Are Yoda and Ben cowards?

[Deathroll]

Jesus...

 

First of all, Yoda wasn't bested by the Sidious, he fled after he almost defeated Sidious because he ran out of time. They went into hiding because they knew they were no match for the entire Galactic Republic. The jedi were thought of as traitors and they were to be killed on sight. The only way to preserve the jedi was to go into hiding and protect Anakin's children who would undoubtedly be force sensitive. Obi-wan couldn't train him in the force for **** loads of reasons. His connection to his father, he would have to be trained while living with his family which was forbidden (attachments). Finally, the reason he didn't kill Vader was because he couldn't bring himself to. He couldn't in the third, even after he cut off his arms and legs lol, he didnt finish him. Also he knew there was still light in Vader, but knew that he wasn't capable of bringing him back. But he knew that Luke could. **** the notion that Yoda and Obi-wan, two of the most powerful force users in history were cowards, **** it.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Deathroll

[iain_b]

I don't know if coward is the right word. Maybe in some respects. Obi Wan was a type of coward for not finishing Vader, and for not just taking Luke and raising him himself. If he had done that Luke would have been far more capable. I think Yoda pretty much gave up though. Regardless, what they did at the end of episode III was really just a plot device used to make the beginning of episode IV make sense. One thing that doesn't make any sense to me is why they split up. Anakin had just become Vader, and had no power base to speak of really. If they had both gone after the Emperor together they may have stood a chance. Cut the head off the serpent so to speak. He had just established power, and the senate had yet to be dissolved, and he didn't really have an established heir. Bad tactical decision making for the sake of a poetic irony lol

 

Obi-Wan took it personally when Anakin fell to the darkside, he saw it as a personal fault in the way he trained Anakin.

 

As for Obi-wan and Yoda going into hiding, they went into exile. That's a bit different. Their only hope to preserve the jedi order was to get the two kids out of the reach of Vader and Palpatine and hope they would survive long enough to carry on the legacy eventually.

Edited January 6, 2012 by iain_b

[PlagaNerezza]

It was more important to the Jedi Order that the two masters survive hidden from the Empire than train an apprentice.

 

It wasn't until Luke became a teenager that a rebellion of significance started to materialize. That would have meant all of Vader and the Emperor's time could be devoted to hunting Obi-wan and Yoda. They had no significant threats to there rule to give the two masters time to train a new generation of Jedi and as I recall there was significant history around the Emperor and Vader rounding up and killing force sensitives.

 

They wanted no challengers to their power and authority and they rightly feared a rise of another force user that could bring them both down.

 

What bothered me was the corruption of Anakin in the movies was very poorly done. It did not seem to me Anakin's power lust was that great to go from Jedi Knight to killer of children in mere momemts to wanting dominating the galaxy.

 

Personally I would have had Anakin slaughter the separatists. Attack the temple and than fight obi-wan. With Sith trials with the Emperor occurring between the separatists and the temple raid.

[micshaz]

....Because that's not what happened

[Gruug]

I read somewhere, perhaps in one of the many a EU books out there, that Obi and Yoda were not in total hiding. That on more then one occasion they were actully off their respective planets helping somewhere in the universe. They just did not leave often as they could not afford to be discovered "until the time is right". And as was mentioned above, the time was not right until the rebellion was in full swing.

[Tal-N]

Why would they hide?

 

Simple. Remember as well, Palpatine too went into seclusion. Does that mean he was a coward? Or did he simply play the waiting game?

 

Both the Jedi and Palpatine did the right thing. They went into hiding and waited for a chance to strike. However Sideous' ego got the better of him and he became over-confident and overtly attempted to create a super-weapon to seize control over the galaxy and allowed the rebellion to know of its existence in a ploy to trap the rebels.

 

What Yoda and Obi-Wan did was a tactically sound move. And remember the key thing, it worked!

[DoctorBeckett]

ooooh I love these types of threads. It flexes my Star Wars knowledge...

