SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE MORTIS ARC?
After about the second time I watched this arc, my thoughts ran towards the idea this was Star Wars in a microcosm, the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall in miniature form, as so many things in Star Wars basically come down to being about Anakin, whether literally about him or an echo and rhyme of the story that he is the very center of. Which I think still has a good amount of merit to it, but in the rewatching of this arc yet again, there’s a bigger arc that jumped out at me so much more clearly, now that I’ve spent more time with the structure and lore of Star Wars.
That this arc is entirely a metaphorical extension of Anakin’s internal struggle between the light and the dark.
It’s a manifestation of the Chosen One struggling to choose between good and evil.
Now, to be clear, the Father and the Son and the Daughter are all real beings that really existed, Dave Filoni has said that pretty clearly on podcast interviews, as well as said more than once that he and Christian Taylor specifically decided not to answer What The Fuck Was That!? about this arc, because they felt it would rob the viewers of speculation about it, as well as the questions that you’re meant to ask after watching it.
There are so many, many moments in this arc that are call-backs to important moments in Anakin’s life, major events and choices he makes along his path in life, as well as commentary from the Father and the Son and the Daughter about who and what they are, what influences them.
In “Overlords”, Obi-Wan and Anakin and Ahsoka find themselves stranded on a mysterious planet, immediately approached by the Daughter and asked if he is indeed the Chosen One. All three of the Mortis lords are intensely interested in Anakin, each of them try to protect him, seduce him, or just try to understand if he really is the Chosen One.
While he’s staying in the Father’s sanctuary, Anakin has a vision of his mother, which he’s deeply affected by, but realizes it’s not really her. He storms out of the room and goes to confront the Father, thinking that these are Sith Lords. But the Father says, no, we’re not Sith or Jedi, we’re bigger than that, like you are.
His explanation is: “We can take many forms. The shapes we embody are merely a reflection of the life force around us.”
In other words, they take the shape that Anakin’s presence imbues them with. They’re real on their own, but their forms here are shaped by the Chosen One.
But the Chosen One is a myth, right? Well, the Father would very much like to know. So, the entire rest of the episode is about hurtling the characters–hurtling Anakin, as the Chosen One–towards a test.
A test that isn’t just about “hey, are you the Chosen One or not?”, but almost every single time the Father says what he has to do–face your guilt and know the truth, you have to release the guilt and choose, only you can do this.
It’s about trying to make Anakin look within himself, look at his guilt and fear and pain, and acknowledge them, face them, and choose whether he will embrace them or let go of them.
Which is E X A C T L Y how the Force works, how the Jedi have always said the Force works. It’s Luke having to face his fears in the cave on Dagobah, it’s the Jedi younglings having to face their fears on Ilum, it’s Ezra having to face his fears in the Lothal Jedi Temple, it’s Rey having to face her fears in the cave on Ahch-To. [x][x]
FACE YOUR FEARS, YOUR GUILT, YOUR ANGER. FACE YOUR DARK SIDE.
The planet is the Force and that’s how the Force works.
Anakin uses the Force to make the Daughter and Son let them go, but refuses to stay on Mortis (and, honestly, doesn’t really do any self-examination or releasing of his guilt, he hasn’t changed internally at all), so they try to leave, but they’re still trapped there.
Which is where “Altar of Mortis” picks up. Because Anakin is still giving shape to the manifestations of the Father, the Daughter, and the Son.
“You’ve chosen the dark side and allowed it to feed your anger and desire for power,” the Father says.
“By bringing the Chosen One here, you’ve shown me my potential,” the Son answers.
And then moments later, he kicks the Father down the stairs (because he’s HOLDING HIM BACK! by not dying fast enough) and screams:
Even aside from time not being linear in Star Wars, we’ll see later that this trilogy of episodes is very aware of Revenge of the Sith and other important moments in Anakin’s life. This moment, screaming in rage, “I hate you!” cannot possibly not remind us of Anakin screaming the same thing at Obi-Wan in ROTS.
Which is yet another moment that’s about Anakin, just as so many other moments are about him, cool little moments of echoes and rhymes, that Star Wars likes to make references and homages to itself, but there are enough of them done with such clear purpose here that I don’t think it’s just Rule of Cool, but instead an intentional narrative purpose behind them.
There are more, but those ones are the ones that really jumped out at me, important moments in Anakin’s story, ones that reflect his fall into the darkness. The moment he caught the saber and attacked Dooku as a choice he couldn’t take back (and was itself an important moment because it was a mirror to Luke’s choice to not kill Vader in ROTJ, even after cutting off his arm in a rage, as Anakin did to Dooku as well) and the moment he very much intended to kill Obi-Wan on the Death Star, these are classic moments that evoke our knowledge of Anakin’s path.
And what does all this do?
It further feeds what’s going on with the Mortis lords.
Everything pretty much goes pear-shaped at this point, Ahsoka dies, the Son accidentally stabs the Daughter instead of the Father–
Which, in and of itself is an interesting parallel to Anakin, his sister the only one he professes to truly love, he’s the one that winds up killing her, despite his intentions, but then we see he also very much loves the Father, he doesn’t want him to die, he’s distraught when it happens, even though he was the one who engineered it, just like Anakin being the thing that really breaks Padme’s heart/causes her death even without his intentions to do so, just like Anakin in “There is Another” in From a Certain Point of View where his heart explodes with loneliness after Obi-Wan dies, so powerfully that Yoda feels it from literally all the way on the other side of the galaxy.
–but Ahsoka is saved through Anakin being the one to channel the last of the Daughter’s energy into Ahsoka, while the Father guides him, the Son fucks off to who knows where, and “What the fuck do we do now?” knowing that the Son wants their ship to leave with.
