While many Star Wars fans would consider Yoda and Palpatine to be almost perfect antitheses of one another, it seems that they share a strange connection through Yoda’s usage of Force Lightning in The Last Jedi that is eerily similar to something Palpatine did just a few years prior–and that connection goes much deeper than just the lightning itself.
During Star Wars’ prequel trilogy, Yoda was a dignified Jedi Master who was one of the oldest, wisest, and most powerful of all the Masters–something that was proven true during his climactic battle with Sheev Palpatine in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. After Palpatine revealed himself to be the Sith Lord responsible for practically everything bad that had been happening in the galaxy throughout the Clone Wars saga and even some time before (including the extermination of nearly every Jedi), Yoda challenged him one-on-one in a fight that would decide the fate of the Star Wars universe. It was during this battle that the two warriors cemented themselves as opposites with one being the greatest example of the Jedi and the other a sinister representative of the Sith–though it wasn’t until the sequel trilogy that Star Wars proved these two Force users weren’t so different after all.
In Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #1 by Charles Soule and Will Sliney, readers are given a detailed look into Kylo Ren’s fall to the Dark Side starting with how he survived Luke Skywalker’s attempt on his life followed by the destruction of the Jedi Temple out of which Luke and his pupils were operating. While fans of the sequel trilogy know that the Temple was set ablaze following Ben Solo’s escape, this issue shows that it wasn’t Kylo who started that destructive fire–it was Palpatine. As Ben stood outside the temple he once called home, a cloud of Dark Side energy billowed above the temple and struck it with lightning, causing it to burn to the ground. This was later revealed to be the work of Snoke aka Palpatine as a way to push Ben even closer to fully accepting the Dark Side.
The scene in this issue is incredibly reminiscent of one shown in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. Before Luke decides to join in the fight against his former student, Kylo Ren, he is visited by Yoda’s Force Ghost who summons a bolt of lightning and strikes the last remnants of the sacred Jedi texts, effectively destroying them. Yoda does this so that Rey, or the future of the Jedi Order, isn’t bogged down by the mistakes the Jedi have made in the past. This is an interesting parallel as Palpatine used a bolt of lightning to destroy Jedi history as a way to push a former Padawan to the Dark Side whereas Yoda uses the exact same method to help a current Padawan reach her full potential and be the best version of what a Jedi can be. This shows that Yoda and Palpatine are opposites as previously established in the franchise, but also that they are much more than that–the two are reflections of one another, opposites to be sure, but also the same in their methodology and power.
While these scenes say a lot about who Yoda and Palpatine are as people, it says even more about the overall structure of Star Wars as a whole. The sequel trilogy’s key events begin with Palpatine destroying the base of the new Jedi Order, and ends with Yoda destroying what remained. This theme of cosmic balance and ‘rhyming’ has been present throughout Star Wars’ Skywalker Saga, with this one in particular proving that Yoda and Palpatine have a secret connection that proves the two master Force users may have different motives, but aren’t actually that dissimilar after all.
