This Mystery From 'The Phantom Menace' Took Almost A Decade To Explain
To say The Phantom Menace left us with a few unanswered questions is an understatement. Over 20 years later and we're still chasing answers. The film has been run over with a fine tooth comb since it was still in cinemas, and questions have even been formed about the smallest throwaway lines. There is one particular line where a young Anakin Skywalker first sets eyes on our then Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala, and he asks her if she's an angel. While most people wrote it off as a throwaway line from a young, lovestruck child, some dove a little deeper into what it meant.
Star Wars in general centers around a completely different universe than our own. And with different universes comes different races, religions and creeds. Some religions have been revealed during the many films, shows, and books, but none as focused on as the Jedi. All religions we've come into vary greatly from many popular ones here. While angels are a common theme in many religions, here it still left a lot of questions about the Star Wars universe, including whether they even had angels in their religions. If they did have them, what kind of form did they take and what kind of purpose did they serve? It took nearly a decade, but the question finally had an answer thanks to The Clone Wars cartoon.
In the The Clone Wars season 1 episode 18 "Mystery of a Thousand Moons," Anakin and Obi-Wan have a run-in with these angels called Diathim. The mysterious figures could be described as radiant, but that was the only time we ever saw any of them. It did mark the answer to the question about whether they had angels. At least now we could finally put an image to the stories a young Anakin was likely told to make the association between his future with and the mythical creature.
The episode follows Anakin and Obi-Wan as they race to find a cure to a disease that Padme, Ahsoka, Rex, and some other clones were exposed to. The journey leads our Jedi right to one of these angels who, in turn, plays a small part in curing Padme. A small thing, but it was one of the many things from The Phantom Menace that wound up playing into the lore of Star Wars as a whole.
The Phantom Menace, while ultimately becoming a rather controversial entry in the Star Wars universe initially, did set up a great number of things that would later come to pass later on in the Star Wars story. While seemingly just a story about young versions of some of our most beloved heroes and even a few Jedi we both knew and didn't, it proved to set up most of the events that would take place during the prequel series, and even in the beloved The Clone Wars series. The film would prove to have its own special place in the Star Wars universe by setting up Palpatine's bid for power, introducing us to many heroes that would become integral to the larger saga and some masters that, while not as integral to the story at this point, would leave a lasting legacy behind through all the forms of media introduced in the Star Wars universe.
Regardless of how you feel about The Phantom Menace, it is fair to say that the questions it raised and the answers that followed were important to the lore of the Star Wars universe as a whole.
Source(s): CBR.com