KotOR Confronted What the Skywalker Saga Never Did

In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker finally says what we had all been thinking:

If you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris.... At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.

It sums up well one of the fundamental contradictions of the first six movies: the Jedi are shown as a noble order of peacekeepers, users of the light-side of the Force, selfless and compassionate. They are the heroes; they are the prototypical 'good guys'.

But if all that is rue, how did they fail so badly? Where did it all go so wrong?

The first six movies are, at the base level, the story of Anakin Skywalker's rise, fall, and redemption. But in a very real sense, they are the story of the final collapse of the Jedi Order. Yes, it all ended up happy in the end, but that was no fault of the Jedi. It's like Luke said; the actual history of the Jedi is one of failure, and they were nowhere being the capable protectors of justice they believed themselves to be.

The Last Jedi split the fanbase, for pretty obvious reasons. Luke's quote (and the rest of his portrayal) was one of the reasons why, but here's the thing: Luke was absolutely right. It's something painfully obvious in the films, but doesn't get addressed until now: the Jedi are wrong.

In the Knights of the Old Republic games, the situation is somewhat similar. The Jedi Council is apathetic and painfully self-righteous. They preach careful deliberation and trust in the Force; they are the Good Guys, unquestioned arbiters of right.

(KotOR is, by the way, not officially in the Disney canon.)

And then a war breaks out. The Outer Rim is invaded, and they have to do something. They have to walk the walk, so to speak; do they defend the galaxy, or ... wait?

It splits the Council. Many are cautious, but a young Jedi, Revan, goes off to fight the invading Mandalorians, and many follow him.

Revan won the war, and the Mandalorians were nearly destroyed. He did awful things to win it, but the galaxy was saved. Was he right?

But that's not the end of the story. In the course of the war, far into the reaches of the Outer Rim, Revan found something darker, something stronger. That something that had corrupted the Mandalorians also corrupted him, and Revan himself fell to the dark side. Now who was right?

That is the world of the Old Republic. It is not the whole story, and I won't spoil it. But KotOR and KotOR 2 examine those crucial grey questions of morality, of light and dark, of the Jedi and the Sith, and that is why it is still the greatest Star Wars story ever told.