This is where “Ghosts of Mortis” starts up, and the announcement furthers our themes:
“A great weight has been placed on Anakin’s shoulders, for it is now that he must face who he really is.”
Not just that he has a choice to make, about what to do about the Son or Mortis, but that this still has to be about discovering who he himself really is. Because Anakin has never yet really looked inside himself or faced his guilt and pain.
Which is when he runs into Qui-Gon’s ghost, as he’s trying to find the Son, and wham does it deliver on all of this:
Qui-Gon’s words aren’t just “bring balance to the Force”, but specifically this is indicated to be done through facing his demons will he save the universe.
Anakin, sliding right by that point, asks if he should just kill the Son or just leave? And Qui-Gon’s answer is that Anakin’s not looking at this in the right way, that there’s another way to deal with this and it’s exactly the one that the Jedi have been teaching for as long as we’ve known them, that the Force has constantly been throwing into the paths of the Jedi, because it’s so necessary to becoming a Jedi: Face the dark parts of you and work past them.
This is why Qui-Gon’s words are so important–it’s not just that this is an echo of Empire Strikes Back where Luke has to face the inner demon of the specter of Darth Vader (it wasn’t an external threat in that cave on Dagobah, that was all about “what you bring with you”, as Yoda says, that was all about Luke’s fears surrounding him), that it’s not just that Qui-Gon says Anakin has to go to a place strong in the dark side but he has to remember his training.
Qui-Gon’s ghost visited Obi-Wan earlier, asking, “Have you trained the boy as I asked?” And now he says, “Remember your training.” because this is what Jedi do, this is what they train themselves for, and why Qui-Gon says it to Anakin here. This is what you’ve been taught to do–go to the dark place and face your demon. That’s the Force, that’s how it works.
And further to that, how the Force works, how Star Wars works, is that it’s about choice in those moments. When you’re at the crossroads, it has to be your own choice. You can ask others for advice and guidance, those things can be incredibly important, but at the end of the day, Star Wars is about “only Anakin can choose”.
So, Anakin does indeed go to face the Son in the place strong in the dark and the Son forces him to look within himself. To know himself.
He sees his future self and actions, he’s so distraught by them, that instead of being able to face them and pass through those fears, he’s consumed by them, he agrees to help the Son, falling to the dark side–poison yellow eyes of the fully embraced dark side and all–to try to avoid what’s coming.
The thing is, Anakin never really confronts his fears, demons, or guilt. He’s consumed by them instead. It happens because he’s trying to avoid it, but he still falls to the dark side all the same, because he listens to the Son dripping poison in his ear, because he sees an easier way out than the hard work of disciplining himself against the dark side (which George Lucas says is how you resist it, the only way to resist it), because the other way seems too impossible and too scary.
Anakin’s story has always been about how he can’t bear to look at himself and his choices and then make the choice–and stick to that choice–to do and be better. His story has always been about his fears ran rampant inside him because he didn’t want to let go of the feelings that made him “special”, he didn’t want to listen to the Jedi when they told him to get a grip, he wanted to listen to Palpatine who told him his feelings should be held onto instead of let go, that they made him special, made him better than those other Jedi, that his hate and rage and fear were justified in being held onto.
And that’s exactly what the Mortis arc is–a reflection and shape of Anakin’s story, that each of them were about the internal struggle he faced.
That Anakin didn’t make these choices in one bad day.
He made this choice over and over again.
When he chose to dig his fingers into his feelings and hold onto them, listening to Palpatine’s poisonous words.
When he chose to do a monstrous thing on Tatooine to the Tuskens and their children, but ignored what that said about him.
When he killed Dooku, unarmed and for the sake of revenge and his rage.
When he chose to maim Mace Windu and lead to his death, choosing Palpatine and the Empire instead of the Jedi and the Republic.
When he chose to attack the Jedi Temple and kill the younglings, leading him to feel unable to ever go back, that his actions had to be justified or else he murdered innocents for nothing.
When he chose to Force choke Padme, which lead to broken heart and her inability to live, after the terrible things he’d done.
When he chose to attack Obi-Wan again and again, despite being warned, leading him to the Darth Vader suit.
When he chose to refuse to accept the vision the Force put in his head in Dark Lord of the Sith, that Obi-Wan still would have forgiven him and helped him, when he rejected that and said, “No. [The dark side] is all there is.”
When he, again and again, chose to reject acknowledging that all these Jedi took different paths that he himself could have done (Jocasta Nu, Ferren Barr, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Eeth Koth, they were all paths he could have walked instead, even then).
When he chose to kill Obi-Wan, despite that Obi-Wan had stepped back and refused to fight anymore.
Anakin Skywalker desperately wanted to be good, there wouldn’t be a struggle or a story there worth telling if he weren’t. The ending of Return of the Jedi wouldn’t have the power and impact it did, if Anakin hadn’t had embers of goodness in him that couldn’t be snuffed out, no matter how hard he tried.
But I think Mortis is an arc that’s about manifesting the internal struggle, that these Force Lords took the shapes they did because they were feeding off him, as the Chosen One, the center of this massive web of destiny. And that’s why Anakin’s choices on Mortis, his struggles and the warnings he receives, are the same ones that are part of the bigger themes of Star Wars’ Skywalker Saga, and just what the hell was going on.
It was Anakin Skywalker’s struggle with the dark and the light–including that the dark won, with small pinpricks of hope and light left alive–literally made manifest and acted out with these players.
stormborns
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
jbbartram-illu
areudirty
germansingergirl
