One “Star Wars” fan may need a rewatch of the prequel films because in a bizarre interaction, the Twitter user dubbed Anakin Skywalker as “space Jesus.” Sounds like “someone” may have completely missed the plot point where the character crosses over to the dark side and transforms into Darth Vader. Ya know, the supremely bad guy and killer of who-the-hell-knows how many people?
“SW is a Christian story, Anakin is space Jesus. Thus why it got wide appeal,” the tweet that opened the flood gates read.
The interaction took place underneath a promo celebrating Pride Month, which triggered an anti-gay response from someone who admonished the “Star Wars” account for making the franchise “political.” The official Twitter account fired back by saying that “queer characters existing isn’t political” and pointed to the fact that “Wars” was in the title of the franchise. Afterward, a user chimed in about the Jesus comment.
A screenshot of the entire interaction, captured by @CritFacts on Twitter, was captioned “What a f—ing time to be alive.” It has since amassed around 14,000 likes and thousands of retweets at the time of publication. Naturally, fans were baffled by the remark, given that Anakin “murdered tons of people” and was generally a bad dude.
Several suggested that if there were to be a “space Jesus” in the franchise, that title would actually belong to Obi-Wan, who is played by Ewan McGregor, with Anakin played by Hayden Christianson on Disney+’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Others pointed to how the egregious misunderstanding actually informs right-wing ideology and completely misses the lessons in the Bible, in addition to those in the franchise about the nature of good and evil.
Here’s a tiny slice of the reactions:
