 Regarding Jacen, I imagine Hera and Kanan had some moments alone while the others were off on missions of one sort or another. Heck, they probably came up with a few missions just to get the ‘kids’ out of the house.
But I didn’t realize that humans and Twi’leks were cross-fertile until the moment Jacen was revealed.
@13 – I mean, I get it, and I always had the feeling there was something going on with them (even before they made it ‘official’) but the way the show played it, it was as if they had never kissed before (or at least, hadn’t in a long time – I got the impression that they perhaps had something before the events of the show, but unless Twileks gestate a super long time, that’s not when it happened either) or been up front about their feelings for each other. Which is not to say casual sex isn’t a thing, but I wasn’t sure if that was intended! But that’s really the only option, unless Twi’leks get pregnant by kissing ;)
Wasn’t it Irvin Kershner who said that in Star Wars, a kiss is basically a sex scene?
Time travel is always a Bad Thing.
@13. We’ve seen human-Twi’lek hybrids before, during the Clone Wars.
They didn’t look anything like Jacen, though, which makes me think he might be adopted.
@16 Thanks for that link, after seeing the picture and wiki entry, I do remember that Clone Wars episode.
No joke, for about two seconds I thought they were implying Rex was his dad, lol.
Or Chopper ;) (J/k).
But in reality, there are different Twi’lek clans, and are all Humans the same lineage? Could just be a particular combination of genes in this case (although I think it’s funny that the skin pigmentation came out as hair color).
Always expect the unexpected and anything’s possible.