Looking for Home Across the Stars

There are two things about the final episode of the Ahsoka series, released over a week ago on Disney+, that struck me as highly unusual—or at least exceedingly rare—for a Star Wars story. Coming from a franchise that tends to follow nomadic characters from planet to planet to planet as they fight to determine the fate of “the galaxy” in general, both of these things are reminders that people also have attachments to particular places—and if they don’t, probably should.

First, the episode (“The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord”) retrospectively clarified just how much the entire eight-episode serial is largely about bringing one character home. Ahsoka is roughly the Star Wars equivalent of The Odyssey. Ezra Bridger is lost in exile in a far-off galaxy, is found, and is sent back to his own galaxy—and, implicitly, back to his homeworld of Lothal. 

Second, there is a fascinating exchange between Grand Admiral Thrawn, the once-and-future big-bad of the Star Wars universe outside the films, and his second-in-command, the witch Morgan Elsbeth. Concluding their last conversation, Thrawn says, “For the Empire.” Behind his back and under her breath, Morgan counters, “For Dathomir.” That is, whereas Thrawn is fighting to reinstate a galaxy-wide regime, Morgan’s objective is local and personal: to restore the fortunes of her homeworld. Morgan is still one of the villains, but this revelation of her loyalty to a particular place makes her more sympathetic, and her choice to collude with a man who only exploits that loyalty more tragic.

However, to test my hypothesis that it is unusual or rare to find homeworld-centric characters or storylines in Star Wars, I searched through my memory for other examples and noticed a pattern. It isn’t so unusual or rare after all, depending on where you look. Ezra’s love for Lothal and Morgan’s love for Dathomir only have a few analogues in the films (by which I mean the nine-episode Skywalker Saga, Rogue One, and Solo), but the longing for a homeworld—whether to return to one, to protect or liberate one, or to find and settle down on one—keeps cropping up in the shows (namely, in Filoni’s Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, and Ahsoka; in Favreau’s Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett; and in Gilroy’s Andor).

It’s not that there aren’t characters in the films that identify themselves with particular planets. Padme Amidala fights to save Naboo from a Trade Federation takeover in The Phantom Menace, and she expresses the desire to return to Naboo to raise her child in Revenge of the Sith. Her daughter, Leia Organa, is frequently associated with the planet of Alderaan. The scoundrel Lando Calrissian reforms his ways, settles down on Bespin, and though he fails to protect Cloud City from an imperial takeover in The Empire Strikes Back, he certainly tried. 

But these characters are the exception. The protagonist of the Original Trilogy is Luke Skywalker, who leaves Tatooine behind and only returns briefly to settle unfinished business. The same is true of his father, Anakin Skywalker, the protagonist of the Prequel Trilogy. Both are very vocal about their lack of love for Tatooine. The protagonist of the Sequel Trilogy, Rey, also grows up on a desert planet, but her repeated insistence in The Force Awakens that she needs to return to Jakku is only in the vain hope that her parents will come back to find her there. In Solo, Han only plans to return to Corellia to save his girlfriend. (Speaking of Han Solo, the closest thing to home in most of the films is the Millennium Falcon. Home is where the Falcon is.) In Rogue One, rebels go into battle crying “For Jedha!”—but that’s different from Morgan’s “For Dathomir!” It’s not because Jedha is their homeworld, but because of what the Empire did to that planet. It’s their version of “Remember the Alamo!”

In the films, to live a long, peaceful life on a homeworld seems an impossibility. It’s something Padme, Leia, or Lando would want, but can’t have. (In Leia’s case, the Empire destroys Alderaan.) Perhaps because it’s so hard to realize with all the devastating star wars going on, it seems most of the characters have given up on the ideal, if they ever aspired to it in the first place. Just look at what happens—or rather, what doesn’t—when a war is over. The Original and Sequel Trilogies both end with the rebels celebrating victory together, but where do they go afterward? Unlike the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, they have no Shire to fight for and then return to.

The Prequels seem to offer a subtle critique of this lack of localized loyalties. To compare the franchise to The Lord of the Rings again, the Jedi Temple is the closest analogue to Rivendell—but what a contrast! Rivendell is warm and earthy. The Jedi Temple is cold and cerebral. The Jedi Code’s ascetic ban on attachments must extend to places. The Jedi are taken away from their homeworlds in early childhood, never to return, and as much as they may consider the Temple their home, they aren’t bothering to make it cozy. It’s probably also significant that the Temple is on Coruscant, the most cosmopolitan planet in the galaxy. But what is most telling in the Prequels is that Palpatine, like Padme, is from Naboo—and he uses their homeworld as a pawn in a political power play, subjecting his people and their culture to death and destruction while he watches from aloof, anonymous Coruscant. The Jedi may think attachment is a liability, but Palpatine’s lack of attachments is part of what makes him so dangerous. Conversely, a love of home turns out to be part of what saves the day. Just as how, in The Return of the Jedi, Palpatine did not count on Luke and Vader’s attachment to each other, in The Phantom Menace, the one thing he did not count on was Padme’s attachment to their homeworld.  

Now, back to the shows.

Of course, Ezra’s close identification with his homeworld in Ahsoka is nothing new for his characterization. Across the four seasons of Rebels, Ezra frequently returned to Lothal, and the final season was about his fight to liberate it from imperial occupation. Indeed, it was the sacrifice he made to achieve that liberation that led to his exile in that show’s finale. In the latter seasons of The Clone Wars, there is a real sense of loss when Ahsoka not only leaves behind the Jedi, but also leaves behind the Temple, which in turn leaves her adrift in the galaxy, looking for someplace to belong. In the second season of The Bad Batch, the Batch find an island paradise and begin to seriously consider staying put instead of being mercenaries. Likewise, The Mandalorian Season 3 ends with Mando and Grogu getting their own homestead, and with the Mandalorians finally retaking their homeworld. (The Mandalorians are strongly reminiscent of the Israelites returning to the Promised Land from Egyptian slavery or Babylonian exile.) The first season of Andor begins and ends on the planet that Andor and his adoptive parents call home, and the writers show an anthropological interest in the customs of different planetary cultures to a degree rarely seen anywhere else in the franchise. Finally, and in the weirdest development of all, The Book of Boba Fett contends that even the most famously dispassionate bounty hunter needs a home: first he is adopted by Tusken Raiders, and then he becomes Tatooine’s new daimyo. 

The strangeness of that last example only serves to underscore what seems to be a significant concern in the shows, acting perhaps as a corrective to how the films largely tended to make the planets mere backgrounds. The shows recognize that people can’t really love or be at home in a vast, impersonal galaxy, but they can love and be at home on a planet of their own.

P.S. October 17: Tim Lawrence makes the fair point that “Padmé’s attachment to her homeworld is part of what makes Palpatine's manipulation work. It’s what gets her to vote him into power. So attachment to a homeworld is ambiguous – just like Luke’s family attachments in [Return of the Jedi], it can be manipulated by/lead to evil (Luke nearly kills Vader because of his attachment to Leia) and can also frustrate/prevent evil (Luke refuses to kill Vader because of his attachment). This double sided quality is probably why the Jedi forbid it in both cases (home and family).” 

On further reflection, I would add that this same ambivalence about place is seen with the two other characters from the films that I cited as positive examples of an attachment to place: Leia and Lando. In A New Hope, Tarkin and Vader threaten to destroy Leia’s homeworld to get her to betray the rebels. (She (comp)lies, but they destroy Alderaan anyway.) And in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader threatens Lando with putting Cloud City under Imperial control to get him to betray Han (and then keeps altering the deal).