What Is Balance Of The Force?

What is Balance of the Force?

So, balance, obviously it refers to balance between good and evil. Good is the light side, evil is the dark side. Therefore, balance means having equal amounts of light and dark. After all, you can’t see if it’s  to bright or to dark, and sight is important, so this is obviously the correct take on what balance of the Force is! Oh, and Jedi = light side and Sith = dark side. Therefore, you need the number of Jedi and Sith to be exactly the same, which would then mean there is equal amounts of light and dark side, which means that the Force is in balance! Everyone knows I’m right because I used an equal sign!

Ok, now that the sarcasm is out of my system, I’m ready to give my answer for what balance of the Force is. I’m only going to be using Lucas canon (orig 6 plus TCW) to answer this question, mostly because that’s all I fully consider canon.

To start off, let’s review what we know about the Force. (bolded emphasis mine)

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together”

“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes, even between land and the ship.”

The Force is not just about or connected to the Sith and Jedi, but to everyone. This is important to remember for understanding what balance is. It is also the main thing I suspect people forget about the Force.

With that reminder out of the way, let’s talk about balance. What does canon have to say about balance?

The main bit of information we get (outside of word of Lucas) comes from the prophecy. This prophecy says that there is a chosen one who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. This would suggest that the two things are linked. Especially since they’re often mentioned together.

“Is he not the chosen one? Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force?”

“You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!”

This would suggest that Sith are an unbalancing element, and canon seems to support this idea.

Think about it. Are the Sith necessary for the galaxy? Do they at least improve things? The answer to both of the both questions is no. The Sith are not necessary, and they actively make things worse. The Sith do things like end democracy. The Sith have people enslaved. The Sith do things like turn the Republic into a fascist Empire. The Sith do things like having Death Stars created that can destroy entire planets. Who benefits from all this? The Sith, everyone else gets to suffer. The Force is connected to all life. The Sith benefiting while everyone else suffers is not balance. The Sith may not always create imbalance, but they certainly make it worse.

I’ve been talking about the Force out of balance, but do we ever see it in balance? Is the title question of the post ever answered?

Yes, it is.

Balance is when good triumphs over evil.

Balance is when we face and defeat our demons.

Balance is when there is more light than dark.

And last, but certainly not least, balance is when selflessness wins over selfishness.

When good is chosen consistently, again and again, every day, that is when the Force is in balance.

It took me four episodes of The Bad Batch to put it into words one of the big reasons why I feel so disconnected from the show (other than All The Other Stuff, you know), which is because the show itself is disconnected from its own setting. I’ve talked a lot about how it’s taking the story away from other characters that should be getting their own story set on their own character–most notably what they did to Kanan’s story, but even more so egregiously with the “reg” clones themselves–that by making the regular clones low-key antagonists in the background, stripped of their individuality and how that was one of the major points of The Clone Wars, leaves a bad taste because it’s both disconnected from the show it’s trying so hard to say it’s a continuation of, and because it’s flattening the clones’ story.  All for the sake of these new characters. But it’s more than that, it’s disconnected from its own setting in that this could also have been a story about how the Empire is affecting the galaxy.  The setting is immediately post-Revenge of the Sith, which is an incredibly fertile area to play with, given the immediate rise of the Empire.  But The Bad Batch isn’t really doing much with it.  There are bits and pieces of it, there’s the brief scene of how people are cheering the end of the war, there’s the brief mentions of the new chain code thing, the exchanging your money for Imperial credits, etc. But they’re not part of the story in any foundational way.  This story is set in the dawn of the Empire, but it’s not doing anything major with the galactic upheaval of that, instead it’s about The Bad Batch being on the run for their own reasons, it’s about protecting Omega, and these aren’t bad elements, but they’re not strong enough to get me invested in the story in the way something like TCW or Rebels did. Because those shows were designed around the galactic circumstances that were necessary to the premise, Rebels had to be in the Empire era because it was about the Rebellion and the Empire, The Clone Wars had to be in the final days of the Republic, because it was about that specific war and showing how the galaxy was ground down by it. Smaller, more intimate stories absolutely have their place.  But when you bill yourself as being the successor/continuation of TCW, when you are bringing in all these familiar characters and mentions of worldbuilding, to connect it to the bigger epic stories of Star Wars, unless you’re bringing your A-game, it feels disconnected.  It’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near what it could have been.

YOU’RE ALL WRONG IF YOU HATE a) THIS MOVIE or b) ANAKIN SKYWALKER’S FACE

Ahsoka sees Anakin

(Not ship art!)

FUCKBOY