Midi-Chlorians Could Be Back To Ruin 'The Rise Of Skywalker'
George Lucas will always be venerated for gifting the world with Star Wars, but that doesn't mean he is wholly infallible.
The most recent run of Star Wars movies have just about washed away the bad taste left by the prequels, and fans are looking toward the future of Star Wars with shows like The Mandalorian and Rian Johnson's upcoming films.
But just when we thought we were free and clear of the prequels, the midi-chlorians have re-entered Star Wars conversation. Which is, as we'll remind any of you who've scrubbed your minds of everything prequel-related, terrible, terrible news.
Though Lucas claimed that midi-chlorians were something he had originally planned to introduce in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, we didn't get our first glimpse until The Phantom Menace. They are sentient, microscopic beings that live symbiotically inside the cells of all living things. When present in high numbers, they allow their host to feel and use the Force at their will. As Qui-Gon Jinn explains it to Anakin: "Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you."
Before midi-chlorians were introduced, the Force was a mystical, magical, incomprehensible thing. Which made it beautiful, in an enigmatic way. But in the prequels, Force sensitivity was reduced to a biological function, A thing that some people have and others don't, like red hair or double-jointed thumbs.
So when it was revealed that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's director JJ Abrams – the man responsible for reinvigorating the franchise with The Force Awakens – chatted midi-chlorians with with George Lucas, we started to get worried about what that might mean for the upcoming saga-closer.
Abrams told Total Film that Lucas had "a lot of things to say about the nature of the Force, the themes that he was dealing with when he was writing the movies. Yes, there were some conversations about midi-chlorians – he loves his midi-chlorians."
Abrams didn't reveal if he'd be using them in The Rise of Skywalker, but the groundwork for them being part Episode 9 has already been sewn by Lucas.
In the prequels, Darth Sidious aka Emperor Palpatine, was instructed by Darth Plagueis to study midi-chlorians. Targeting them would be targeting "life itself" and thus halt the ageing process, to help someone avoid death altogether.
You'll recall that Palpatine has seemingly come back to life for The Rise of Skywalker. The red flags that midi-chlorians could be part of this are starting to, well, rise.
Whether they're included in the final chapter of the Skywalker Saga has yet to be confirmed, but we're hoping they won't be.
It would be quite a diverting subject to suddenly include in a film already tasked with doing so much. We'll just have to "quiet our minds" and wait and see.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is released on Thursday 19 December 19 in the UK and Friday 20 December.
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