As long as anyone could remember, Yoda had spent most of his time in the Jedi Temple with the very young. Playing with them at ages two and three—hide-and-seek, dodge-bolt, Force tag. The early rambling lessons in the garden where he taught them the secret lives of vegetables, the irresistible burst of shoots, and flowers playing dress-up; clustering them around to watch an orb-spider weave its web, or a bee bumble its way into a mass of blossoms.
When the first combat training started, with falls and rolls and footwork games, Yoda led them. For one thing, he was just their size.
-Dark Rendezvous
Like, on the one hand this is both sweet and adorable. Yoda loves kids both because he doesn’t have to strain his neck and because their innocent youth is a balm against all the shit he has to deal with.
On the other hand, the fact that Yoda is the fun grandpa for over a hundred generations of Jedi is a major contributing factor to the Order’s stagnation. If you’ve ever tried to talk politics with your racist grandpa, you know how hard it is to actually stand up to someone you love and are raised to see as wise. Nothing changes and no one (or hardly anyone) says no to him because they love and respect Yoda too much to cross him. Luke was able to ignore his advice because Yoda wasn’t his beloved grandpa, just a crazy little swamp man with magic powers and backward syntax.
Canon caveats: I am primarily a noveslistic EU reader. My points of views are beholden to that and it’s possible this might be where some fault lines are.
Agreed on the first point.
On the second, I’m not 100% convinced Yoda telling Luke to not go to Bespin is this terrible advice. It’s a tactical one and considering this is war considering the Order is dead and that Yoda saw it happen, and that Luke is the best they got for facing the Emperor – I can’t see him giving any other advice. Leia made a similar choice when she decided to lock the doors in Hoth. As a military leader these are rational, pragmatic choices. What other options are there? Tell Luke he can’t go to Vader because he’s his father? Would that help? I mean realistically at ESB Luke just doesn’t have the skill level to face Vader. All it would accomplish would be to get everyone killed.
Let’s switch gears for a sec, because I want to bring one thing up that rarely comes up in Yoda discussions:
One thing we forget is that it was Yoda’s choice to send the twins off with families. Obi wan wanted to raise them both the “Jedi” way. So regardless of how Yoda downplays attachment (in wanting Luke to kill his own father for the greater good and arguably how was he to know that Luke’s attachment wouldn’t lead him to fall dark side? He has seen too much), he at least is in some way an indirect catalyst for Luke being the person he is.
Don’t get me wrong Yoda was incredibly misguided with Anakin. Incredibly and hurtfully. I think it probably has to do with the quote above. Anakin came too late, was too different, too hurt, and too talented. Yoda didn’t know what to do with him. No one in the Order did and that was why they failed and it’s tied to the way Jedi recruitment operated and how some children had deep wounds that upbringing at the Temple couldn’t address. It was a system headed for failure – it got there MUCH faster due to war.
I feel like Yoda realized this and THIS is why he sent Luke and Leia to families. This is the scene in the novelization:
Even if the Sith find one, the other may survive. I can take the boy, Master Yoda, and you take the girl. We can hide them away, keep them safe—train them as Anakin should have been trained—”
“No.” The ancient Master lowered his head again, closing his eyes, resting his chin on his hands that were folded over the head of his stick.
Obi-Wan looked uncertain. “But how are they to learn the self-discipline a Jedi needs? How are they to master skills of the Force?”
“Jedi training, the sole source of self-discipline is not. When right is the time for skills to be taught, to us the living Force will bring them. Until then, wait we will, and watch, and learn.”
So Yoda at least learns after the disaster with Anakin to know that he and Obi wan just don’t have what it takes to raise balanced, disciplined Force wielders. Leia and Luke could have been perfect Jedi candidates – they were Force strong orphans.
And here by self-discipline, I feel like he’s referring to curbing despair, fear and anger. Jedi training didn’t/couldn’t do this for Anakin. But instead of agreeing with Obi wan that the twins are blank slates (”as Anakin should have been trained…”) and that it’s just training needs to start earlier, the answer is not that at all.
With Luke and Leia, Yoda is thinking, let’s try putting them with with families and step aside (”watch and learn”) trusting that with those families the twins will learn more about others, about themselves– that there are some blindspots the Jedi have that will be addressed through that. That THEY will also learn by watching them.
Implicitly it’s a statement that mastery of the Force is not as important as what they can learn by a normal non-Jedi upbringing.
So maybe Yoda wasn’t able to really understand Luke’s ability to see the good in this father. But honestly that to me, looking at it from Yoda’s pov speaks more about how EXTRAORDINARY Luke is than anything else.
Because you know who else had a huge problem seeing the good in Vader? Leia.
I personally think some kind of despair was part of Yoda’s decision. In 800 years, he must have realized that children tend to pick up a lot of their ways of thinking from their parents. (Luke and Leia bear this out; the reason Luke can see the good in Vader and Leia can’t has a TON to do with the kinds of people their adoptive parents were.) And since Yoda’s leadership just ended in the destruction of the Jedi, he’s not too keen on the idea of one of the twins picking up anything significant from him.
(On the topic of despair, is it possible Yoda felt that watching one of Anakin’s kids grow up would constantly remind him of what happened, and isn’t 100% confident in his ability - especially as he approaches the end of his life - to curb his own despair?)
Holy shit that last point! I mean all of your post, but that last point. Especially knowing how Yoda bonds with children and the mess of feelings.
The attachment. The guilt of knowing that this little baby is going to be facing monsters. Might die. You’re right. It might be too much to bear. That certainly could play into his decision to have the children be raised elsewhere.
Good point about learning from parents. I think a lot of Yoda’s decisions near the end of the war were weighed by despair and that’s a strong contaminant. I think this was the problem – on top of Yoda being blindsided by someone like Anakin.
The fact that Obi wan and Anakin swoop in just as Yoda’s about to reel his old apprentice in doesn’t help.
The fact that Anakin kills his old apprentice who Yoda tried to redeem and was ~attached to doesn’t help either in getting him to be sympathetic to Anakin’s spiraling. Yes, Yoda himself was ready to kill Dooku, but it has to hurt nonetheless that someone else did it.
None of this makes it right. Yoda should have not grand mastered that long.
But I like to imagine how Yoda felt when Luke decided to leave to face the killer of all his Jedi, of everything he built. Untrained. I bet Yoda is thinking oh no not again. He’s seeing the faces of all the younglings. His Jedi. Dead.
And he could have just sank Luke’s X-wing again. It was that fucking simple. Just for a time. Just until Luke completed his training. Until Yoda deemed him ready. Leia doesn’t have the base Luke does.There was no one better placed than Luke Skywalker to free the galaxy from Vader and the Emperor.
Yoda could have kept Luke until he was ready. Yoda’s power’s are nothing short of amazing:
[Master Yoda] shuffling out in front of them all, the long, snoozing sigh: and then the rush, the little figure calling the Force to fill him up, the pull of it so strong that Dooku and the other gifted children could feel it, like a current streaming from the corners of the room into Yoda’s horny feet, running in electric streams through his legs and trunk, the fire in his eyes, the Force gathered at the tip of his wooden sword like caged lightning, and when he lifted his foot and stamped it back down into a wide ready stance, you could feel the whole Temple shake.
…and Yoda lets him go. He lets him go. It was and would be Luke’s decision. No matter what happened.
With the entire galaxy in the balance. Yoda knows first hand what is at stake.
That’s how Yoda fights the dark side.
