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- May 5, 2015
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After some careful consideration of the trailer, I have the following thoughts:
This hype about "grey" Jedi is probably premature and precisely the reaction they wanted. Mark Hamill stated in an interview just after the trailer debuted that the teaser is deliberately misleading. He and Daisy went on to talk about how, in this film, Luke Skywalker isn't the man Rey expected; he's experiencing a crisis of faith surrounding the fall of Kylo Ren and the demise of his Jedi students at the hands of his nephew. Combine that with Han's quote the previous movie about Luke blaming himself and walking away from it all, it is far more likely that Luke's quote at the end of the teaser was not meant to herald the literal end of the Jedi (else, as GABA said, why is he training Rey later?), but it is meant to highlight his own doubt in the Jedi as a result of the tragedies he has witnessed.
There is other evidence. In The Force Awakens Snoke makes a very memorable quote: "If Skywalker returns, the new Jedi will rise." There is another quote, made by Lor San Tekka the beginning of the movie: "Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force." We know that, as far as canon is concerned, and what most Star Wars fans simply refuse to accept, is that the light side of the Force is the Force in balance. It is the Force as it naturally occurs; the dark side is a perversion of it, and therefore, if the dark side is eliminated, the Force is in balance. Therefore, the Jedi must return in order for the Force to return to its balanced state.
There is other evidence, of course. In canon, use of the dark side at all corrupts an individual. There is no way you can "walk the line" for very long, the only exception being Bendu, and we're not sure what he is yet. While people laud Ahsoka Tano as a "grey Jedi," she is neither grey nor a Jedi. She's very much a light side Force user who no longer identifies with the Jedi Order. Even in Legends, the original Jedi, who practiced balancing darkness and light eventually fell to the dark side, forcing the remaining Jedi to use the light side to combat them; and Revan was literally torn into two different psyche due to his own efforts to balance the two sides of the Force.
Therefore, I would not get my hopes up for a "grey Jedi Order" or anything of the such. Luke's comments were very likely just a reflection of his own self-doubt, which Rey will cure by Act II of the film, thus permitting him to train her.
Exactly my thoughts.
