It still just feels like an excuse to make murder seem more palatable, which just seems silly in the first place. It’s either right or wrong, and the level of brainwashing necessary makes their age seem moot to me. Again, conscripted as children or not, they are all adults that can choose to leave, the way Finn and Jannah (and even Hux) did. This also means that the rest, conscripted as children or not, chose not to defect.

I feel like this change doesn’t actually change who dies or who doesn’t. It just makes us feel better about some deaths, and that feels like a strange goal. Are we supposed to feel more excited by people being brainwashed at 18 instead of 17? What age does empathy wear off, exactly? At what age do we say people taking the same exact actions deserve to die versus don’t deserve to die?