“The legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris.” — Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker spends most of The Last Jedi brooding about the failure of the Jedi Order and telling Rey why it needs to end. Luke is despondent. He has spent years reflecting on his failure with Ben Solo; equating it with Yoda and Obi-Wan’s failure with Anakin Skywalker. However, with Luke’s death Rey is now on her own. She has nothing but the Jedi texts salvaged from the tree and with those she will need to do what Luke Skywalker could not: rebuild the Jedi Order.
It is my belief that Episode IX will operate as a saga epilogue in balance with The Phantom Menace’s prologue. It will take place several years, perhaps even a decade, after The Last Jedi, just as The Phantom Menace takes place ten years before Attack of the Clones. I think this gap will function well for the story because it will give Rey time to grow up as a Jedi Knight, it will give Kylo Ren time to tighten his grip on the galaxy as the new “Emperor”, and it will give the Resistance time to gather resources in order to be able to challenge the First Order.
So, what can Rey do? How can she build a Jedi Order that stands the test of time and doesn’t fall to the same mistakes her predecessors made? More importantly, how can she build an order that can defeat Kylo Ren? I believe that storytellers will look to human history to guide Rey’s future. The Jedi Order is an amalgamation of the samurai, the Knights Templar, and Buddhist monks. This third influence, Buddhism, needs to come to the forefront in Episode IX if Rey is going to be successful in her quest to bring the light back into the galaxy. Read More
