The End Of The Jedi & Republic Vs The End Of The Empire Revenge Of The Sith By Matthew Stover | Aftermath:

The End of the Jedi & Republic vs The End of the Empire Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover | Aftermath: Empire's End by Chuck Wendig

These institutions were both dead from the beginning due to self-inflicted wounds of corruption and ignorance. Destruction will continue in a vicious cycle if its mistakes are not obliterated from its foundations. The end of the Jedi and Republic warns of this. It became the Empire, then the New Republic, which failed as it only reinstated what the previous Republic was without uprooting its flawed systems. The Empire transformed into the First Order, but both were already doomed being led by power-hungry figures who end up trying to kill each other and force the world into an order utterly unnatural. Fascism is unsustainable and will always devolve into consuming itself in pursuit of selfish individualistic power.

There's also an interesting contrast between both of these passages. When speaking about the Jedi and the Republic, the supposed Light-Side, there's this tone of hopelessness and utter despair. Their corruption consumed them and you can't stop it or save it. Anakin will always be the dragon that burns thousands of years of legacy to the ground. But when speaking about the Empire's end, there's an underlying tone of hope even as the story closes on it's successor rebuilding in the shadows. Because even when the galaxy continues to rebuild kingdoms of oppression, hope and resistance will always coexist against it simultaneously. The Empire is doomed, and The First Order too, because it dared to rebuild while those willing to fight for justice still exist.

Was the galaxy saved or doomed the moment Anakin stepped onto the scene. Both? Neither? It’s about how hope and perseverance exist even as institutions continually seek power.