Bendu, Neutrality & the Broader Force

Going back to an idea I touched on a few weeks ago, when I was kid watching the original trilogy, and even when I was older and watched the prequels, I was under the impression that the Force was a two-sided coin:  it was either used for light, or dark; good, or evil; Jedi, or Sith. There wasn’t really any middle-ground. But now, with the Sith destroyed, the dark side of the Force should be gone too, leaving the light as the only remaining side of the Force coin, right? Well, I think the Bendu, Supreme Leader Snoke, and the Knights of Ren would all disagree…so let’s put the Force stew back on the burner, add elements of neutrality along with different forms of good and evil, and then see how it tastes, huh? (Yay, cooking reference!)
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“Hope” & “He lives!” Or: Maul’s Return to Star Wars Rebels Season 3

I assume you all watched that episode of Rebels last night, yeah? (Or Saturday night, depending on your time zone and when I actually get this published…) Pretty bad ass, right? Right, okay, we agree, awesome, I knew we would…and, yeah, I get that a lot of people are jazzed about the idea of the “twin suns” being the secret to destroying the Sith, but I’m more interested in Maul’s vision, his search for “hope”…what does “hope” even mean for someone like Maul? What does someone who’s been through everything he’s been through hope for? Vengeance? Power? Immortality? All of the above? I’m going to postulate a few possible hopes for Maul based on his “he lives!” line following what was probably a partial vision of his would-be true “hope”…and, just as fair warning, these are all definitely old hopes, not a new hope, like the one Ezra saw…
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