How did Tarre Vizsla not only join the Mandalorian faith but also become Mand’alor, as the Jedi of Star Wars had to leave their homes and birthrights behind?
The eternal battle between good and evil in the Star Wars universe is fought out in numerous wars between the different warring groups that populate a galaxy far, far away.
The feud between Jedi and Sith, which encapsulates the worldwide struggle between light and dark, is the oldest and arguably most well-known of these confrontations.
Why Was Tarre Vizsla Allowed to be a Jedi
The original Star Wars trilogy was defined by the conflict between the Rebellion and the Empire. The Book of Boba Fett, a new Disney+ series, focused on the rivalry between various criminal forces in the galaxy’s underworld.
The age-old battle between the Jedi Order and the Mandalorians, on the other hand, is buried a little deeper in the massive tomes of Star Wars lore.
This conflict has recently risen to the forefront of the franchise’s attention, with both The Book of Boba Fett and Season 2 of The Mandalorian focusing on the differences and tensions between the Jedi and Mandalore paths.
During the events of The Book of Boba Fett, Grogu — the Mandalorian orphan who became a Jedi Padawan before being orphaned again — found himself in this division.
A single item in the Star Wars world embodies the Jedi/Mandalorian tensions and their potential settlement – the Darksaber. The person who created this ancient weapon was a strange mix of Jedi and Mandalorian ideas.
Torre Vizsla, the designer of the Darksaber, was the first Mandalorian Jedi, first mentioned in Star Wars Rebels. He built his one-of-a-kind lightsaber with a great flat black blade following his admission into the Jedi Order. He would later use the sword to lead his people, taking on the title of Mandalore.
The Darksaber was deposited in the Jedi Temple after his death, where it stayed until Vizsla’s Mandalorian descendants stole it following the collapse of the Old Republic.
The weapon became a symbol of Clan Vizsla and, later, Mandalorian dominance, as it was used to massacre a large number of Jedi. Even though its inventor belonged to both the Jedi and the Mandalorians, the Darksaber is a crucial item in the history of strife between the Jedi and the Mandalorians.
Vizsla’s loyalty to both factions stands out as more than a bit unexpected, especially in light of recent discoveries in The Book of Boba Fett and what has been portrayed of the Jedi Order in the past. When joining the Jedi Order, Initiates are expected to give up their previous life and devote themselves entirely to the Jedi.
Attachments of any type is forbidden by the Jedi, including devotion to family, friends, and homeworlds. For this reason, Jedi Initiates are typically kidnapped from their families when they are still infants or only a few years old — even Anakin Skywalker, at the age of nine, was considered too old to begin his Jedi training.
Furthermore, because Jedi must give up their previous life to join the Order, they also relinquish any claim to titles or power. Count Dooku, the Jedi turned Sith Lord, was only entitled to assume the title of Count of Serenno after abandoning the Jedi Order. As a Jedi Knight, how could Tarre Vizsla claim the title of Mand’alor, the Mandalorian people’s ruler? While the official canon has yet to explain, there are two unique alternatives.
The first possibility is that the Jedi Order of Vizsla’s time did not prohibit its members from holding such titles or having ties to their homeworlds as tightly as today.
Vizsla joined the Jedi Order during the reign of the Old Republic when the Order was less controlled and more dispersed around the galaxy. The Tales of the Jedi comics introduced Andur Sunrider, a Jedi Padawan with a wife and kid, who shows how the ancient Jedi Order differs from the Order depicted in the prequels.
Nomi Sunrider, Andur’s wife, began her Jedi training well into adulthood after Andur’s death. Vizsla might have become a Jedi as an adult, having previously learned the Mandalore Way and not needing to give up his birthright in order to follow the Jedi path.
Another hypothesis is that Vizsla was not both a Jedi and a Mand’alor. It’s likely that Vizsla, like Dooku millennia before him, deserted the Jedi Order in order to return to his homeworld and claim his illustrious title. If this is true, the Jedi would have had to track down and recapture the Darksaber in order to store it in the Jedi Temple after Vizsla’s death.
This could indicate that the Mandalorians saw the Jedi as stealing a vital part of their civilization. Given how little is known about the beginnings of Mandalorian/Jedi tensions in Disney’s new Star Wars canon, it’s likely that this act was the catalyst for their ancient hate, or at the very least the spark that sparked a long-dormant war.
Torre Vizsla’s role as both a Jedi and a Mand’alor in the Star Wars universe lends him a special significance. Because of the struggle that Vizsla’s weapon sparked between these two tribes, it was doubtful that others would pursue the Jedi or Mandalore paths until millennia after his death. Could Vizsla’s story foreshadow things to come, with Grogu now sandwiched between the two factions?
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