fluffycakesistainted:

Alright, y’all want a rundown of what exile looks like in Star Wars? Cuz this is exile in Star Wars, and it ain’t pretty, or nice, or good. Nor is it meant to be:

Yoda

“Failed, I have. Into exile, I must go.“  –Revenge of the Sith

“Perhaps the Empire thought he was long dead and had ceased searching. Or, more likely, the Empire did not care, so unimportant one ancient Jedi Master had become.

He sighed again. Maybe the Empire was right. About how unimportant he had become, that was.”

“Their exile had been too long and too lonely. But had the two of them remained together, the Empire would surely have found them.”

“For Yoda, the galaxy was so rapidly becoming emptier and emptier.”

“He held back the loneliness. He held back a galaxy without Obi-Wan.”

“And he whispered to himself, ‘Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force.’

But he was lonely.

‘Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.’

But he was lonely, and old.

And he had failed.

He had not seen the paths the young Padawan Anakin had begun to take."  

–“There Is Another”, From A Certain Point Of View

Ahsoka

"She was alone, something she was never meant to be. Her people were tribal…and her ability to use the Force gave her a galaxy of brethren from all species. Even after she left the Jedi Temple, she could feel the others when she wanted to–the ebb and flow of them in the Force around her.

Until, of course, she couldn’t.”

“…the yawning gulf that had haunted her since Order 66.”

“…there was a darkness to her meditations now that she didn’t like. …The familiar presence of Anakin was gone… Ahsoka couldn’t feel him anymore, or any of the others. Even the sense of the Jedi as a whole was gone… She missed it like she would have missed a limb.” 

“She felt the familiar tightness in her throat, the same strangling grief that came every time she imagined what had happened when the clone troopers turned.”

“Ahsoka found herself spiraling down through her grief and reached out to grasp onto something, anything, to remind her of the light.”

“The Jedi were gone. Ahsoka thought it mercilessly, over and over again–still too afraid to say the words out loud–until she could take the final step: the Jedi were dead. All of them. …They were dead, and there was nothing Ahsoka could do.

Why had it been her? She’d had that thought a hundred times since Order 66. Why had she survived? She wasn’t the most powerful; she wasn’t even a Jedi Knight, and yet she was still alive when so many others had died. She asked the question so often because she knew the answer. She just hated facing it, as painful as it was. She’d survived because she had left. …She walked away from the Jedi…and because of that she was alive, whether she deserved to be or not.”  –Ahsoka 

Obi-Wan

“Bail thought of Obi-Wan, sitting by himself on some Outer Rim world. His sacrifice was to take himself out of the way, to focus only on the future and not give any thought to the present. It would be a lonely way to live, even if it was peaceful, and Bail did not envy him at all.”  

“He’d gone to Shmi Skywalker’s grave to apologize for losing her son. He had never met her…but Qui-Gon had made her a promise and Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to keep it. As he stood there, looking at the stone, he felt an even deeper shame.”  –Ahsoka

"‘For nearly two decades, I have been little more than a shadow waiting to become a Jedi Knight again.’" 

"Only after Anakin’s fall did [Qui-Gon] push himself to appear fully. …This he did for Obi-Wan; at least his Padawan did not have to spend his years in the desert entirely alone." 

"But after all his losses, all his sacrifices, all these endless years in the desert, Obi-Wan Kenobi still wants more life."  –"Master and Apprentice”, FACPOV

“Nineteen years. Nineteen years since I left him to die. Nineteen years of reliving his corruption every night in my dreams.”  –“Time of Death”, FACPOV (Obi-Wan was having recurring, depressing ptsd dreams about Anakin during his entire exile, y’all)

Luke

“I see things that are not yet to be. …worst of all, Luke, as I am now, an old man, his face creased, his eyes haunted. He’s cut off from those who love him, consumed by regret and sorrow. It is too much to bear, a future I never want to see."  –"Time of Death”, FACPOV

“’Do you think I don’t know my friends are suffering? Or that I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?’”

“He wondered what that Luke Skywalker would think of what he’d become.”

“…whatever had happened to him had led him to reject his own legacy as well. Not for the first time, she wondered if he had slipped into madness during his years in exile.

But the bearded man in the rough-hewn woolens didn’t look insane. Just profoundly sad.”

“Rey wondered if he relived those dark times every day, brooding on top of the island as when she’d first met him, or if he never did–if it was her arrival that had forced him to confront the events that had caused him to shut himself away from family and friends and vanish." 

“‘…it was I who broke that family. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. A legend.’ 

He said that last word as if it were something terrible–a burden and a curse.” 

“…a broken man dragged back into a storm he’d thought he’d escaped.”  –The Last Jedi novelization

“And I was left with shame and with consequence.”

"I came to this island to die."  –The Last Jedi 

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Exile in Star Wars is grief, shame, anguish, guilt, survivor’s guilt, and intense loneliness. Exile in Star Wars (and in general, really) isn’t a salvation, it’s a penance. And Ben Solo is already paying the penance for his own sins, and his grandfather’s, and the fatal mistakes of his Jedi forebears that have been reverberating throughout his family and the galaxy for decades. Which is why one of the purposes of this trilogy is to make it clear that, finally, enough is enough.