#prove me wrong with polite discussion about our blorbos!

[acewizardinspace]

People don’t think enough about the jedi council’s options in the wrong jedi arc. They can either:

A: Do nothing. Tell the public and the friends and family of the victims, “There is a ton of evidence for this person’s guilt, but she is one of us, we have known her since she as a baby, so we decided she is not guilty, without a trial. Bye.”

B: Hold your own trial. We don’t know exactly what kind of legal system the jedi might have, but there is no way in thousands of years there has never been a jedi accused of a crime. Even if we assume those crimes are handled by the government issuing the accusation, there has to have been a time when that wasn’t an option. For example, the council held a trial to decide the fate of Prosset Dibs, so yeah there must be some type of system in place. But Prosset and Ahsoka are very different because he only attacked another jedi, making it an internal affair. For Ahsoka, think of the implications, either they:

a: Find Ahsoka guilty: What now? Do you imprison her yourself? Do the jedi have cells in the temple for keeping force sensitives? Just keep her in her room with guards on the door? We know the jedi believe in rehabilitation so there would be an attempt to help her away from the dark side (once again, what they did for Prosset). Meanwhile, they have to deal with the public who is probably not happy that she is getting off with what is, in their opinion, a slap on the wrist. Is it the jedi’s job to care what the people want? Maybe, maybe not, but public opinion is at an all-time low because of this fake war set up to make them look bad, and this will have consequences. (Yeah, we know she is not guilty and doesn’t need rehabilitation away form the dark side, but the council doesn’t.)

b: Find her innocent: This will sound like bullshit to the public. “Uh we meditated on it and the force told us she is not guilty.” How mad would you be if this happened? If your friend died in the attack, wouldn’t you be just pissed about this? There is a TON OF EVIDENCE TO HER GUILT and at this point, no counter evidence. (Yeah, Anakin shows up with Barriss eventually, but you cannot make a decision based on something that will happen in the future, something you don’t know about. So, this doesn’t factor into the council’s decision.)

Or finally, the option they chose, the only real option available:

C: You send Ahsoka off to receive a fair trial* where she will have an opportunity to defend herself in court and will have an attorney. In their minds, this trial would likely be even more fair than one they hold because they are emotionally compromised here, because, yes, they do know Ahsoka and consider her family! But they have been burned before (Dooku and Krell) and are at this point willing to accept the possibility of betrayal.

People act like the council sent her to die. They didn’t. All they did was vote on whether or not she, someone accused of a crime with tons of evidence supporting that claim, should go to trial. That’s it. Everything else was Palpatine and Barriss. Besides, this way if she is found innocent the public won’t think it was nepotism.

* We, the audience, know this will not be a fair trial, but the council, and literally everyone else, believes it will be. There is literally not a single indication to imply anything else. You can’t blame characters for not knowing something they logically couldn’t know.

So, to the people who think the council fucked up here, I ask an honest question, if you were on the council, had the full ability to sway the vote, and only knew what the council knew, what would you have done? And if it was anything other than expelling Ahsoka from the order, how would you have handled the fallout? The riots, the protesting, the clones from the guard who get killed in the crossfire of your choice?

The council made the only choice they could have made, and Ahsoka got hurt. That doesn’t make them wrong, and it doesn’t make Ahsoka wrong to feel betrayed either.