 

1. Palpatine ascends to power. (a deserving thread all in it's own) Nice plan. Excelently executed. The Sith are very patient. Who else would conceive of something like this that would last almost a generation? Anakin gets corrupted to the dark side. Palpatine's plan all along to help him ascend to power.

 

2. Yoda and Obi-Wan take on Palpatine and Anakin. Obi-Wan nearly kills Anakin (more on this in a bit) and Yoda is over matched by Palpatine. (be patient, just laying the groundwork here..)

 

3. Padme has the twins, they're split up for their protection.

 

4. Obi-Wan goes to Tatooine and Yoda goes to Dagobah in their exiles.

 

 

Ok. Obi-Wan was so close to Anakin they were "like brothers". He was tasked, in duty, to kill Anakin. Like all military men, they must follow orders. Even ones that they don't like. "The Duel" happens. "I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you." He almost kills Anakin.. Obi-Wan, in hindsight, should have force pushed Anakin into the lava and ended it there (and taken away Palpatine's chief enforcer). But he couldn't bring himself to do it. I don't know if he wanted to make Anakin suffer with the burns or what, it may have been the closeness he still felt for him but for whatever reason, (the betrayal?) he couldn't. Obi-Wan kept tabs on Luke playing the old hermit building up that persona very well. He felt like it was his fault that Anakin fell to the dark side. And therefore not training Luke all of that time in exile.

 

 

 

Yoda just plain underestimates how powerful Palpatine has become. Politically and Force-wise. He tries his damnedest to take on Palpatine one on one and almost gets killed for his trouble. So he knows the twins will eventually need to be trained. He exiles himself to Dagobah and awaits the arival of one or both of them, keeping tabs on them through The Force. I'm sure Yoda chose to live by "The Dark Side Tree" (where Luke faced "Vader" the first time..) to keep under Palpatine & Anakin's Force sensitivity radar..

Edited January 6, 2012 by DoctorBeckett

[DarkMorlin]

Neither Obi-Wan or Yoda could train Luke. Remember the Emperor and Vader both began to sense Luke's growing power....as Luke's power grew.

 

Anakin began throwing off so much power during his training the entire council was terrified of him becoming an unstoppable monster...which he did. Palpatine sensed his potential almost immediately and began his corruption within weeks of Qui-Gon discovering him.

 

Ben and Yoda knew they had to wait until Luke was old enough to stand a chance against the Sith. Wiat until Luke's 25-30, in his prime, put him through a grueling, quick training regimen before the Sith can find him, and when they do catch up....

 

They meet the Jedi Anakin should have been, a fully trained Luke, the chosen one with the force as his ally, ready to lead the rebellion which is coming to a head, with Obi-Wan and Yoda at his side....

 

Good plan, but Leia got in the way and jumped the gun by pulling Ben into the rebellion, and the rest is history.

[Rhyltran]

I love Star Wars

 

I love Jedi

 

However one thing has always bothered me: Yoda and Obi Wan going into hiding once the Sidious ascended.

 

Granted Yoda went to battle Sidious and was overmatched and Obi bested Vader they reconvene and decide to go thier seperate ways to survive.

 

umm what really?

 

Yoda and Obi-wan are both Jedi Masters...both general's in the clone army and both very experienced leaders and have both trained padawans.

 

Why would they hide? Or at least why would they hide and shut down any opposition to the sith....They basically coward away for 20 years waiting for Luke to find them...instead of finding force sensitives and secretly reestablishing the Jedi order its not like they couldn't hide in the universe...I mean there were thousands of Jedi during the old republic and the entire empire remained hidden....surely 50-60 Jedi could hide on some moon.

 

Just something I have always thought about it seemed out of character for them. Could you imagine Mace going into hiding and just hanging around...or Revan...

 

If they died all would be lost. They knew Anakin's children survived. They knew they'd be the one's to defeat both Vader and Sidious.

