the thing that alw bothered me ab the mustafar duel is it did not have to end like that. like... i understand we needed anakin alive, but burned n severely wounded, but can you seriously look me in the eye n tell me you think obi-wan would leave him to burn? obi-wan is definitely a mercy-kill kind of guy
and i know, there's all those complicated emotions because it's anakin and obi-wan but... those emotions are *not* complicated enough for obi-wan to decide that leaving him to burn slowly to death was the best choice
there's a lot of controversy about the "a jedi does not pull their weapon unless prepared to kill" line and, honestly, it feels like a really terrible way of making the point that obi-wan's "i will do what i must" line did. but, to be clearer, i'd like to frame it in the context of obi-wan and anakin's discussion about lightsaber-flails in the comics (2020):
We want our opponents to know that we use a weapon that requires intention. Training, precision, and choice. The lightsaber symbolises the care with which we approach our gifts through the Force and the care with which we wild them. It reminds others that while we could do more... we very purposefully do not. We choose a weapon with limitations – with difficulties. You cannot use a lightsaber to destroy a city or a planet. Every death or injury it inflicts must be precisely chosen. The lightsaber tells the galaxy that the Jedi are not destroyers. We are protectors.
that feels like a much better way of putting it.
a jedi always draws their lightsaber with intention. with full knowledge of what both the wielder and the weapon are capable of.
obi-wan did not go into the duel on mustafar intending to let anakin live. he knew, from the moment he drew his lightsaber – honestly, probably from the moment he saw the footage from the temple – that only one of them was going to leave that planet alive.
i'm not saying it would have been easy for him. i think drawing his lightsaber at all was probably one of the most difficult decisions he ever made.
but i still don't think he's capable of looking at a being, no matter how evil, and leaving it to suffer.
especially because it is anakin.
anakin screams that he hates obi-wan and he sounds like a petulant child. i can imagine him screaming that and then stomping off, unsuccessfully attempting to slam an electrical sliding door.
you cannot tell me obi-wan didn't hear that.
to me, i see him taking one of two routes, and neither of them are canon:
the first – and more likely imo, in the context of obi-wan's emotional state (the destruction of the order, the loss of the clones, the footage he has just seen of anakin murdering children, the fact he just saw anakin choke his own wife out) – is a mercy kill. obi-wan has won the fight. anakin is weaponless, limbless, and alone. as far as obi-wan knows, the two options for anakin now are that he burns to death – a slow, agonising death – or that obi-wan puts him out of his misery – a swift, relatively painless end.
obi-wan still loves anakin, despite everything, and that is part of what makes the idea of obi-wan killing him so difficult. but it is also exactly what makes it impossible for him to walk away while he burns. he loves him enough to kill him – to spare him pain.
the second, less likely, option is that he tries to save him.
i don't think obi-wan is at a point in rots where he would do this. by the end of the duel on mustafar, he has lost literally everything, including the hope and faith it would take to believe anakin could be saved – either from wounds that severe or from Falling.
and yet, it is still, somehow, more believable to me than him turning around and walking away.
idk i just... it irks me. they are duelling in increasingly precarious conditions on a literal lava planet. there are *so many* other ways that anakin could've obtained the injuries required for Darth Vader in the original trilogy and obi-wan still would've blamed himself regardless so we'd still get the angst potential.
just let him fall off something and survive in a scientifically implausible way like everyone else ;-;
jbbartram-illu
dededos
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
areudirty
jacobvanloon
2087
