Gen Z Gets Anakin. Boomers Still Don’t.

Anakin Skywalker has rescued the Chancellor, fought a galactic war, and lost a hand on the job. Unfortunately, management has concerns about his attitude. The Jedi Council acknowledges his extraordinary potential. Whether he should be allowed to do anything with it without supervision remains under review. You can see why the Anakin memes have found an audience. The third installment of the prequels has been going viral on X with Gen Z asking, “Wasn’t Anakin… the good guy?” For some Gen Z men, he captures the peculiar frustration of being told you could be anything, then discovering how many people would prefer that you remain exactly where you are. That conflict gives him an emotional life richer than the standard diagnosis of an entitled young man who needs to calm down. He is talented, handsome, proud, romantic, and desperate to prove himself. Sometimes he wants to save everyone. Sometimes he wants everyone to admit he was right. He’s young and full of ambition, like many young men his age. But his appeal goes deeper than handsome-man-with-a-lightsaber edits. Anakin wants a consequential life. He wants mastery, adventure, recognition, and love. He wants independence and his mentors’ approval. He wants to protect Padmé and remain a Jedi. He wants responsibility before he fully understands what it costs. That conflict gives him an emotional life richer than the standard diagnosis of an entitled young man who needs to calm down . Congratulations On Your Potential In Revenge of the Sith , Anakin gets a seat on the Council without the rank of Master. The appointment comes through Palpatine, whose influence the Council distrusts. It then asks Anakin to exploit that relationship by spying on him. His connections are compromising until someone needs a favor. That is where the Jedi acquire their boomer energy. They need his abilities, question his judgment, and retain the authority to decide when his service should translate into influence. Doesn’t this all sound familiar? For viewers who feel that hard work has purchased more expectations than opportunities, the logic is familiar. The sting is that he wants their respect because young men by nature want mentors and feel they don’t have them. A young man indifferent to the Council would be much harder for it to disappoint. Anakin believed in the promise of becoming a Jedi. His resentment grows as the distance between that promise and his experience becomes impossible to ignore. For viewers who feel that hard work has purchased more expectations than opportunities, the logic is familiar. The “millennials will never be able to afford a home because they eat too much avocado toast” has taken a new form with Gen Z . Very Detached. Except From Power. Devon Eriksen’s critique of the prequels and AJA Cortes’s comparison of the Jedi to California spiritual elites identify a useful contradiction: renouncing personal possessions does not necessarily make you less attached to running things. The Council worries about Anakin’s attachments while expecting his loyalty to the Order to survive almost anything. His marriage must remain secret. His fear for Padmé must be discussed without admitting who she is. When he seeks Yoda’s advice about losing someone, he receives instruction in letting go. Accepting mortality is wisdom, but imagine being terrified for someone you love and realizing that honesty would jeopardize the vocation around which you have built your life. Anakin needs help governing his passions. The institution is better equipped to tell him which ones he should not have. A young man’s ambition can be educated. His courage can acquire judgment. His love can become less possessive. None of that happens because a boomer tells him to stop wanting so much. Hamlet With Better Hair There is something of Hamlet in Anakin: a gifted young man whose private anguish becomes entangled with a corrupt court. Older men demand his trust while maneuvering around him. Grief becomes dangerous because it gives those men something to use. Palpatine understands Anakin’s hunger for recognition and his fear of loss. He offers what the Council cannot: the feeling that someone believes his desires can be answered. The offer is poisonous, of course, but its attraction is still intelligible. The manipulation becomes particularly cruel after Padmé’s death. The droid describes her as physically healthy but rather, she lost the will to live. Heartbreak for the Anakin she fell in love with is a plausible reading. Palpatine then tells Anakin that he killed her in his anger. Anakin believes his wife and unborn child are gone, his old life is destroyed, and the Emperor is all he has left. He wanted the power to prevent helplessness. He ends up dependent on the person who benefits most from his despair. Luke Finishes The Story The films give Anakin something more profound than that victory. Camille Paglia recognized the finale’s power long before its current admirers did. In 2012, she called it “the most important work of art produced anywhere in the world in the last 30 years.” Her essay on Lucas examines the intercut births of Luke and Leia and the reconstructed Vader. His children enter the world as he is sealed inside the machinery that will keep him alive. His wife is dying while he’s being worked on after exploding into flames. The future continues without his knowing he has a place in it. Then Luke grows up. His son refuses to accept that Vader is the whole truth about his father. In Return of the Jedi , Luke defeats him but refuses to kill him and take his place beside the Emperor. He stops the succession Palpatine wants: another gifted young man proving himself through a murder that makes him useful to the same master. Luke risks his life on the conviction that his father can still choose differently. For a story about generations, this is what Gen Z needs. And Anakin does. Watching the Emperor torture Luke, he finally turns on his master and saves his son, suffering fatal injuries in the process. He cannot undo his crimes, but he can keep his son, Luke, from becoming their next victim. For a story about generations, this is what Gen Z needs. Anakin. A now older man who uses his strength to ensure that his son can live beyond him . A son believes his father is capable of more than defending the person he has become. The young Anakin wanted his gifts to amount to something. After decades of having those gifts used by men who wanted to rule, he finally makes a choice that costs him everything and frees the one he loves. In the end, he does something great after all.