[TollShaddar]

That is a very good question. I don't think coward is the right word though. I do think they had moments of weakness. Obi-One not killing Anakin, as has already been mentioned, was a moment of weakness, albeit an understandable one. But a moment of weakness non the less.

 

Yoda's is another issue. Here is a Jedi Master who has just witness all that he has lived and died for over the course of 800 years be destroid, in his watch so to speak. I wonder what was going through his head as he fell to his knees in kashyyk feeling the loss of so many Jedi. He was not ready for Sidious, but he fought him anyway, and lost. I think his decision to go to exile was also a moment of weakness, but I don't know that he had any other choice at the time.

[NumbNuts]

Yoda didn't hide. He went to study and learn as did Ben. Since when Qui-Gon had learned to communicate even being dead. And he wanted to teach that to Ben and Yoda. So that those great Jedi even if found and defeated would not "die" and would be there to train Luke.

 

Also there was 41 Jedi that survived the Order 66. Most of those who tried to rebel and and re-build were killed by Vader and co.

[imajasjam]

I thought a new hope made it pretty clear that Owen told Obi-Wan to leave Luke alone, and Obi-Wan didn't have the heart to force Owen to let him train Luke as a kid.

 

He mentions that in the conversation that Owen refused to let Obi Wan give luke his fathers lightsaber.

 

In the beginning of a new hope Owen tries pretty damn hard to stop Luke going to "Ben" even to give him R2D2 with the message.

[Barrechor]

I get Obi wan was watching over luke...but for 18-20 years? and he never took him and trained him? seems like a bad idea.

 

Being at battles would fuel Vader to be more ruthless? So your saying they choose not to rebel for the greater good type idea? interesting...I would still say that is cowardice...surely early after the Empires creation Vader was still vulnerable and Yoda surely could have overcome him with Obi-Wan.

 

Bare in mind that Obi-Wan had just watched someone he had trained from a young age, turn into the most notorious sith lord of all time.

 

I dont think he wanted a repeat with Luke.

 

Yoda however couldve done a great job on Dagobah, teaching Luke the ways of the force.

[Darth-Malice]

It's Called bad story writing. Lucas lost the ability to form coherent thoughts and direct at the end of the eighties. And rushed the scripts to the point he even admitted there were some pretty stupid things in the movies.

[mervotron]

I think Shaak Ti should have survived...

[Cypherwells]

I think they were cowards.....

 

Vader was beaten and if instead of running away, they joined up to take on Sidious then the sith would have been defeated as Vader would have died!

 

COWARDS COWARDS COWARDS!

 

THE SITH RULE!

[xeviltoasterx]

Given what we know about Palpatine, the mastermind that he is, the way he mapped out events and manipulated EVERYTHING to his own will, plus how strong he was in the force...wouldn't you think it would be incredibly dangerous to have started training Luke earlier? Hell, with no detection for however many years, he still would have killed Luke had it not been for Anakin. If that happened, Leia would have then been the only potential Jedi in the galaxy and, more likely then not, would have never known this/come to any of her potential. Who would have trained her? The galaxy would have been ****ed.

 

That being said, imagine how quickly things could have went wrong had Palpatine discovered Luke earlier. I don't think it was as much of a cowardice issue as a desperate, final attempt to keep the Jedi, and any hope for the Rebellion, alive. Maybe.

Edited January 7, 2012 by xeviltoasterx

[RayceUlrand]

I get this but why then didn't Yoda take Luke with him or Ben? The Jedi always took force sensitives when they were toddlers...why was this different?

 

Take a newborn baby to a place as disgusting and filthy, not to mention DANGEROUS as Dagobah?.....

 

Right.

[The_Anf]

Take a newborn baby to a place as disgusting and filthy, not to mention DANGEROUS as Dagobah?.....

 

Right.

 

He only would have had the strongest Jedi to protect him...I'm sure he would have been fine

[Saigo]

My question is.

 

Why is everyone questioning Ben/Yoda when they achieved their ultimate aims.

