A thing that makes me go absolutely feral over the show is how the prequels are very much about that the galactic public has become apathetic, that it starts in The Phantom Menace, where Anakin repeats Shmi’s words, “Mom, you said that the biggest problem in the universe is no one helps each other.” and how George Lucas talks about, “All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator,“ as a theme of the movies.
It’s all over The Clone Wars, too, there’s a bunch of arcs that emphasize that you need the people on your side if you’re going to get anything done, that it’s not just on a handful of people, not even a million people, to do everything, but that everyone has to stand up, everyone has to try to help. It has to be about the entire people of the galaxy.
But the galaxy just demanded the Jedi and the clones fight their war for them, they drafted both into service, they made it an impossible choice between everyone dying (because the Separatists were committing atrocities that would have killed them all, even down to every last innocent person in the Republic) versus apathy and helping no one.
It was years of grueling war, that the Jedi and clones were dying in the battle, meanwhile Senators and the general public were tired of waiting for the war to be over, they were tired of being broke because of the cost of it, they were willing to give up their freedoms because they wanted the easy answers the Empire promised them, no matter what they had to overlook to get them.
Obi-Wan says it plainly, as they’re helping the Lurmen to protect themselves, “The rift in the galaxy is not our [the Jedi’s] fault. If more worlds would stand up for themselves against the Separatists, this war would have been over long ago.“
Obi-Wan is used to a galactic general public that didn’t care. There were pockets of good, but the majority of them weren’t willing to help others out if it cost them anything of themselves. The Jedi gave and gave and gave in that war, they broke themselves on that war, because the galaxy asked it of them and because innocent lives were on the line and the galaxy still refused to meet them halfway. So few people helped each other.
And these first two episodes are all about showing the kindness that does still exist in the galaxy. Bail reminds him that there’s no one he trusts more with the child he loves so much, he shows complete faith in Obi-Wan. Haja seems like a crook, just another con artists willing to desecrate the name of a murdered culture for his own gain, but then he’s genuine, he risks himself to help Force-sensitive children get away, to help a Jedi when they need it.
Which is why the scene with the 501st trooper hits so hard–another example of how cruel the galaxy was, that the clones gave everything to the Republic, and then they were just thrown away, like they were nothing.
And it has to hurt, this was the 501st, the ones that marched on the Temple.
This was one of Anakin’s battalion, this man worked with Anakin, this man knew Anakin, the loss of whom Obi-Wan still cannot get his heart around.
And this man very possibly murdered Jedi children, even if it wasn’t his fault.
But Obi-Wan still digs out some of the very few coins he has and tosses them over, even though it has to cost him to remain kind in a galaxy that seems so determined to be cruel, because he’s starting to see again that there is kindness in the galaxy.
That he has to put kindness into the galaxy even if it costs him. Even if it burns him sometimes, he has to put kindness into it, because there will be people who return that kindness, even when it costs them, too.