starvedforpizza replied on this post of mine:
I just rewatched TCW and actually never even thought about it. I have been thinking lately that Anakin was a person just created to suffer to fulfill the Force’s will. The Force created him and choose Shmi of all the woman in the galaxy to be his mother which meant he wouldn’t be found by the Jedi. The Force triggers him to go back for his mom. The Force gives him the visions of Padme dying. The Force must have told Palpatine what to offer Anakin (the power to cheat death) to get him to turn. The Force lead Luke to go to Bespin which leads to Luke learning the truth and creating the desire in Like to save his father which leads to what happens in ROTJ. So the Force certainly seemed to be directing things to happen a certain way. While balance maybe the destruction of the Sith to me it appears that on the path to accomplishing that goal the Force also wanted the Jedi wiped out. to prevent everything the Force just didn’t have to show Anakin visions of his mother or Padme dying.
To say that the Force wanted the Jedi to be wiped out (ie, that a genocide of an entire people and their culture was a good and necessary thing), you also have to be saying that Star Wars decided the way to show this plot element was through baby murder. That to show that this was a justified choice was to show it through innocent children being slaughtered. That’s an underlying point of my original post (where I personally cannot separate Anakin from the multiple baby murderings, so I have a difficult time being on his side in anything), that you cannot separate out the genocide of the Jedi from the baby murder. They are the same thing, so if one says the genocide was necessary, you’re saying the deaths of those babies were necessary, and that this is the message Star Wars was trying to tell us, this is how Star Wars chose to show it. Not by just killing adults, but specifically through showing the babies were stabbed to death, too. And I just cannot buy that that’s the way Star Wars would show us that kind of message. I cannot buy that Star Wars would tell us, “Well, sometimes genocide is necessary.” I cannot buy that Star Wars would tell us, “Those babies being murdered was necessary to show to understand that this was the path to good.” Further, it’s also that Anakin is wrong about what he does, by narrative intention. George Lucas says about Anakin: “Anakin wants to be a Jedi, but he cannot let go of the people he loves in order to move forward in his life. The Jedi believe that you don’t hold on to things, that you let things pass through you, and if you can control your greed, you can resolve the conflict not only in yourself but in the world around you, because you accept the natural course of things. Anakin’s inability to follow this basic guideline is at the core of his turn to the dark side.” –George Lucas, sci-fi magazine “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed. Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the fates and what is natural. “ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary Anakin is going against the fates and what is natural in ROTS, what we see in ROTS is not the natural path meant for the galaxy. His fall is due to his inability to accept basic Jedi guidelines, it was Anakin turning away from the fundamental truths of life at every turn, not because this is what the Force wanted. George Lucas has been very, very clear about the core issue of Anakin’s fall and his actions, and that it’s going against the course of life itself. So, no, the Force push Anakin to destroy both the Jedi and the Sith, because the point is that Anakin was supposed to let go, that’s the theme of Star Wars, Lucas has said that many times. But he didn’t and it led to baby murder, because that’s against what fate is in Star Wars.
I’d argue that the Force’s “will” is also… much more abstract than what that reply was suggesting. The Force isn’t like God - it’s not a fully sentient being with complete agency and purpose. It’s, as Obi-Wan explains in ANH, an energy field made of every living thing (past, present, and future), and it influences and can be influenced. It’s a web that the Jedi and Sith can tug on voluntarily while everybody else influences it passively. So in that sense, I personally don’t see Anakin getting visions as the Force necessarily ‘wanting’ him to get those like a person wants things to happen. There is an element of sentience to the Force but I feel like it’s much more that Anakin is tied to specific people and places in that web - so when something past, present or future tug those strings, it tugs at Anakin too. It’s just something that’s going to happen because of how the Force works (and in a few cases like with the visions of Padmé’s death, it can be argued that it’s probably Palpatine that’s directly doing the tugging anyway).
What the Force has in the way of sentience seems to be directed much more towards overall currents. It’s like a river that ‘wants’ to flow one way because it’s natural. The way I see it, what the Force can unequivocally be said to ‘want’ is indeed balance, that is to say peace (not something achieved through baby murder). For example, only the Force practitioners opposed to the Dark Side get to live forever, get to form healthy and natural bonds with kyber crystals, get to tap into the full potential of their relationship with the Force… The Force helps the surviving Jedi much more directly than it helps the Empire track them down (see Rebels: the contraption used to keep Luminara’s essence and lure the Jedi in is clearly very unnatural, whereas the Lothal Wolves helping the Rebels is framed as this incredible symbiotic relationship. Ezra can also access the World Between Worlds on his own, but Sidious had to use him to try and get to it.)
The Force isn’t outright talking to the Jedi and helping them like a God would, but they naturally have a deeper and more meaningful connection with it than the Sith do. That seems to be the Force’s ‘will’ - a strong current that pushes towards a balanced outcome (again, not achieved by baby murder), with the very specific things being more of the interconnected tugging and pulling all living beings exert on each other?
The more direct agents of the Force - the Father, Daughter, Son, Priestesses, Loth Wolves and the Bendu - are always embodiments of very specific aspects of the Force, and they very significantly do not have the same will or go about things the same way, like they would if the Force was one conscious Being. However, those agents all want balance (with the exception of the Son, because the Dark Side is inherently anti-balance in that it never stops trying to overtake everything), and those agents still overwhelmingly side with the Jedi over the Sith.
So yeah. That the Force wanted Anakin to see his mom but arrive too late to save her? Not buying it. That the Force wanted Anakin to freak out over Padmé? Not buying it. That the Force ‘wants’ balance? Yes, but not through baby murder. Cause that’s the Dark Side. And the Dark Side isn’t balance.
//Me, chiming I’m at 11:30 pm after my shift/
I often think of it a bit like this. The Force sort of has this… end goal. Like it was said, peace and balance. The Force - however much it is capable of feeling - wants that. And like it was said, yes others influence it and it influenced others. It’s a very push and pull. That being said, I sort of feel like it has that end goal in mind and it knows it will get there. The Force had very little concept of time - and why should it? It is energy, it is past, present, future, wrapped all in one at the same moment. It is literally everything. The End goal was always balance and peace. How it got there and how long it took? That was up to the free will of the people.
The Force seems to have given certain people the tools to achieve balance more than others (force sensitives, Jedi, etc.) and these people have this ability to access and connect with it more than others. The thing is, the Force isn’t taking anyone over. It’s not whispering in their ear telling them to specifically do atrocities. It has not (I don’t even think it really can) interfered with the free will of the people. So the people have a choice. Abuse it, like the Sith, which IS NOT what the Force particularly wants. Do nothing, like some. Or do good and help others with their abilities, like the Jedi. To help try and bring the Force balance (which the Force rewards those people, with ability, enlightenment, bonds and even force ghost-ness).
The point is; the end goal was always balance and peace. HOW balance and peace was achieved and HOW LONG it took, was always entirely up to the people (aka Anakin).