 

They played it perfectly, Luke coming into power early would have alerted Vader/Palpatine, so Kenobi held back to the point where Luke could learn quick and come into power and be able to defend himself unlike the younglings, while waiting Kenobi was able to construct a legend about himself without it being about Obi Wan Kenobi the Jedi Master, but Old Ben the crazy hermit who Luke was aware of.

 

Kenobi led Luke to Yoda after he fell, so you could say he shuffled Luke to plan B after he gave his life to save him, Yoda was able to open his mind to the force fully and that led to Luke being directly responsible for the 'death' of Darth Vader, the moment Vader turned against his Master he was Anakin again, that act and Anakin's killing of Palpatine brought the prophecy and the Jedi Masters life works to a successful conclusion.

 

So what they did was perfect, from a certain point of view.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Saigo

[Grayhorn]

They were not cowards, they were intelligent.

 

THey were not the only jedi who survived the war, small groups began to form shortly after the genocide, yet each of these were hunted down by the empire. The other key difference is that unlike the war that took place ten years prior to the game, there was no republic to support the jedi. THe very people they had sworn to protect had turned on them. No world, space station or moon was safe. In situations where everyone is against you your best chances at survival are to scatter, that way at least one survives.

 

Palpatine had a nearly endless army which in a single night managed to kill almost every jedi in the galaxy. Sure combined Obi-wan and Yoda could probably take out Sidious. However they would never be able to reach him, he would be able to sense them before they even got close and fighting through all his guards was not an option. THey were not cowards, they merely did what they had to in order to survive

[Beldirion]

I love Star Wars

 

I love Jedi

 

However one thing has always bothered me: Yoda and Obi Wan going into hiding once the Sidious ascended.

 

Granted Yoda went to battle Sidious and was overmatched and Obi bested Vader they reconvene and decide to go thier seperate ways to survive.

 

umm what really?

 

Yoda and Obi-wan are both Jedi Masters...both general's in the clone army and both very experienced leaders and have both trained padawans.

 

Why would they hide? Or at least why would they hide and shut down any opposition to the sith....They basically coward away for 20 years waiting for Luke to find them...instead of finding force sensitives and secretly reestablishing the Jedi order its not like they couldn't hide in the universe...I mean there were thousands of Jedi during the old republic and the entire empire remained hidden....surely 50-60 Jedi could hide on some moon.

 

Just something I have always thought about it seemed out of character for them. Could you imagine Mace going into hiding and just hanging around...or Revan...

 

 

 

Well,the Sith are in almost complete rule,so,they are not cowards, because orders are Kill them on sight,and they are the last Jedi until they train Luke.In other words,they hide 'cause if they go out,they will eventually die,witch means Luke will never become a Jedi and the Rebels will be eliminated.Luke would never become a Jedi because he would never had been trained by Ben Ka-nobi(Obi-wan Ka-nobi) and later Master Yoda,who some might say is a little coo-coo when he meets Luke.If you think about it,Ben has a hand in almost every event,like the major ones,from A New Hope to Return of the Jedi.

[Night_Hawke]

I love Star Wars

 

I love Jedi

 

However one thing has always bothered me: Yoda and Obi Wan going into hiding once the Sidious ascended.

 

Granted Yoda went to battle Sidious and was overmatched and Obi bested Vader they reconvene and decide to go thier seperate ways to survive.

 

umm what really?

 

Yoda and Obi-wan are both Jedi Masters...both general's in the clone army and both very experienced leaders and have both trained padawans.

 

Why would they hide? Or at least why would they hide and shut down any opposition to the sith....They basically coward away for 20 years waiting for Luke to find them...instead of finding force sensitives and secretly reestablishing the Jedi order its not like they couldn't hide in the universe...I mean there were thousands of Jedi during the old republic and the entire empire remained hidden....surely 50-60 Jedi could hide on some moon.

 

Just something I have always thought about it seemed out of character for them. Could you imagine Mace going into hiding and just hanging around...or Revan...

