A point of contention when talking about the prequels is the Jedi Order’s stance on attachment. A particular scene people often come back to is Yoda’s conversation with Anakin in RotS, where Yoda seems to give some questionable advice about grief. This issue was brought back to my attention by a scene at the end of one of the episodes of Book of Boba Fett, where Luke is shown to be carrying on that same anti-attachment philosophy.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on this, mainly on the question of whether or not this is a good philosophy, and if it’s not, whether that was intentional on the part of George Lucas.
For example, there’s the fact that the Jedi take on new members when they’re babies, because they don’t want prospective Jedi to develop attachments to their families. To me, this flies in the face of the argument that the Jedi are only against possessive, selfish attachments, since familial bonds don’t really fit into that category. If you accept that even the love between a parent and child is something that’s selfish and dangerous, then that leaves you to conclude that all interpersonal relationships are selfish and dangerous and lead to the Dark Side.
It’s true that Anakin consistently takes things too far in his obsession with keeping people in his life. His reaction to his mother’s death is odd in that he focuses on himself, angrily vowing never to fail again, and when he fears for Padme’s life, the language he uses about her is very possessive and dependent to an unhealthy degree.
Basically, Anakin’s relationships are an extreme negative example of the pitfalls of attachment, rather than what would be the norm for all Jedi. Ideally, Jedi would be coached in how to deal with emotions like grief, and how to come to terms with the loss of loved ones so that it doesn’t cloud their judgment. But instead of doing that, the Jedi try to keep their students from even having loved ones at all, and directly associate the act of mourning with negative emotions like jealousy and greed.
This whole issue is further complicated by the ending of RotJ. Luke refuses to kill Vader because of their relation, and it’s Anakin’s attachment to his son (and thus his desire not to lose him) that pulls him back to the Light and causes him to destroy the Emperor. So we have a scenario where familial attachment saves the day and brings victory for the Light Side, with the main difference being that Anakin acted on his attachment in a self-sacrificial way this time, though it’s not certain whether he knew the act would kill him.
This seems to suggest that Lucas’ intention was for the Jedi to be wrong about attachment. And this interpretation was inadvertently backed up by Luke’s portrayal in the old EU, where he’s fully open to attachment and allows it for his students. But there’s something important to keep in mind. The Jedi’s rules on non-attachment hadn’t been invented yet when the OT was being written, and therefore, the EU writers obviously didn’t incorporate it into their stories. By the time George was writing the prequels, he had changed a great deal as a person (as all people do), and therefore was approaching those films with a different perspective. The Jedi’s stance on attachment seems to be something he came up with in the gap between trilogies. And of course, he’s also spoken against the idea of Luke ever getting married in his version of events.
Keeping that in mind, when we look at Luke’s depiction in BoBF, things start to make more sense. BoBF is a project that Dave Filoni is closely involved with, and Filoni was especially close to George and seems to understand his vision and intentions. So, it’s fairly safe to say that Luke’s portrayal in BoBF aligns pretty closely with Lucas’ vision for a post-RotJ Luke.
TL;DR Luke being pro-attachment in the old EU was just a happy accident caused by George simply not having decided yet that attachment was a bad thing.
Totally out of touch George Lucas actually thought audiences would like the PT Jedi and think they were cool.
But this topic always leads me to wonder about how the Jedi parent children. What history are they taught? How much free-play do they have? What is appropriate behavior towards the opposite sex? What are there values regarding topics like economics, bioethics etc.?
I think it is time for a TV series to explore the Jedi Order itself; follow a 5 year old from recruitment to full knighthood or something.