Obi-Wan Kenobi (spoilers)

[Zaukrie]

Edgelord: If you let him live, you're as good as killing everyone he later kills!
Me: Am I then responsible for all the lives he saves in the process?
Edgelord: What? What the hell are you talking --
Me: If he kills someone who would then kill five people, those five people are going to die if he doesn't kill the first person. If I kill him, I've killed those five people. And what if one of those five people will save countless lives in the future? By killing him and thus them, I've killed countless lives.
Edgelord: You can't know --
Me: Oh, so this morality play you've set up only works the way you want it to? How convenient. Go play with someone else. I have control only over my own choices and do not seek anything else. Anyone who does seek that is a tyrant in the making, and I would inevitably be one of the bodies in the foundation of any utopia they seek to create.

Are you suggesting it is likely anyone thought Vader would just stop? How about detaining him instead of killing him? For the story, he could escape....

 

[Davies]

Are you suggesting it is likely anyone thought Vader would just stop?

It doesn't matter.

Detaining him was not within Obi-Wan's resources. He had two choices -- kill him while he's helpless, a monstrous act, or walk away and keep Vader's anger focused on himself instead of the galaxy as a whole. He made the right decision.

 

[Bolares]

Couldn't we have this discussion in a more chill way?

 

[Ryujin]

Couldn't we have this discussion in a more chill way?

You'd think that we could discuss something that has all of the depth of a 1930s American Western with some civility, wouldn't you?

 

[Bolares]

You'd think that we could discuss something that has all of the depth of a 1930s American Western with some civility, wouldn't you?

Tell that to Umbran when he appears

 

[Stalker0]

Where is this ever said? Hate. Anger. Fear. Those things lead to the dark side. Killing a defenseless Sith Lord who had already murdered thousands and will murder many more in order to prevent innocents from dying? I don't remember that being on the list of things that lead to the dark side.

Its shown three times in the movies that I can recall. The movies show that Anakin's killing of helpless Dooku is considered a step towards darkness.

When Windu is going to kill Palpatine while he's helpless, Anakin tries to remind him that "this is not the Jedi way".

When Luke has Vadar down for the count, the emperor flat out says, "strike him down, and your journey to the dark side will be complete".


The series has a long tradition of showing "killing helpless person = bad". We can argue why, we can argue if it makes sense, but you can't argue it doesn't exist.

 

[Imaculata]

Something does keep Obi-Wan from killing him -- Obi-Wan's pity for the self-loathing monster that Darth Vader reveals himself to be.

This is how I interpreted the scene as well. Obi Wan has a mix of pity and horror when he sees what Anakin has become. He wasn't ready to see Anakin like this. He recoils, rather than finish the job.

 

[Ryujin]

This is how I interpreted the scene as well. Obi Wan has a mix of pity and horror when he sees what Anakin has become. He wasn't ready to see Anakin like this. He recoils, rather than finish the job.

"Then my friend is truly dead."

 

[Maxperson]

Its shown three times in the movies that I can recall. The movies show that Anakin's killing of helpless Dooku is considered a step towards darkness.

Yes. Killing Dooku in anger for revenge was a step towards the darkness.

When Windu is going to kill Palpatine while he's helpless, Anakin tries to remind him that "this is not the Jedi way".

When Anakin is trying to keep the guy who will help him save Padme alive and would say anything?

When Luke has Vadar down for the count, the emperor flat out says, "strike him down, and your journey to the dark side will be complete".

Again, it was when Luke was attacking his father while filled with anger and hate. The emperor wanted him to give in to the emotion.

Luke kills hundreds, if not thousands of janitors, computer techs and other non-combatants when he blows up the Death Star. That didn't drive him to the dark side.

Luke force strangles to death two Gamorreans who answer Jaba's door. That didn't drive him to the dark side.

We are shown Anakin murdering a whole tribe of Tuskans out of anger and a desire for revenge in order to show him sliding to the dark side. If all it took as his killing them, we didn't need to see the anger and revenge motivation. He could have dispassionately cut them down.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The series has a long tradition of showing "killing helpless person = bad". We can argue why, we can argue if it makes sense, but you can't argue it doesn't exist.

I feel like it came up a lot in the Clone Wars animated series as well, and I seem to recall poorly executed plot points related to this being my least favorite thing about that series and one reason why I stopped watching it. But as someone who just watched about two thirds of the episodes once five or six years ago I can't really cite examples.

I've often disliked the way Star Wars handled this, because it seems so happy so often to let probably-not-irredeemably-bad footsoldiers of villains be chopped up by Jedi all day with laser swords without shedding a tear, but when named-villain-who-is-definitely-going-to-do-more-evil is at a Jedi's mercy it is suddenly a moral conundrum. But it is definitely a trope of Star Wars to make it a moral conundrum.

All that said, this ending to the Obi-Wan series was not one of the places it bothered me, because Obi-Wan not choosing to kill Vader felt appropriate to his character and their relationship, and because he hadn't just cut a path of rampant destruction through a bunch of Stormtroopers to get to him, or otherwise done anything recently that treated lives more trivially. I wish the dialogue had made the thought process a little clearer, but oh well.