Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi

This article examines the cosmology of the Force presented in the film Episode VIII: The Last Jedi in the context of how depictions of the Force have shifted since the release of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and it offers a charitable interpretation the film’s depiction of the Force. Tales from the Star Wars universe have described the relationship between the light and dark sides of the Force in two different, often incompatible, ways. Sometimes they have described a cosmotic relationship between good and evil where the light and dark sides of the Force are in conflict and strive to eliminate each other. This cosmotic view of the Force aligns with the cosmologies of religious traditions like Zoroastrianism and the Abrahamic traditions that eschew any notion of normative balance between good and evil. Other times, their relationship has appeared more in line with acosmotic cosmologies like Daoism that depict good and evil as necessary features of a larger whole that inevitably balance one another. Many fans hoped that The Last Jedi would continue the recent emphasis on an acosmotic view of the Force that started with The Force Awakens and was further emphasized in Star Wars Rebels by showing lead characters such as Rey and even Kylo Ren becoming Gray Jedi, Force users who rejected the cosmotic views of the Sith and Jedi by balancing the Force within themselves. Fans who hoped for the first canonical, filmic depiction of the Gray Jedi felt betrayed when the film appeared to default to a cosmotic view of the Force with the final fight between Rey and Kylo Ren. This article argues that the film, in fact, offers an acosmotic view of the Force commensurate with the Aztec idea of teotl, which describes reality as a dynamic process that balances itself through the conflict of matched opposites.