 

How as yoda overmatched by sidious? Yoda matched him blow for blow force power for force power. The main thing that decided the fight was the force explosion that they both forced, sidious being bigger and heavier flew less distance and was able to hold onto the senate pod. Yoda being smaller and lighter flew farther and lost the high ground to sidious. I know he could have pulled an Anakin and attempted to use the force to regain a fighting position, but it would have taken time and could have failed (ask anakin.). Soon the military would have shown up and he would have had to fight them and sidious.

 

So he had failed and left.

 

Obi-wan was never going to succeed against anakin, obi-wan told yoda this in the first place. But vader wasn't the problem. He had just turned to the darkside realistically a sith lord he was not. He was just an evil jedi at this point. However vaders death was not required to save the republic in all truth. So obi-wan's failure only mattered if yoda also failed.

 

As far as i know their is no difinitive lore that states they never ever trained anyone in hiding just as their is none that state no other jedi survived the purge. For all we know there is a jedi order secluded out there that is waiting to return still.

 

So after losing to sidious to preserve the order yoda and obi-wan had to go into hiding just like bane did after the events on rusaan.

 

TLDR version; they played the long game like the sith had 1000 years ahead.

[Rhyltran]

Yoda couldn't match Sidious. As I posted in another thread.

 

First from Leland Chee.

 

"Inside the spacious interior of the Galactic Senate chambers, Yoda challenged the Emperor. The two entered into a spectacular duel -- a contest between the most powerful practitioners of the Force's light and dark sides. The Emperor proved too powerful to defeat. Though Yoda held his own for much of the duel, in the end, the Sith bested him. He realized that directly confronting the Sith would be doomed to failure. Defeated, Yoda slinked away into the shadows of the Senate chamber's cavernous depths, leaping into a waiting getaway speeder piloted by Bail Organa."

 

Second from the novelization.

 

There came a turning point in the clash of the light against the dark.

 

It did not come from a flash of lightning or slash of energy blade, though there were these in plenty; it did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch, though these were traded, too.

 

It came as the battle shifted from the holding office to the great Chancellor's Podium; it came as the hydraulic lift beneath the Podium raised it on its tower of durasteel a hundred meters and more, so that it became a laserpoint of battle flaring at the focus of the vast emptiness of the Senate Arena; it came as the Force and the podium's controls ripped delegation pods free of the curving walls and made of them hammers, battering rams, catapult stones crashing and crushing against each other in a rolling thunder-roar that echoed the Senate's cheers for the galaxy's new Emperor.

 

It came when the avatar of light resolved into the lineage of the Jedi; when the lineage of the Jedi refined into one single Jedi.

 

It came when Yoda found himself alone against the dark.

 

In that lightning-speared tornado of feet and fists and blades and bashing machines, his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the Force.

 

Finally, he saw the truth.

 

This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known...

 

just--

 

didn't--

 

have it.

 

He'd never had it. He had lost before he started.

 

He had lost before he was born.

 

The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years' intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.

 

They had become new.

 

While the Jedi--

 

The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war.

 

The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter the light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when the war itself had become the dark's own weapon?

 

He knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him.

[Masakari_]

I don't care about 300 EU Jedis hiding around or the novelization or whatever anyone can come up with.

 

What matters is the movies, and in that sense, the answer is simple - plot device for Lucas to setup the old trilogy, otherwise it makes no sense.

 

For that matter, what the movie showed was Yoda weakening from falling, but so was Palpatine from the force blast, Yoda could had perfectly continued fighting, and maybe defeating him. From that whole fight scene, it seems a totally balanced fight with neither combatant stronger than the other.

 

I've never seen that fight scene as "Yoda being defeated", or "Palpatine being stronger", it's on and suddenly Yoda goes away for no reason other than the script needed it. They weren't exactly cowards, Lucas could and should have done a better job with the setup to the original trilogy.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Masakari_