You Are… NOT the Father! Let’s Talk About the ‘Force Awakens’ Family Tree

There are moderate spoilers for The Force Awakens here, including discussion of the fact that there is a new Force-adept character of unknown parentage as well as a look back and speculation on the future. But if you haven’t seen it by now, you wouldn’t have clicked, because you presumably clicked because you’re into Star Wars, and everyone who’s into Star Wars has surely seen The Force Awakens by now, right? Right. Moving on.

As people ponder paternity in regard to a new lead character in the sequel trilogy, it seems like many are forgetting one important thing in regard to our favorite far, far away galaxy: you do not need to have a father in the Star Wars Universe.

It’s time to talk about what they didn’t teach you in that awkward junior high health class: Fatherless Force Babies.

Anakin Skywalker did not have a father. It seems as though his mother was impregnated by The Force itself. Or, maybe she did have a traditional conception with a really sleazy Force user who then mind-tricked the memory of him away from her. Or, maybe she was lying. Let’s assume that a post-coital ‘mindwipe’ is too dark for Star Wars and that Shmi Skywalker was telling the truth.

Establishing that Anakin was a Fatherless Force Baby is not a neat and tidy piece of his origin. It opens a huge can of Geonosian brain worms. Was the conception random or was Shmi specifically chosen? She did have a really cool last name.

If not purely The Force itself, was there a guiding, unseen hand (or hands) manipulating things?

Was a Jedi behind it? It doesn’t seem like a very ‘Light Side’ thing to do, but since they are not supposed to have children, could a rogue have figured out a way to secretly sire a child through The Force?

Was a Sith was behind it? Why leave Anakin alone until the Jedi found him? He could have been a Trojan Horse to ultimately destroy the Jedi from within. Could the series of events that needed to happen to get the heroes of Episode One to Anakin’s town of Mos Espa really have been more than just chance? It seems that all of the manipulations and machinations required would have taken a lot of power. Could there be a Dark Side entity so old and powerful that even Palpatine was their pawn? Was the real ‘Phantom Menace’ Anakin’s de facto father?

Even the noble Qui-Gon Jinn, with his very particular set of skills in regard to Midi-chlorian testing and trying oh so hard to be the paternity-revealing Maury Povich of Tatooine, did not know for sure.

Are we really talking about Episode I when Episode VII is in theaters and we have Episode VIII to look forward to? Yes. There is a prominent new possible Fatherless Force Baby in the mix and The Force is strong with them. The only real question in regard to their parental origin may be ‘who’s the mother?’ Is it someone we know? The possible answer to that question is likely to be extremely limited since there is only one major female character from the Original Trilogy (sorry, all of you hardcore Mon Mothma fans, she doesn’t count).

Let’s not forget about the burden that a Fatherless Force Baby would place on its mom and just imagine what a Fatherless Force Baby could do to a relationship! You’d have to feel bad for a guy that has a special lady, perhaps they already have a son that is a bit of handful, maybe did something disturbing like cut the family droid’s arm off in a temper tantrum, who goes off an adventure with his pal only to come back to find his true love pregnant. The timing doesn’t seem right, distrust begins to set in… an already strained family dynamic gets even more volatile, bad things to come are made even worse… Pure speculation, but I think you can smell what I’m cooking.

Regardless of their parentage, how this ass-kicking new main character ended up where they did when we met them in Episode VII is another major thing to have a lot of fun considering, daydreaming and speculating about. Let’s all meet up at the bar in Mos Eisley and kick it around a bit.

Happy New Year and I’ll see all of you wretched, villainous scum in 2016!

Brock Relyea (@Brock626) won a shit-ton of creative writing contests in college and has been tinkering with novels ever since. He is a full time Human Resources carny, homeless outreach volunteer, unlicensed private investigator and friend of many feral cats. He lives with his wife in Northern Virginia and drives a 2001 Mustang that doesn’t look like much, but its got it where it counts and he’s made a lot of special modifications himself.

(spoiler warning image via PC Advisor)