Summary

• The Jedi Order in the prequels was flawed due to complacency and detachment from the citizens of the Galactic Republic.
• Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Legends established a reformed Jedi Order that learned from past mistakes of the prequels.
• Rey’s Jedi Order in the modern canon may repeat the same mistakes as the prequels, failing to evolve like Luke did in Legends.

One notable moment in a Star Wars Legends novel explains key flaws of the prequel-era Jedi Order and how its successor avoided such pitfalls. The Jedi Order is – infamously – portrayed as a well-intentioned yet highly flawed organization in the prequels, with the Jedi having become complacent, overly restrictive, and losing touch with the Galactic Republic’s citizenry. The Star Wars Legends continuity does not have Luke Skywalker rebuild the old Jedi Order following the events of Return of the Jedi, however. Instead, he establishes a new iteration of the Jedi – and a significantly reformed one at that.

The modern
Star Wars
canon’s sequel trilogy and
The Book of Boba Fett
establish that Luke repeated many of the mistakes of the prequel-era Jedi Order when leading his new generation of Jedi.

Luke Skywalker’s character arc in the Star Wars original trilogy has him walking a truncated and unorthodox path toward Jedi Knighthood. Not only did Luke live an ordinary life as a moisture farmer before beginning his Jedi training, but he also refused to eschew attachments to his friends and family. This, ultimately, worked in his favor, as his choice to defy the advice of his mentors – the old guard Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda – allowed him to redeem Darth Vader and resist the temptation of the dark side, positioning him to establish a new and reformed Jedi Order.

The Prequel Jedi Embodied Mon Mothma’s Lesson

The 1995 novel Ambush at Corellia by Roger MacBride Allen includes an exchange of dialogue between Luke Skywalker – by this point the Grandmaster of the New Jedi Order – and Mon Mothma – the former New Republic Chief of State and founding member of the Rebel Alliance. Although the book was written and published years before the prequels, its words fascinatingly convey the old Jedi Order’s failings in the movies, which Mothma would retroactively be aware of. The exchange goes as follows:

“In the years to come, as the Jedi grow from a handful of students into an order of thousands of Knights, will they set themselves up as an elite priesthood or as a band of champions? Are they to be cut off from the people by privilege and mystique, answerable to themselves alone? Or will they act in the service of the people, be intimately
bound
to the people? Will they be
part
of the people, the citizenry, or outside them?”

Luke had never considered the question in quite that way before. “It’s obvious what answer you want,” he said, “but I think it’s the answer I would choose no matter what. It seems to me that an order of Jedi that isolated itself from the population would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be very easy to forget the ways of ordinary folk if you never experienced the things they did.”

“Precisely,” Mon Mothma said. “I believe, and believe strongly, that the Republic needs Jedi that get their hands dirty, that are part of the Republic’s daily life. Jedi that live in ivory towers might be more dangerous than no Jedi at all. You need to look no further than our very recent history to see that it has been the Dark Jedi that have sought isolation. To be a Jedi of the Light, a Jedi must be one with the people. There must be a Jedi on every planet, a Jedi in every city – not a few planets full of Jedi and nothing else. There must be Jedi doing what ordinary folk do, Jedi who are ordinary folk. There must be Jedi doctors and judges and soldiers and pilots – and politicians.”

Daisy Ridley’s Jedi Order Seems Unlikely To Learn From This Mistake

Unfortunately, even while in the best position to create a reformed Jedi Order in canon, Rey’s generation of Jedi will seemingly retain the same flaws as the prequel-era Jedi Order. Daisy Ridley herself has strongly implied that Rey’s Jedi still forbid attachments like the bygone generations, which may imply that she will not allow the Jedi to evolve as Luke did in Legends. Time will tell, of course, but for now, it seems as though the only version of the Jedi to truly grow beyond the prequel era is the New Jedi Order from the Star Wars Legends continuity.